After he left office in disgrace in 2021, and before vaulting back into the public arena with his run for mayor, Andrew Cuomo kept a fairly low profile. There was an aborted attempt at a podcast. He started a nonprofit that purportedly would fight antisemitism, but didn't actually do much, and same with a gun safety initiative that flamed out after a single video. There was a lot of hanging out at his sister's house. But the bulk of Cuomo's energy since his exodus from Albany has been devoted to defending himself against multiple lawsuits and investigations, attacking the women who accused him of sexual harassment in court.
Those legal battles have cost the public quite a bit of cash. In September, state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli released a report that the state had already spent $25.4 million defending Cuomo and his aides in various lawsuits. And according to updated figures compiled byDiNapoli, the total cost of handling all of Cuomo's misdeeds has ballooned—the state has now spent a whopping $60 million in taxpayer money on scandals related to Cuomo, either on defending or investigating the former governor.