THE PUBLISHER of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s coronavirus response book has stopped promoting and reissuing it amid his Covid nursing home scandal.
Crown Publishing Group halted promotion of the New York governor’s book American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic, as a federal investigation unfolds into the state’s nursing home coronavirus deaths.
The company does not plan to reprint or reissue Cuomo’s book which was released in October, publisher Gillian Blake said in a statement to The New York Times on Monday.
Crown Publishing Group’s decision stems from “the ongoing investigation into N.Y.S. reporting of Covid-related fatalities in nursing homes,” Blake stated.
The US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn opened a probe into Cuomo’s handling of nursing homes and the coronavirus last month.
Cuomo and his administration are accused of knowingly withholding the number of nursing home coronavirus deaths.
The scandal goes back to last summer when Cuomo’s aides convinced health officials to the omit the number of nursing home residents who died of coronavirus at hospitals in a July report.
About 3,500 deaths were not counted.
It wasn’t until eight months later that the state disclosed the true numbers, after a court order and a report form the state attorney general.
In addition, one of Cuomo’s top aides, Melissa DeRosa, told Democratic leaders during a video conference session that “we froze” at the thought that the real figures would “be used against us” by federal prosecutors.
Cuomo was widely praised for how he handled the pandemic early on and won an Emmy for his daily coronavirus briefings.
“The Governor’s 111 daily briefings worked so well because he effectively created television shows, with characters, plot lines, and stories of success and failure,” the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ president and CEO Bruce Paisner said in a statement at the time.
“People around the world tuned in to find out what was going on, and New York tough became a symbol of the determination to fight back.”
Cuomo’s book “tells the riveting story of how he took charge in the fight against Covid-19 as New York became the epicenter of the pandemic, offering hard-won lessons in leadership and his vision for the path forward.”
It became a New York Times bestseller.
After the third woman came forward, Cuomo last Wednesday said he was “embarrassed” for the “pain I’ve caused” and promised to cooperate in an investigation by the state attorney general but said he would not resign.
