A state ethics board on Tuesday ordered former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to relinquish roughly $5.1 million he made from a memoir about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo was ordered by New York’s ethics commission to give up the millions he was paid to write a book about his response to the pandemic. An attorney for Cuomo immediately called the action unconstitutional and promised a fight. https://t.co/eYZiJxs6Mo

— The Associated Press (@AP) December 14, 2021

The Joint Commission on Public Ethics gave Cuomo permission to publish  “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From the Covid-19 Pandemic” in 2020. Last month, the board determined that Cuomo misled them when he said he would “write the book entirely on his own time, without the use of state resources or personnel.”

Multiple news outlets and a report from the state legislature have indicated that Cuomo forced staff members to work on the memoir. From The Wall Street Journal:

Melissa DeRosa, the governor’s top aide, exchanged more than 1,000 emails with the publisher, the report said. The governor, top state officials and editors met at the Executive Mansion on July 24 and 25, 2020, to work on the book, according to the report. Mr. Cuomo also recorded the audio version of the book at the mansion on weekdays in September 2020, the report said.

Cuomo admits that aides helped him with the book, but insists they volunteered. JCOPE gave him 30 days to turn over the money he earned to the state attorney general’s office.

Jim McGuire, a lawyer for Cuomo, vowed to fight Tuesday’s ruling.

“JCOPE’s actions today are unconstitutional, exceed its own authority and appear to be driven by political interests rather than the facts and the law,” he said to The New York Times. “Should they seek to enforce this action, we’ll see them in court.”

The Times adds:

The order, which is sure to set up a protracted legal fight, could be complicated by the fact that Mr. Cuomo already donated $500,000 of the book’s proceeds to charity, and placed another $1 million in a trust for his daughters.

Cuomo resigned in August after he was accused of sexual harassment and creating a hostile working environment. An investigation corroborated the claims against him. He was also found to have intentionally misled the public about the number of people who died of COVID-19 in New York’s nursing homes.