On March 23rd, 2020, eighteen days after the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in New York and three days before the state lockdown, a Penguin Random House agent contacted then-Governor Andrew Cuomo’s literary agent to ask if Cuomo could be involved be interested in publishing a book. Cuomo, whose daily pandemic press briefings had made him a national media star – those early days of the “Cuomosexuals” – was interested. Three and a half months later, literary agent Penguin Random House announced that 70,000 words had already been written for a book that would record Cuomo’s experiences of the first six months of the pandemic, including details of his interactions with Donald Trump’s White House. After Penguin Random House won a bidding war against two other publishers, Cuomo pledged $ 5.2 million as an advance on royalties. In a phone call with the governor and one of his top aides, a representative from Penguin Random House had ruled that the book would have to be ready for publication before the 2020 elections.
Cuomo, now the former New York governor, resigned earlier this year after an investigation supervised by the attorney general confirmed allegations that he repeatedly sexually molested his staff. But the publication of his book “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic” last October raised questions even before the harassment allegations surfaced. On the one hand, the timing was embarrassing because it coincided not only with the 2020 elections, but also with the start of the second wave of COVID-19. The production of the book itself also undermined the premise of Cuomo’s political turnaround in 2020. How can a leader follow science 24 hours a day and personally write lucrative memoirs at the same time?
The answer is, he can’t. On Monday, the New York State Assembly Judiciary Committee released the results of an impeachment investigation launched against the former governor in March, almost a year to the day after Penguin Random House inquired about Cuomo’s literary ambitions. While the attorney general’s office only dealt with the harassment allegations, the scope of the judiciary committee was broader – including the book deal, allegations that the Cuomo government covered up the number of COVID-19 deaths in the state’s nursing homes, and allegations of concerns ignored the safety of a new bridge over the Hudson River named after Cuomo’s father, former Governor Mario Cuomo. On all fronts, the law firm the Justice Committee hired to conduct its investigation has found potentially worrying information.
The report describes how Cuomo and his office forced government officials, from junior aides to senior officials, to work on “American Crisis,” urged a state ethics committee to expedite the approval of the book business, and stood the amount of money downplayed by the former governor to make the publication of the book. According to the Justice Committee’s report, Melissa DeRosa, the governor’s secretary and the second most powerful figure in his administration – named only as “the chief executive of the executive chamber” but identified by reference to a passage from the published book – was raised sending or receiving a thousand euros -Mail related to the project. She and other senior officials worked on the drafting and editing of the manuscript during regular working hours, nights and weekends – including full-day meetings with Penguin Random House. A member of the governor’s COVID-19 task force told investigators that work on the book was “distracted” from his work on other pandemic topics. The state ethics committee’s approval of the book deal was contingent on Cuomo not using state resources or personnel to produce it. This requirement was clearly ignored – between the work of his employees and the fact that he hired a ghostwriter, the report does not reveal how much of “American Crisis” Cuomo actually wrote himself. In anticipation of controversy, Penguin Random House suggested that the Acknowledgments section of the book only mention the governor’s agent and his editors, according to the Judicial Committee report. “That advice has been followed,” the report said.
The report also makes it clear that the Cuomo administration’s decision to suppress data on deaths in COVID-19 nursing homes was at least partially influenced by the book deal. On July 6, 2020, the same day Cuomo and a senior officer called Penguin Random House, the state Department of Health released a report on the impact of COVID-19 on New York nursing homes. The intent of the report was to defend an order Cuomo issued in March 2020 that instructed nursing homes to admit patients from hospitals regardless of their COVID-19 status. According to the judicial committee’s findings, witnesses said that DeRosa, Cuomo’s top adviser, ruled that the Department of Health’s report only reflected the COVID-19 deaths that occurred in nursing homes, rather than the number that included people who died after the Transfer to hospital died had hospitals. This change lowered the listed death toll in nursing homes from about ten thousand to six hundred and five hundred. Later, when American Crisis was drafted and edited, the chapter dealing with the nursing home issue was rated “Critically Important” by a senior Cuomo advisor.
Despite his previous demands for due process, Cuomo only provided minimal cooperation with Judicial Committee investigators and ignored several subpoenas. “[O]On September 13, 2021, the former governor’s attorney presented the committee with a written statement that contained only one paragraph on the book and did little to disprove the evidence, ”the report said. In March, Crown, the Penguin Random House subsidiary that published American Crisis, distanced itself from Cuomo and canceled plans to print a paperback version of the book. Earlier this month, the state ethics committee belatedly withdrew the book deal’s approval. Of the $ 5.1 million guaranteed to Cuomo under the deal, $ 3.12 million had been paid out at the time the book was published, with the remainder to be shared out in equal amounts over the next two years. According to the Times, Cuomo has said he donated $ 500,000 of his after-tax proceeds from the book to the United Way of New York State. American Crisis sold fewer than fifty thousand hardcover copies.
For a moment after Cuomo resigned in August, it looked like legislature leaders would be suspending impeachment proceedings. New York law appears to prohibit the impeachment of former incumbents. Some in Albany thought it best to just move on. But after an outcry from Cuomo’s louder critics, investigators were allowed to continue, and the report released this week recalls the importance of accountability. Taken together, the scandals that brought down Cuomo involve more than any single allegation. They are about Cuomo’s overall approach to government, his presumption of power and the culture of fear and coercion which he oversaw and from which he personally benefited. Aides were instructed to work on “American Crisis” the same way Brittany Commisso, an executive assistant in Cuomo’s office, was supposed to go to the Executive Mansion one evening in December 2020 to supposedly help the governor with his iPhone. After she got there, Cuomo groped her – an incident now under criminal investigation in Albany County. Just days later, Lindsey Boylan, a former civil servant, became the first to publicly accuse the governor of sexual harassment. But Commisso was silent about her experience for months, in part because she saw the governor’s office fight Boylan and the press leaked embarrassing internal files about her. Intimidated, Commisso planned to “take her story with her to the grave,” according to the Justice Committee report.
Even after his resignation, Cuomo has insisted that he had done nothing wrong and has questioned the motives and trustworthiness of his accusers. He and his lawyers picked up on the Commisso story, partly because the Attorney General’s Office was initially unable to specify the date of the alleged fumbling around the Executive Mansion, and partly because of other minor inconsistencies in Commisso’s story. Again, the decision to allow Justice Committee investigators to continue their work has proven important. After obtaining new evidence, investigators were able to more accurately say that the incident occurred on December 7th. As for the other discrepancies, the report states that they are of the kind often found with Witnesses who do not have staff to help them organize their narratives. The report calls these types of discrepancies “the marks of truth.”
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