While Cuomo was seeking a $4 million deal for his book on pandemic leadership lessons, his aides were covering up the real death toll at New York's nursing homes, a new report says
AP
- Gov. Cuomo's book deal could have been worth as much as $4 million, the NYT reported.
- His work on the book overlapped with efforts to undercount COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes, it reported.
- The book paints Cuomo as a pandemic hero, though sales have plummeted amid multiple controversies.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
While New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's aides were covering up the COVID-19 death toll of the state's nursing homes, he was working towards a $4 million deal for his book hailing his pandemic successes, according to a new report by The New York Times.
The publication found that Cuomo's work on his book last summer, which relied on assistance from his aides and staffers, overlapped with efforts by his administration to under count coronavirus-related deaths in New York nursing homes in a health department report.
Richard Azzopardi, a senior adviser to the governor, told The Times there was "no connection" between the book and the report.
Cuomo released "America's Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic" in October, which paints him as a pandemic hero when New York City was the world's epicenter of the disease. It landed on The New York Times Best Sellers list, though sales have since plummeted.
Cuomo was working on the book at least as early as mid-June, The Times reported. He used a team of both aides and junior staffers to help with the book, performing tasks ranging from printing and posting drafts to editing his writing, per The Times' reporting.
The publication said that this may violate state labor laws which prohibit the use of public resources for personal gain, but Azzopardi told the newspaper that "every effort was made to ensure that no state resources were used in connection with this project."
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Crown Publishing, which published the book, declined to comment to The Times on how much it paid for the book. Cuomo has also declined to say what he was paid. His office told The Times that he would donate a "significant portion" of the book's proceeds to a COVID-related charity.
One of the aides involved in the book's publication was Cuomo's top aide, Melissa DeRosa, who The Times says was concurrently working with the governor to amend a July report on nursing home deaths issued by the state's Department of Health.
According to the publication, initial drafts of the report said that "there were 9,844 fatalities among NYS nursing home residents with confirmed or suspected COVID-19" from March 1 to June 2020. The final report listed the figure as 6,432.
Cuomo's office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
The cover-up was kept secret for months, until New York Attorney General Tish James released a bombshell report in late January, accusing the administration of undercounting COVID-19 nursing home deaths by up to 50% by not including nursing home patients who died from the coronavirus while in hospital.
Azzopardi told The Times that the Department of Health's report was focused on the effectiveness of the administration's policies and was not meant to be "a full accounting" of all COVID-19 deaths among nursing home residents. He told the publication that the report has since been updated to include most "out of facility" deaths, and that this did not change the overall conclusion of the report.
In March, DeRosa told lawmakers in a leaked call that the administration withheld additional death totals while facing both federal and state inquiries.
The nursing-home scandal is just one of many to blow up around Cuomo in 2021. At least 10 woman have accused him of making inappropriate comments or physical advances, including one current and three former aides.
And New York coronavirus testing sites were reportedly told to prioritize people in Cuomo's inner circle, including his brother, top officials, and the billionaire president of pharma giant Regeneron.
Lawmakers have since called on the governor to resign, and some told Insider's Jake Lahut they're open to impeaching him.
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