House Republicans ask DOJ to charge Andrew Cuomo for lying about calculated cover-up of NY nursing home deaths

WASHINGTON — House Republicans have asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to charge former New York Gov.Andrew Cuomo for making “criminally false statements” to Congress, citing “overwhelming evidence” that an audit he presided over had low-balled nursing home deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic.The House Oversight Committee re-upped the criminal referral after then-Attorney General Merrick Garland declined last year to prosecute Cuomo for allegedly triggering, helping to draft and reviewing a July 6, 2020, report that undercounted the total number of deaths in senior care facilities by 46%.“Andrew Cuomo is a man with a history of corruption and deceit, now caught red-handed lying to Congress during the Select Subcommittee’s investigation into the COVID-19 nursing home tragedy in New York,” said Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) in a statement.“This wasn’t a slip-up — it was a calculated cover-up by a man seeking to shield himself from responsibility for the devastating loss of life in New York’s nursing homes.”Comer demanded that “Cuomo must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” for lying three times to Congress — a charge that carries a maximum five-year prison sentence for each count — and said his panel would “fully cooperate” with a future DOJ probe of the 67-year-old ex-governor and current mayoral front-runner.The March 25, 2020, directive forced recovering COVID patients into senior care facilities — without mandated testing to see if they could still infect others.By May 10, when Cuomo revoked the order, thousands of sick New Yorkers had been either admitted or readmitted into nursing homes.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had acknowledged the risk of asymptomatic spread six days earlier — but media outlets had been reporting on the possibility of such infections since early April.Cuomo had filed his own request for former President Joe Biden’s Justice Department to charge ex-Hou...