Andrew Cuomo is ready to fight the very ethics panel he created to try and keep his $5.1 million pandemic-windfall book deal.

A lawyer for the forced-to-resign ex-governor threatened Wednesday to sue the state’s ethics board for trying to claw back the payday Cuomo received for his written-on-the-job memoir about the COVID-19 scourge — and accused officials of acting “for improper political reasons.”

In a letter to the chairman of the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, Cuomo lawyer James McGuire formally put the agency’s commissioners and staffers “on notice that they must preserve all records” related to their consideration of the controversial book deal.

McGuire said JCOPE had violated Cuomo’s “rights to the protections of due process under the United States and New York Constitutions, and expose JCOPE and its commissioners to liability under [federal civil rights law].”

“The Governor will seek the intercession of the courts to protect his rights and prevent further abuses by JCOPE of its authority,” he wrote.

McGuire also said that “JCOPE’s actions support, at the very least, the reasonable conclusion that it has acted for improper political reasons.”

JCOPE Chairman Jose Nieves — who was appointed by Gov. Kathy Hochul following Cuomo’s resignation over sexual harassment allegations — told The Post, “We wouldn’t have taken the action if we didn’t feel it was appropriate.”

Nieves declined to comment further, saying he hadn’t yet seen McGuire’s letter.

A top JCOPE staffer approved Cuomo’s lucrative deal for “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic” in July 2020.

But that approval was revoked by JCOPE’s commissioners in November by a vote of 12-1 on grounds that Cuomo violated an agreement to not use government staffers to help prepare the book, which he claims they did voluntarily.

JCOPE also ordered a probe into the initial greenlighting of Cuomo’s deal.

Last month, the board again voted 12-1 to order Cuomo to hand over his earnings.

In both cases, the lone dissenter was William Fisher, a Cuomo appointee.

But two days after the second vote, Attorney General Letitia James’ office told JCOPE that its order couldn’t be enforced because it hadn’t detailed specific violations of state law or specified the amount of money Cuomo made that’s “attributable to penalties and disgorgement.”

Nieves responded that JCOPE was “empowered and required” to act and asked James to “support the efforts of the commission to seek expedient civil process that will hold the former governor accountable.”

Meanwhile, one JCOPE commissioner has warned that a suit by the former governor could reveal damaging information about how he obtained the agency’s initial, staff approval.

“I do not believe we have all the details on the book deal,” Commissioner Gary Lavine said last month.

 “Every time the book deal is subject to legal action, it’s subject to scrutiny.”