The disgraced former New York governor and now frontrunner in the race for New York City mayor is now the subject of a criminal investigation by the DOJ.
In effect, he lied to Congress about an ‘independent’ 2020 New York Health Department report that came out during COVID, which took the blame off of his disastrous nursing home directive which led to the deaths of thousands of elderly patients.
He told Congress he had nothing to do with it, but witnesses say he actually wrote portions of it.
Here’s more from Fox News:
The U.S. Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for allegedly lying to Congress about his decisions made during the COVID-19 pandemic while serving as governor, a source familiar with the probe confirmed to Fox News.
The New York Times first reported that the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington opened the inquiry into Cuomo about a month ago after senior officials in the DOJ demanded an indictment of New York City Mayor Eric Adams for corruption charges be dismissed.
The DOJ declined to comment to Fox News.
Cuomo is running in the Democratic primary to serve as the next mayor of New York City, while Adams is seeking re-election as an independent candidate.
“We have never been informed of any such matter, so why would someone leak it now? The answer is obvious: This is lawfare and election interference plain and simple—something President Trump and his top Department of Justice officials say they are against,” Rich Azzopardi, Cuomo’s spokesperson told Fox News. “Governor Cuomo testified truthfully to the best of his recollection about events from four years earlier, and he offered to address any follow-up questions from the Subcommittee — but from the beginning this was all transparently political.”
The former governor was grilled by Republican lawmakers last year about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. House Republicans subsequently recommended the Justice Department pursue criminal charges against him. They accused him of intentionally lying to Congress during the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the excessive number of nursing home deaths.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., referred Cuomo to President Donald Trump’s Justice Department for criminal prosecution.
Last month we reported on this referral to the DOJ and here’s more detail about Cuomo’s lies:
Comer charges that Cuomo, a Democrat, “knowingly and willfully” lied to the House Select Subcommittee about his knowledge and involvement of a 2020 report regarding the COVID-19 “nursing home disaster” and “the ensuing cover-up.”
Comer and Select Committee Republicans assert that Cuomo took an active role in drafting and editing the New York State Department of Health report to dodge responsibility for the thousands of lost lives during the pandemic.
“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. 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 said in a Monday release.
At issue is that on March 25, 2020, Cuomo issued a directive that New York nursing homes and long-term care facilities admit COVID-positive and potentially COVID-positive patients.
However, when the New York Health Department report came out on July 6, 2020, it alleged that nursing home staff — not the March 25 directive — caused excess COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes.
“According to witness testimony and new documents revealed in the Select Subcommittee’s referral, Mr. Cuomo personally drafted and edited portions of this purportedly independent and peer-reviewed report,” Republicans wrote in their timeline.
Cuomo, however, told the committee “that he was neither involved in the drafting nor the review of the July 6 Report. Documents establish that statement to be false.”
Further, he told the committee that he did not know if the report was reviewed by people outside the Health Department. Republicans have documents that “again demonstrate that statement to be false.”
Cuomo is a total POS. He needs to be held accountable for these lies and I sincerely hope the DOJ success in the courts to do just that.