In the two and a half years since he resigned as New York’s governor, Andrew M. Cuomo has spent countless hours and millions of dollars to restore his image and vanquish his critics.
One of his primary targets is the state’s new ethics panel, which his lawyers argue was formed unconstitutionally and should be disbanded — a result that would plunge the enforcement of state ethics rules into chaos.
Mr. Cuomo won the fight’s first round, successfully persuading a State Supreme Court judge last year that the panel, the Commission on Ethics and Lobbying In Government, had been created in a way that violated New York’s Constitution.
After the commission appealed the ruling, the parties wound up in an appeals court in Albany, N.Y., on Friday for oral arguments.
Mr. Cuomo’s clash with the ethics panel goes back to the $5.1 million book deal he snagged for a 2020 memoir, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From the Covid-19 Pandemic.” The commission had been considering whether to compel him to forfeit the money when he sued.
Lawyers for Mr. Cuomo contend that the commission is unconstitutional in part because it employs a group of law school deans to vet political appointees for conflicts of interest, stripping the governor’s constitutional authority to oversee the panel. The model, created by Mr. Cuomo’s successor, Gov. Kathy Hochul, was created to increase the independence of the ethics commission, whose predecessor was dogged by allegations of corruption.
The five judges who heard the appeal on Friday appeared skeptical of the commission’s arguments that a governor had the authority to cede authority over ethics enforcement.
“Is there any other commission or authority in the State of New York that has that structure?” Justice John C. Egan Jr. asked the commission’s lawyer, Dustin J. Brockner of the attorney general’s office.
Mr. Brockner allowed that the commission’s design was unique.
“But we are dealing with a unique problem here,” he said, noting the perennial struggle to regulate ethics in Albany.
The failures of the past ethics board — the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, or JCOPE — hung over the proceedings. Mr. Cuomo helped to craft that panel, which did not stop him from suing it in separate, successful litigation after it revoked its approval of the book deal.
But even the earlier commission, which included members chosen by both the governor and the Legislature, would not meet the standard Mr. Cuomo’s lawyers now seek. They argue that the panel should be almost entirely dominated by the executive branch.
The irony that New York’s Constitution might place a panel with ethical oversight of the governor under the authority of the governor was not lost on the court.
“Isn’t that the problem that you had with JCOPE to begin with?” Justice Molly Reynolds Fitzgerald asked.
“If that is something the people care deeply about then amend the Constitution,” replied Gregory Dubinsky, a lawyer for Mr. Cuomo.
The appellate judges are expected to issue a decision in the coming months. If they rule against the new commission, Ms. Hochul and the attorney general, Letitia James, can appeal to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. If Mr. Cuomo were to win there, the Legislature would have to craft a replacement that complies with the court’s ruling.
Lawmakers also have the option of amending the Constitution to keep the current ethics format, but that process, which requires the approval of two separate Legislatures and a public referendum, could take years.
Mr. Cuomo’s effort to disband the ethics board is the latest example of his campaign to confront his perceived enemies, chiefly Ms. Hochul and Ms. James. It was her report, which found that he had sexually harassed 11 women, that prompted Mr. Cuomo to resign in disgrace.
Mr. Cuomo claims that Ms. James and the outside investigators she hired to conduct the inquiry manipulated details and omitted evidence that would have exonerated him, accusing her of doing so to further her own political interests.
Three of the women identified in Ms. James’s report as victims of Mr. Cuomo’s behavior have filed sexual harassment lawsuits against him, giving him an opening to have his lawyers subpoena a range of witnesses connected to the cases.
Some of these efforts have yielded promising results for Mr. Cuomo: Last year, Ana Liss, one of the women named in Ms. James’s report, said in a deposition that she did not believe Mr. Cuomo had sexually harassed her.
Nonetheless, Ms. Liss described the workplace culture that Mr. Cuomo created as “somewhat inappropriate” and “a little bit dangerous for younger, vulnerable people, particularly women.”
When a Justice Department report last month seemed to confirm Ms. James’s findings, Mr. Cuomo was quick to strike back.
In a letter to Merrick Garland, the attorney general, Mr. Cuomo demanded a meeting and a review of federal investigators’ process. Mr. Cuomo pointed out in the letter that investigators had not interviewed him or each of his accusers before issuing their findings.
Justice Department officials disputed Mr. Cuomo’s characterization, citing the report’s inclusion of additional accusers. They declined to provide information about those accusers and also declined a request for comment on the decision not to interview witnesses or Mr. Cuomo.
Five district attorneys opened inquiries into the claims in Ms. James’s report and opted not to file criminal charges against Mr. Cuomo, although many of them said they found the women to be credible.
Because of a state law that shields elected officials against litigation that does not result in criminal convictions, much of Mr. Cuomo’s legal efforts have been funded by New York taxpayers. Under that law, Mr. Cuomo has already been reimbursed $565,000 for legal bills, Politico first reported.
An analysis in The Times Union of Albany suggested that taxpayers could owe more than $20 million on Mr. Cuomo’s behalf, including legal representation for him and members of his executive staff as a result of the multitude of legal inquiries that emerged in the final days of his tenure.
Outside of his legal efforts, Mr. Cuomo has kept busy. There was his podcast, “As a Matter of Fact,” where he set out to dissect the most pressing matters of the day, from Israel to immigration, with a rotating series of political insiders.
There have been public appearances at Black churches and covert dinners with New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, and Kellyanne Conway, a onetime adviser to former President Donald J. Trump.
Just this week, he wrote an opinion piece in The Daily News arguing that the U.S. justice system had become overly politicized, threatening Americans’ faith in their institutions. On this topic, Mr. Cuomo admitted, he was not entirely objective.
