As New York marks the third anniversary of the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, questions about how state leaders handled the crisis keep piling up. The latest disturbing revelation concerns the memoir that Andrew Cuomo published in October 2020.

Previous investigations have found that Cuomo and his staff were working on the book as early as mid-June of that year — which was problematic enough, given that he had promised not to use government resources for a personal project, not to mention that the pandemic was very much not over.

That timeline has now been rewritten by newly surfaced internal emails. They show that work on what appears to be a gubernatorial memoir began as early as late March and resulted in a draft “preface” by April 18.

The emails provide more evidence that Cuomo made use of his government staff — for a book deal that would ultimately pay him $5.1 million. Although the preface was written in Cuomo’s voice, and included reflections on his political philosophy, it was drafted by one of his state-employed speechwriters, Jamie Malanowski.

The emails show that a second speechwriter, Tom Topousis, prepared a “daily diary” of key events in the pandemic response, foreshadowing the diary-like format of Cuomo’s memoir.

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