On Wednesday, while talking to reporters, New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo has followed some state lawmakers in backing an overhaul of the New York Joint Commission on Public Ethics (J-COPE), saying it is “meaningless.”
“The fundamental flaw is a constitutional barrier,” Cuomo said.
“Because the fundamental flaw is it can’t enforce anything; it’s nonbinding. It’s essentially advisory. If the legislature takes the position that its findings are not binding because there is no outside agency that has any authority for any sanction,” Cuomo continued.
Don’t forget that Cuomo is still embroiled in multiple sexual harassment complaints against him by former female staffers and he allegedly killed thousands of nursing home patients by forcing COVID infected patients into nursing homes, then had his administration try to cover up the accurate number of COVID deaths from nursing homes. He’s just a mess for New York.
Cuomo established the ethics commission, and it was approved by the state legislature, back in 2011, after vowing to lead the “most transparent administration in history.” I think all Democrat administrations say that and though they might actually mean it at that precise moment they say it, it hardly ever works out that way. I believe this is because most Democrats are corrupt politicians.
The intended mission for the commission was to discover and eradicate ethical violations in the executive and legislative branches of the New York state government.
So, Andrew Cuomo is now admitting that an ethics commission that he created is a constitutional barrier and fundamentally flawed. Do you think he knows that he admitted that? With his ego, I’m certain it’s a miscalculation.
Like everything else Democrats do, this commission was for symbolism over substance when it concerned the governor’s administration because even though J-COPE has gone after and disciplined many state legislators for misconduct, critics of the commission say that it drops the ball when it’s supposed to hold members of Cuomo’s administration to account for any wrongdoing because Cuomo is the one who appoints the majority of its members. In other words, it’s rigged.
One great example of the commission being rigged was when it approved a $5.1 million book deal for Cuomo and they didn’t reveal the value to the public. Remember when Cuomo had the audacity to write a book about how well he handled the coronavirus pandemic while at the same time he was forcing COVID-19 infected patients into nursing homes thus killing over 10,000 elderly victims? But the worst part of that fiasco is how the Cuomo administration intentionally under-counted the number of dead during home patients by the thousands. If ever there was a need for an ethics investigation, that was it.
It also became very apparent early on during the revelations of Cuomo’s sexual harassment problems that most people around the governor feel very intimidated by him because he’s allegedly an arrogant, vindictive, despicable man.
The commission’s first public address against a lawmaker was in 2013 when they went after former Assemblyman Vito Lopez. J-COPE sanctioned Assemblyman Lopez for sexually harassing his staffers, however, but the investigation didn’t begin until after it was publicized in the media.
Another case J-COPE took on was against Assemblyman Dennis Gabryszak for sexually harassing seven of his former employees. The commission wound up fining Gabryszak $100,000 after the Assemblyman resigned.
Isn’t it ironic that the commission took out two legislators for sexually harassing staffers and Andrew Cuomo, the alleged sexual harassment King of New York, is still in office?
The governor’s comments were made as the state assembly’s judiciary committee is still working on an impeachment investigation over the numerous scandals the governor is facing.
For Cuomo, however, the committee hired a law firm to run the investigation into Cuomo. They are looking at his numerous sexual harassment complaints, his attempt to cover up and manipulate that nursing home COVID deaths scandal, and Cuomo’s alleged misuse of state resources to do his memoir book about how well they handled the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cuomo even had a little tit-for-tat going on with Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis over how both states handled the pandemic. Cuomo fed into the media lies about Florida’s governor screwing up the pandemic to make Cuomo look good. It turns out, Ron DeSantis handled the pandemic in Florida immeasurably better than Andrew Cuomo did for New York. The numbers don’t lie, but in Cuomo’s case, his administration did.
