Cuomo’s legal bills hit $6.6 million

ALBANY, N.Y. — Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo continues to spend big on lawyers as he remains at the center of multiple high-profile legal cases two years after his resignation.

A campaign finance disclosure report filed by Cuomo on Monday morning shows he has spent $1.6 million since mid-January on legal fees. He has now spent a total of $6.6 million on attorneys since the state Assembly launched an impeachment probe into him in the spring of 2021.

Cuomo currently has $7.6 million in his campaign account, down from $16.8 million at the start of 2021.

A good chunk of this will eventually be reimbursed by taxpayers. Since at least some of the allegations made against the ex-governor led to courtroom appearances that did not end with convictions, state money will pay his campaign account for the share of the legal spending that went toward these cases.

A little more than half of Cuomo’s current payments went to Rita Glavin, who has represented him on matters including the sexual harassment allegations made against him. Glavin has now been paid $3.4 million from his campaign account in the past two years.

Manhattan firm Sher Tremonte was also paid $711,000 in April.

Cuomo, who did not have a permanent residence when he moved out of the Executive Mansion, is also spending $1,573 a month of campaign money on storage lockers.

While Cuomo left the executive branch nearly two years ago, he still has plenty of business before the judicial branch.

He’s currently under investigation by the Committee on Ethics and Lobbying in Government over allegations that the $5 million book deal he signed in 2020 relied on the use of state resources. He has brought a suit against COELIG that challenges the legality of the ethics enforcement entity that was created last year.

Cuomo is also involved in ongoing legal fights over the numerous sexual harassment allegations made against him. Earlier this month, he asked a judge to force state investigators to share records of their interviews with his accusers.

Cuomo has denied all the allegations against him and long argued that his downfall was engineered by the political aspirations of individuals like Attorney General Tish James, who briefly ran for governor after his resignation.

The former governor's spokesman Rich Azzopardi pointed to “two years of legal wins, dismissals and cases that were never sound enough to be brought forward in the first place” as evidence that a report from James on the sexual misconduct allegations “was a sham.”

James has repeatedly said that her probe was “an independent investigation” and that Cuomo’s attempts to downplay the allegations against him are an attempt to “undermine and to politicize” the report. An impeachment investigation from the state Assembly that followed her probe concluded there was “overwhelming evidence of [Cuomo’s] misconduct” such as what she detailed.

The ex-governor is still raising a little bit of money from his remaining supporters. A total of 39 contributors combined to contribute $11,000 to his campaign account over the past six months.

His top donor was North Carolina resident Anne Overstreet, whose Twitter bio says that her interests include “Music, Dogs, Fun, Cars, and Handsome Gentlemen who look like Andrew Cuomo.” She gave four checks totaling $4,000.