Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York, won’t have to surrender the $5.1 million payment he received for his book about his state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, Politico reports.
Cuomo had been ordered to forfeit the profits from his 2020 book, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From the Covid-19 Pandemic, last December by New York’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics. The ethics board ruled that Cuomo had tasked administration officials with helping him write and edit the book.
Cuomo and his attorneys took exception to the board’s decision, and a judge in Albany ruled in his favor this week, saying that the former governor’s due process rights had been violated.
The New York Times reports that the judge, Denise Hartman, wrote in her ruling that the ethics commission “issued the approval for the outside activity, then unilaterally determined wrongdoing, then withdrew the approval, and finally imposed the disgorgement penalty—all without the opportunity for a due process hearing explicitly provided for under the procedures set forth in Executive Law.”
Both Politico and the Times note that it’s unclear whether Hartman’s decision can be appealed, as the ethics commission doesn’t exist anymore—Gov. Kathy Hochul and the New York state legislature replaced it with a new commission earlier this year.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
