House COVID panel will refer ex-NY Gov. Cuomo to DOJ for criminally false statements about nursing home death report
A US House committee will refer former New York Gov.Andrew Cuomo to the Department of Justice for making “criminally false statements” about a state audit that undercounted nursing home deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic, The Post has learned.The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic is accusing Cuomo of falsely saying that he was not involved in prompting, drafting or reviewing the July 6, 2020, report, which low-balled the state’s total nursing home COVID death count by 46%, according to a draft of the criminal referral to Attorney General Merrick Garland.Asked whether he drafted, reviewed, discussed or looped in people outside of his administration to “peer-review” the report, Cuomo told the House panel during a June 11 transcribed interview that he had not.“I did not.
Maybe it was in the inbox, but I did not,” Cuomo said when asked whether he reviewed a draft of the report during his transcribed interview.But subcommittee staff, in the 104-page referral, presented emails of aides discussing his involvement in editing and reviewing the report, as well as drafts that were confirmed by them to allegedly have the ex-governor’s own chicken scratch in the margins.Cuomo’s handwriting throughout the documents emphasizes arguments he has made since the disastrous March 25, 2020, directive ordered COVID patients into senior care facilities.He revoked the order on May 10 after thousands of New Yorkers had been either admitted or readmitted — without requiring testing — to nursing homes.Cuomo’s notes deflect responsibility for the nursing home mandate itself, with one claiming that his administration only learned in May that “asymptomatic people could infect others.However, by that point the disease was already in the nursing homes.”The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledged the risk of asymptomatic spread six days earlier, though news outlets had been reporting on the phenomenon since early April.In on...