Newsman: New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and his administration faced new allegations on Friday that they had covered up the scope of the coronavirus death toll in New York’s nursing homes, after a top aide to the governor admitted that the state had withheld data because it feared an investigation by the Trump Justice Department. Rep. Tom Reed said Friday he will file a criminal complaint against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo‘s aide and is calling for her arrest, after a bombshell admission that she withheld data on COVID-19 deaths at nursing homes to avoid federal scrutiny. On Friday, however, New York’s 14 Democratic state senators released a joint statement calling for the repeal of Cuomo’s emergency executive powers to deal with the pandemic. “While Covid-19 has tested the limits of our people and state … it is clear that the expanded emergency powers granted to the governor are no longer appropriate,” they wrote.
Lawmakers from both parties have called for stripping the governor of the emergency powers that he has exercised during the pandemic, while Republicans have demanded the resignations of top Cuomo administration officials and new federal investigations.
The leaked recording of the governor’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, admitting to Democrats in private conversations this week that the administration withheld the true data because it feared the Department of Justice would use the figures to pursue complaints of state misconduct.
“Basically, we froze,” during the call Ms. DeRosa told top New York Democrats referring to tweets from Donald Trump last August that she said turned the issue of New York’s nursing home deaths “into this giant political football”, and his calls for the justice department to investigate , according to a partial transcript later released by the governor’s office after her remarks appeared in The New York Post.
“We were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, what we start saying, was going to be used against us while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation.” At the time, the governor’s office was also facing similar requests from the State Legislature.
Rep Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) told FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo on Friday,”I’m going to be looking at filing a personal criminal complaint against these individual today in local law enforcement offices as well as federal offices because she needs to be arrested today. “
A spokesperson for Cuomo did not immediately respond to FOX Business’ request for comment on Rep. Tom Reed’s comments to Maria Bartiromo of FOX Business.’
The admission fueled outrage after a probe by the New York Attorney General Letitia James revealed Cuomo’s Department of Health underreported COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes by as much as 50%.
“Now we have Gov. Cuomo’s second-in-command essentially on a taped confession to fellow Democratic lawmakers admitting she committed criminal activity to cover up for what they were hiding from the federal officials that were responsible to get to the bottom of this, and make sure that skilled nursing homes and nursing homes themselves learned what happened with the COVID-19 positive order that sent 15,000 people to their death that Cuomo issued back in March,” Reed said.
Reed said Republican lawmakers are demanding that “transparency and accountability” be part of the next COVID-19 package. “The days of Cuomo are going to be numbered in Albany here, but most important we need to start with this second-in-command,” Reed said.
Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., has also called for a federal obstruction of justice investigation into the New York nursing home situation. Other New York Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Elise Stefanik, demanded that Cuomo and his “senior team” be “prosecuted immediately” at the state and federal levels, regarding the nursing home deaths.
Rich Azzopardi, a senior Cuomo adviser, suggested that the DOJ’s investigation, spearheaded under former President Donald Trump’s administration, was “politically motivated” and Cuomo and other top state officials feared the information would be used to “blame Democratic states for COVID deaths.”
The New York Department of Health reported that as of Jan. 27, 2021, there were 5,957 confirmed deaths due to COVID-19 in nursing homes and an additional 2,783 presumed deaths. In assisted care facilities, there were 160 deaths and 52 presumed deaths.
But on Wednesday, the state revealed the number of deaths was actually 15,049 residents in elder care facilities (nursing homes and assisted living/adult care facilities), according to a letter from the State Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker sent to Senate Democrats
Meanwhile, Cuomo is expected to travel to Washington, D.C., on Friday in the midst of the scandal in his first visit to the White House since President Biden took office to discuss the federal American Rescue Plan for dealing with the coronavirus.
The NY governor Andrew Cuomo had long faced criticism for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020 after he directed nursing homes in the Empire State to accept patients who had or were suspected of having COVID-19. The decision created an onslaught of COVID-19 cases that infected thousands of elderly patients and resulted in hundreds of deaths among the state’s most vulnerable population.
