Andrew Cuomo ordered to return millions in book proceeds

Andrew Cuomo must return millions of dollars in proceeds from a memoir published while he was governor of New York, a state ethics panel voted Tuesday.

Members of the Joint Commission on Public Ethics voted 12-1 for a resolution giving Cuomo 30 days to turn the money over to the New York State Attorney General. Cuomo's office said in May 2021 that his earnings from the book, "American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic," were expected to be about $5.1 million.

It was not immediately clear if the ethics committee expected book proceeds to ultimately land in state coffers or be returned to the book's publisher, Penguin Random House, which is a subsidiary of Crown Publishing.