ALBANY, N.Y., Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo secured a temporary restraining order Thursday in his ongoing legal battle with the New York State Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government, pausing the panel’s investigation into his $5.1 million pandemic memoir. Cuomo sued in Albany County Supreme Court this week, arguing that the commission, known as COELIG, violated his constitutional rights and was unlawfully created after replacing the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, which originally opened the inquiry.
Both Cuomo’s legal team and state attorneys agreed to the restraining order, which halts the commission from examining whether Cuomo improperly used state employees to help write American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic. Cuomo maintains that any staff involvement was voluntary. The order remains in effect until the court rules on his request for a preliminary injunction, with oral arguments set for April 30, 2026.
The case has already traveled through multiple layers of New York’s judiciary. Judge Thomas Marcelle previously sided with Cuomo and declared the commission’s investigation unconstitutional, but that decision was reversed on appeal. In February, the state’s highest court upheld COELIG’s legitimacy in a narrow 4-3 ruling, allowing the probe to continue until now.
Cuomo, who recently lost New York City’s mayoral race to Zohran Mamdani, has acknowledged mistakes in his administration’s pandemic response, including nursing home deaths, saying on Election Day that “it was on my watch.”
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