The book, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic, was published in the fall of 2020, after Andrew Cuomo secured a $5.1-million contract to write it several months earlier.
Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi called the report a “feeble stunt” and said the Cuomo administration provided “any and all information that JCOPE required for approval”. Cuomo’s staff “exerted pressure on JCOPE to expedite the approval of the request,” the report found, and refused to provide ethics commissioners with a copy of the governor’s book contract. The request was ultimately approved, without a full vote of the Commission.