House panel seeks criminal charges against Cuomo

(The Center Square) — A House panel is recommending that former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo be brought up on criminal charges for providing false statements about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, members of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic allege that Cuomo made “false statements” to the panel during his testimony as part of its investigation into how his administration handled nursing home policies during the initial weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Mr. Cuomo provided false statements to the select subcommittee and what appears to be a conscious, calculated effort to insulate himself from accountability,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, the committee’s chairman, wrote in the letter accompanying the criminal referral. “The Department of Justice should consider Mr. Cuomo’s prior alleged wrongful conduct when evaluating whether to charge him for the false statements.”

The panel argues that Cuomo denied being involved in the drafting or reviewing a July 6 report about his pandemic nursing home policy during testimony before the committee earlier this year but said documents show that he was involved. The panel included handwritten notes on a draft copy of the July 6 report that a former executive assistant to Cuomo testified was likely his handwriting.

But Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi blasted the panel’s criminal referral and investigation as “a taxpayer-funded farce.” He pointed to Cuomo’s testimony, saying he couldn’t recall if he had reviewed the July 6 report.

“This is a joke – the governor said he didn’t recall because he didn’t recall,” Azzopardi said in a statement to news outlets. “The committee lied in their referral just as they have been lying to the public and the press.”

In September, the committee grilled Cuomo for hours about a controversial directive issued by his administration in the early days of the pandemic that required nursing homes and long-term care facilities in New York to admit COVID-19-positive patients.

A memo released by the committee during the hearing accused Cuomo and his team of making a “deliberate decision to exclude scientifically significant nursing home-related COVID-19 deaths from mortality rates” and “heavily edited” New York State Department of Health documents “to shift blame away” from his administration.

Republicans also criticized Cuomo for showing a lack of empathy about his responsibility for policies that they claimed contributed to a high rate of COVID-19 deaths in long-term care facilities.

Cuomo, a Democrat who stepped down from office in 2021 amid sexual harassment allegations, defended himself before the House panel and blasted GOP members for conducting a “partisan” investigation.

He has blamed the high number of COVID-19 deaths nationwide on then-President Donald Trump, whom he claimed “willfully deceived the American people” during the pandemic.

“His lies and denials delayed our response, let the virus spread, and this country never caught up,” Cuomo said in testimony. “And this subcommittee, run by Republicans, repeats the Trump lies and deceptions.”

The March 25 directive required nursing homes to begin accepting “medically stable” patients recovering from COVID-19 in 2020 as they were discharged from hospitals. It was rescinded after several weeks, but Cuomo was widely criticized for contributing to the high death toll in the state’s long-term care facilities.

More than 80,000 New Yorkers died of COVID-19 from the beginning of the pandemic to May 2023, including 15,000 nursing home residents, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Department of Justice previously investigated whether Cuomo’s policy violated residents’ civil rights in New York’s nursing homes and found no wrongdoing. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office also looked into the impact of the policy but dropped the investigation. Both investigations determined that New York’s directive was in line with federal health policies that were in place at the time.