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A Republican-led House subcommittee on Wednesday referred former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to the Justice Department after he was accused of lying to Congress about a report on his involvement in nursing home deaths during the coronavirus pandemic.
Leader of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, signed the referral that accuses Cuomo of engaging in a "conscious, calculated effort" to avoid responsibility for how nursing home deaths were accounted for in early 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic began.
The referral letter claims that Cuomo, who held a behind-closed-doors meeting with the subcommittee, didn’t review a State Health Department report that blamed him for those deaths, according to a new report by the New York Times.
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Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is sworn in to testify before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in the Rayburn House Office Building at the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 10, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Kent Nishimura)
Despite Cuomo reportedly reviewing the reports from his state’s health department and writing parts of early drafts in emails, the former governor says he doesn’t recollect such a thing.
"This taxpayer-funded farce is an illegal use of Congress’s investigative authority," said Richard Azzopardi, a spokesperson for Cuomo. "The governor said he didn’t recall because he didn’t recall. The committee lied in their referral just as they have been lying to the public and the press."
This comes as Cuomo has surfaced as a top name for next year’s New York City mayoral contest. It’s unclear whether current Mayor Eric Adams will run again as he’s recently been indicted by a grand jury on five counts of bribery and corruption, which includes soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations.
Cuomo resigned as governor in August 2021 amid sexual harassment allegations, which he still denies.
The criminal referral by the House subcommittee doesn’t carry water in the legal system and Congress doesn’t have the wherewithal to instruct the Justice Department on what they should do with it.
There’s also no indication if the upcoming election will have any bearing on the subcommittee’s referral — regardless of who gains control of Congress or who wins the presidency.
Former New York Gov. Andrew spoke about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and controversial nursing home policies while Republicans scrutinized his role in the state's response and alleged undercounting nursing home deaths. (Kent Nishimura)
Cuomo’s memoir, "American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic," has been under scrutiny the last few years and he was ordered to return $5 million on his payment advance for the piece after a state ethics board declared he used state resources to help pen it.
That’s something Cuomo also denied and successfully sued the board for, claiming it was his right to due process.
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Cuomo has insisted that information and data regarding COVID deaths during the early stages was unreliable, and that his administration focused on more reliable numbers that people could trust, according to the Times.
In Wenstrup’s letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, he said Cuomo falsely said "he did not have any discussions about the July 6 report being peer reviewed" and "that he did not know whether the July 6 report was reviewed by persons outside" the State Department of Health.
Rep. Brad Wenstrup, chairman of the COVID-19 select subcommittee, sought answers from former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo about his handling of the pandemic behind closed doors. (Getty Images)
"Mr. Cuomo provided false statements to the select subcommittee in what appears to be a conscious, calculated effort to insulate himself from accountability," Wenstrup wrote in the referral letter reviewed by the Times. "The Department of Justice should consider Mr. Cuomo’s prior allegedly wrongful conduct when evaluating whether to charge him for the false statements described."
Cuomo has accused the subcommittee of misusing government resources to "investigate a matter beyond its jurisdiction, apparently in service of a private lawsuit."
