Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo will testify publicly next week before the Republican-led House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic regarding his administration’s response to the COVID-19 scamdemic.

“Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will testify publicly before Congress for the FIRST TIME regarding his COVID-19 nursing home policies at a @COVIDSelect hearing on September 10, 2024,” the subcommittee announced.

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* Image from Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic X Post *

“Andrew Cuomo owes answers to the 15,000 families who lost loved ones in New York’s nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. On September 10, Americans will have the opportunity to hear directly from the former governor about New York’s potentially fatal nursing home policies. During closed-door testimony, Mr. Cuomo was shockingly callous when pressed to explain discrepancies in nursing home death counts, repeatedly deflected responsibility for the nursing home directive, and most egregiously, showed little remorse for the thousands of lives lost. A true leader owns up to his mistakes and takes responsibility for wrongdoing. That is not what we saw from Mr. Cuomo during his term as governor nor during his transcribed interview. We hope that during his public hearing next week, Mr. Cuomo will stop dodging accountability and honestly answer the American people,” Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) said.

From the New York Post:

During the seven-hour ordeal, subcommittee members expressed similar impressions after pressing Cuomo about a March 25, 2020, “must admit” order that placed the COVID-positive patients in senior care facilities statewide.

“I don’t see a lot of remorse,” Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), one of several doctors on the panel, told reporters during a break from the testimony.

“He’s keeping to what you’ve read about in his published book,” quipped Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-NY), Cuomo’s 2018 gubernatorial challenger, in reference to the $5 million book deal that the governor inked in the middle of the pandemic and that depicted his leadership in glowing terms.

While he attacked what he called a “nuclearized” probe by the Trump Justice Department of the nursing-home mandate, the 66-year-old ex-governor acknowledged that a member of his staff had drafted the order, but he still blamed the federal government for providing the original guidance.

Per CNN:

The committee said it also conducted interviews with nine high-ranking former Cuomo administration officials. It said transcripts from all interviews, including Cuomo’s, would be released ahead of the hearing next week.

A 2021 investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, found that the New York State Department of Health undercounted Covid-19 deaths among residents of nursing homes by approximately 50%, essentially by leaving out deaths of residents who had been transferred to hospitals. A 2022 audit by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli concluded that Cuomo’s health department failed to report roughly 4,100 deaths between April 2020 and February 2021.

Cuomo has insisted that advisory was consistent with guidance from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Wenstrup said on “The Lead” in April that lawmakers wanted to ask the Democratic former governor about the March 2020 advisory, which barred nursing homes from rejecting patients solely on the basis of a Covid-19 diagnosis.

“I’m trying to learn why he would do something like this,” Wenstrup said. “As a doctor who has treated infections, it goes against all medical common sense to take someone who was highly contagious and put them amongst the most vulnerable.”

 

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