A US House committee will refer former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to the Justice Department for making “criminally false statements” about a state audit. Nursing home deaths undercounted During the COVID-19 pandemic, The Post has learned.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic is accusing Cuomo of falsely saying he was not involved in preparing, drafting or reviewing a July 6, 2020 report that reported the state’s total number of COVID-19 cases in nursing homes. The death toll was down 46%. To draft criminal referrals to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Asked whether he drafted, reviewed, discussed or involved people outside his administration to “peer-review” the report, Cuomo told the House panel Written interview of June 11 Which he did not have.
“I didn’t. Maybe it was in the inbox, but I didn’t,” Cuomo said, when asked if he reviewed the draft of the report during his written interview.
But the subcommittee staff, in a 104-page referral, presented emails from aides discussing their involvement in editing and reviewing the report, as well as drafts whose margins were allegedly marked by the former governor’s own chicken. There was a scratch.
Cuomo’s handwriting throughout the documents emphasizes the arguments he has made since the disastrous March 25, 2020 directive ordering COVID patients to be placed in senior care facilities.
After this he canceled the order on May 10 thousands of New Yorkers They were either admitted or admitted to nursing homes without the need for testing.
Cuomo’s notes distance himself from responsibility for the nursing home order, one claiming that his administration only learned in May that “asymptomatic people could infect others. However, by that time, the disease was already Had reached the nursing home.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledged the risk of asymptomatic spread six days earlier, although news outlets had been reporting on the phenomenon since early April.
In a draft page, they changed “Neither CDC guidance nor state directive mandates” to “Neither CDC guidance nor state directive mandates.”
The second cuts out “death” and replaces it with the estimated time frame for the infection to become fatal.
Cuomo also directed staff to keep the number of deaths in nursing homes in neighboring states “comparable to New York’s,” using data from deaths inside nursing homes to explain the lower death toll.
“New York is 6,600?” More than 9,000 people died, he wrote in the margins of a draft page – but not counting those admitted to hospitals. The last report listed 6,432.
Cuomo’s former senior staffer Farrah Kennedy recognized Cuomo’s handwriting in a written interview with the House COVID panel earlier this month and said she “often” had to decipher and write it down.
Former Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa and Jim Malatras And Gareth Rhodes, deputy superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, told the subcommittee in an earlier interview that concerns about the death numbers were raised in an email chain on June 7, 2020.Big defeat in history books,” the then-governor probably wrote through his secretary, Stephanie Benton.
New emails disclosed by the committee also show a member of the Executive Chamber staff writing in a June 28, 2020 email series that “the Governor turned over the edits to the version that you asked me to turn over to him “
Another staff member responded, “Upon closer inspection those are not edits I can make.” “Governor’s edicts attached.”
New emails disclosed by the subcommittee show that Cuomo’s office sought guidance from Northwell Health CEO Michael Dowling and Greater New York Hospital Association president and CEO Kenneth Ruske.
“Appoint Harvard men(,) Dowling(,) and Ken Davis (sic) as ‘peer review’ experts on the report. Get them the draft now to study,” read the June 30, 2020 email, written by Stephanie Benton but directed by Cuomo, according to a former staffer.
Dowling responded in an email two days later, “If you would like, Ken Ruske’s staff and my staff can do a complete rewrite (of the executive summary).”
“The documents falsify Mr. Cuomo’s testimony,” COVID subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) wrote in a signed cover letter accompanying the criminal referral.
Wenstrup’s committee subpoenas New York Gov. Kathy Hochul hand over relevant documents in September – but a whistleblower eventually made them available.
An impeachment report cited in the referral and prepared by the New York State Assembly Judiciary Committee also found evidence that Cuomo inspired, reviewed, and drafted the report to “counter criticism” and defend his nursing home order. Edited.
Cuomo said at other points in his June written interview that he did not “recall” reviewing or seeing the July 2020 nursing home report before its release.
“Mr. Cuomo has no valid legal defense,” the subcommittee’s criminal referral concluded. “Mr. Despite being given the opportunity to do so, or during the select subcommittee’s September 10 hearing, Cuomo did not repeat or correct his false statements during the June 11 written interview.
“The facts, evidence, and precedent show that the DOJ should proceed with criminal charges against Mr. Cuomo pursuant to 18 USC § 1001 for false statements,” it closes.
Trump aide Roger Stone was the most recent person to be prosecuted under the same federal law for making false statements to the House Intelligence Committee as part of its investigation into ties between the former president’s 2016 campaign and Russia.
Cuomo’s lawyer and spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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