Despite $5M book deal, Gov. Cuomo making taxpayers foot $2.5M legal defense tab

Taxpayers are being forced to shell out more than $900 an hour for Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s lead defense lawyer, to help him try and fend off multiple allegations of sexual harassment, charges that he used staffers to help write a book detailing his handling of the pandemic and claims that he and aides hid from the public the true death toll among patients of nursing homes.

The $2.5 million deal, revealed in a contract made public through a Freedom of Information Request by The Post, was struck even though Cuomo sold the rights to his coronavirus memoir for $5.1 million and has around $17 million in his campaign war chest. The three-term Democrat is also holding a $10,000-a-head fundraiser later this month amid an ongoing impeachment probe by the state Assembly’s Judiciary Committee.