Lander Demands Cuomo Return $5 Million Book Deal Payment, Adding to $60 Million He Owes New York Taxpayers
Five years ago this week, with the pandemic surging, Cuomo met with Penguin Random House to secure a $5M book deal on his pandemic “leadership”
Cuomo’s legal issues, including sexual harassment and lying about COVID nursing home deaths, have cost taxpayers $60 million
Watch the recorded press conference and view photo album
NEW YORK, NY — Five years ago this week, New York witnessed its first COVID-19 deaths, the granting of emergency powers to then-Governor Andrew Cuomo, and Cuomo’s first meeting to orchestrate his $5 million book deal. Today, Brad Lander stood outside Penguin Random House’s NYC office to demand that Cuomo return the $5 million he received from his sordid book deal, which taxpayer-funded government employees helped write during office hours.
“Just five days after the first COVID-19 death in New York, Andrew Cuomo was already looking to profit on New Yorkers’ pain. Five years later, he’s refused to return the $5 million he profited from his sham book deal,” said Brad Lander. “Cuomo ordered his taxpayer-funded staff to write a book glorifying his leadership, undercounted the number of seniors who died in nursing homes after his deadly decision, and personally pocketed $5 million on a book deal. Andrew, will you fork over the $5 million from your corrupt book deal to help defray the $60 million you have cost New Yorkers? Or will you continue to place your own needs above theirs?”
On March 19, 2020, just days after the first New Yorker died of COVID-19, according to the State Assembly’s Judiciary Committee Report, the first contact was made between Cuomo’s team and a representative from Penguin Random House, the publisher that eventually wrote Cuomo a $5M check to fund his autobiography on “leadership.”
The report found while Cuomo bragged about an “around-the-clock state response to the crisis,” he stunningly forced his taxpayer-funded, government staffers to spend hundreds of hours away from pandemic response and towards contributing to the book “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
Throughout 2020, while the state of New York was ravaged by the pandemic, Cuomo continued to assign his official-side staffers to dedicate their workdays to the book, from conducting research to drafting edits to conducting promotion.
It was later revealed – in an effort to preserve his $5M book deal and reputation – that Cuomo personally falsified the total number of nursing home deaths in New York during the COVID-19 pandemic by the thousands, in a New York State Department of Health report.
The New York State Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government challenged the book deal, due to the egregious misuse of taxpayer dollars and state resources. Despite Cuomo contesting the ethics commission’s claims, the New York Court of Appeals in February of 2025 upheld the existence of the ethics commission, allowing them to continue their investigation into the $5M book deal.
To this day, Cuomo continues to deflect blame over his administration’s controversial directive to send infected COVID-19 patients into nursing homes, which resulted in thousands of deaths, during the worst period of the pandemic.
Just yesterday, when pressed by the New York Post on whether he regrets the $5M book deal, Cuomo not only refused to apologize to families of those who lost loved ones in nursing homes, he doubled down and played victim. He said it was “really offensive” and “ludicrous” to claim he made a profit on the backs of New Yorkers lost to COVID.
Today’s call comes one week after Lander called on Cuomo to refund taxpayers the nearly $60 million being spent to defend Cuomo’s personal legal scandals.
Instead of being used as Cuomo’s personal piggy bank, this taxpayer money could be used to fund:
9,000 afterschool slots
2,000 new preK slots
66,000 new summer youth employment slots
1,000 domestic violence shelter beds
2,400 supportive housing units.
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