New York’s Congressional Republicans want to know why Democratic state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli waited until after the Nov. 8 election to release a bombshell report detailing billions lost to state unemployment fraud earlier in the pandemic, The Post has learned.

“The timing raises concerns that your office may have delayed the report to limit damage to Governor Kathy Hochul’s campaign,” reads the letter sent Dec. 21 by Reps. Claudia Tenney, Elise Stefanik, and Nicole Malliotakis as well as James Comer (R-Ky.), the ranking GOP member of the House Oversight Committee.

The letter demands that DiNapoli turn over documents detailing discussions between his office, the state Department of Labor and the Hochul administration related to the report and the timing of its release by Jan. 4 – the day after Republicans will officially take control of the House of Representatives.

New York lost an eye-popping $11 billion to fraud while jobless claims soared during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic under the watch of disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who Hochul replaced amid multiple scandals in August 2021, according to the audit released Nov. 15.

“There was a good intent to get as much money out the door — but the problem was that it made the system even more susceptible to fraud, particularly with regard to identity theft,” DiNapoli said at the time.

The state still owes the federal government roughly $7.7 billion for covering unemployment claims while New York struggled to keep its finances afloat amid the economic disruptions of the pandemic.

“This stunning incompetence demands immediate accountability and action,” Justin Wilcox, the executive director of the advocacy group Upstate United, said in a statement at the time of the report’s release.

Department of Labor Commissioner Robert Reardon argued last week that the audit “greatly exaggerates the problem” with unemployment fraud in the state while touting how the department was on pace to “uncover $110 million in fraudulently obtained benefits this year.”

A DOL spokesperson said Thursday that the department is “committed to transparency and accountability” and did what it could to accommodate DiNapoli’s audit requests in a timely manner.

“Despite department resources being devoted to pandemic efforts, NYSDOL participated in biweekly meetings with [Office of the State Comptroller] where all requested items were reviewed and addressed as quickly as possible throughout the audit process,” the spokesperson said.

Republicans say the issue might have affected Hochul’s chances of winning reelection, since she served as Cuomo’s lieutenant governor at the time of the fraud.

“Voters should have been informed of these damning allegations of waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement by Governor Hochul’s DOL prior to the election,” the letter states.

Fraudulent claims made up nearly 18% of joblessness benefit applications in between April 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021 — compared to just 4.51% two years before, according to the audit, which found that the state Department of Labor had ignored warning signs of fraud for years.

“Department officials did not heed warnings as far back as 2010 that the UI system
was out of date and, consequently, difficult to maintain and that it lacked the agility
necessary to adjust to new laws and the scalability to handle workload surges,” the audit states.

DiNapoli, who also won reelection in November, blamed the department for dragging its feet on providing key data for the audit, which kept it from getting released until a week after the closer-than-expect Nov. 8 election between Hochul and Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Suffolk).

“Our office has dozens of audits underway at any given time and only release them when they are ready,” DiNapoli spokeswoman Jennifer Freeman told The Post. “This audit was no different. As we noted numerous times in the report, DOL was not cooperative with our staff and caused multiple delays in our efforts to complete this audit.”

“Those trying to politicize the audit should spend their energies on fixing the problems we found and recovering improper payments,” she added.