Here’s the devastating $5M Cuomo book deal report panel won’t let you see
Hours after it released a devastating investigative report on how disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo manhandled the state’s ethics watchdog into approving his controversial $5 million pandemic book deal — the now-defunct panel scrubbed the findings from its web site.
The 36-page report — the result of a taxpayer funded investigation led by international law firm Hogan Lovells — disappeared from the now officially disbanded Joint Commission on Public Ethics’ website Friday. It had been briefly posted the night before following the controversial panel’s last board meeting.
The link to the JCOPE report was dead Friday but The Post downloaded it is posting it for public consumption here.
The much-maligned JCOPE — whom critics derisively called “J-JOKE” — is being replaced by a new watchdog agency created by Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Albany Legislature called the Commission on Ethics in Lobbying and Government.
“The website transitioned to the new Commission site this morning so the old links may not work,” JCOPE spokesman Walter McClure said Friday, although all other reports can still be found on the defunct agency site.
And the new link he provided says, “We’re sorry, the page that you are looking for is not found,” the link for the report now says.”
Other JCOPE reports — such as its just-released annual review of the lobbying industry — were still available from its website.
JCOPE officials claimed the disappearance was the result of a glitch and the link to the report reappeared on the new ethic agency’s website Friday afternoon after inquiries from The Post.
The independent probe — recently requested by JCOPE commissioners — said agency officials acted like Cuomo’s lap dogs instead of watch dogs by approving his book deal without even a basic review of the terms.
JCOPE officials allowed Cuomo and his team to dictate the terms of what information it would disclose and when about the book contract when it sought approval from the ethics agency.
“One of the clear takeaways from our analysis of JCOPE’s approval of the July 10 [2020 book] request is that the Executive Chamber overpowered JCOPE, and JCOPE failed to assert itself as a watchdog agency against the Governor,” the findings of the law firm Hogan Lovells found.
“Rather than JCOPE telling the Executive Chamber what information it needed to provide in order to obtain approval, the Executive Chamber told JCOPE what information the Governor would provide, which was not much.”
The belated autopsy said, “The Executive Chamber also successfully coerced JCOPE into expediting the approval and rushing through the process with very minimal due diligence.”
A major mistake, the report said, is that JCOPE’s commissioners in 2012 had delegated authority to give approval for outside activity requests submitted by statewide elected officials to its top staffers, who turned into patsies who were “overpowered” by Cuomo and his top aides.
The report recommended that commissioners of the ethics agency should be required to approve any outside activity such as a profit-making book of statewide office holders.
“There’s lessons to be learned for the successor commission. Do not allow the executive chamber of the governor to interfere with deliberations and adjudication of the agency. The commissioners must retain the independence and the decision prerogative and must guard it zealously,” said JCOPE Commissioner Gary Lavine.