By Ken Silva via Headline USA,
Last October, the coronavirus pandemic subcommittee sent a criminal complaint to the Department of Justice, recommending that former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo be charged with perjury to Congress.
Not surprisingly, the DOJ ignored the referral. About six months later, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., asked Trump’s Justice Department to review the matter again.
“To our knowledge, the Biden administration ignored this appeal despite clear facts and evidence. Accordingly, we ask that you review this submission and take appropriate action,” Comer said in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bond on Monday.
According to a report from last year’s coronavirus subcommittee, Cuomo had reviewed, edited, and even authored part of a supposedly independent and peer-reviewed New York State Department of Health report that was used to support his deadly pandemic-era nursing home policies.
But Cuomo told the subcommittee in a transcribed interview from June that he had nothing to do with the report. Cuomo’s lie is why the House GOP wants him criminally charged.
“Andrew Cuomo is a man with a history of corruption and fraud who has now been caught lying to a select subcommittee of Congress investigating the New York City COVID-19 nursing home tragedy,” Comer said Monday.
“This wasn’t a slip-up – it was a deliberate cover-up by a man trying to shield himself from responsibility for the devastating loss of life in New York City nursing homes.”
The Cuomo administration has come under significant scrutiny over a policy that initially called for the readmission of recovering COVID-19 patients from nursing homes to prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed. This was in addition to the state’s death toll, which was significantly lower than the official death toll.
In June, an investigation into New York City’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic found that former Governor Cuomo’s “top-down” dictating public health policy through his office — rather than coordinating with state and local agencies — created confusion during the crisis.
In the state’s nursing homes, where about 15,000 people have died, the administration’s lack of communication with agencies and facilities led to wasted resources and distrust – not to mention concern for residents’ loved ones, according to an independent investigation commissioned in 2022 by current Governor Kathy Hochul.
Cuomo resigned in August 2021 amid sexual harassment allegations, which he denies. Hochul, a fellow Democrat who had been Cuomo’s lieutenant, inherited the job and was reelected the following year.
