Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is set to testify next week before a House committee investigating his administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic — including an infamous mandate that forced infected patients into nursing homes.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic announced Tuesday that it was preparing to question the ex-New York governor on Sept. 10 about the “unscientific guidance” that led to the deaths of thousands of senior citizens.
“Andrew Cuomo owes answers to the 15,000 families who lost loved ones in New York’s nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio).
The COVID subcommittee has already conducted a closed-door transcribed interview with Cuomo in June, during which the governor came across as “shockingly callous,” Wenstrup added.
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.
“If I knew then what I know now, I would have told my Department of Health, ‘Don’t listen to the federal government; they don’t know what they’re talking about,’” Cuomo told reporters. “Because what the facts now show is you know what happened in nursing homes.”
Lawmakers quibbled with that characterization, pointing out that the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a subagency of US Health and Human Services, did not compel anything, unlike New York’s order. --->READ MORE HERE
'[Cuomo] blamed everybody but himself -- no apology,' says committee member Nicole Malliotakis of New York
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo will sit for a hearing Sept. 10 before the congressional subcommittee tasked with probing the coronavirus pandemic, the panel announced Tuesday.
Cuomo, one of the most visible governors during the height of the pandemic, was lambasted for implementing stringent social and economic restrictions throughout the Empire State.
He also was blamed for thousands of COVID-related deaths that occurred in nursing homes, which a 2023 report from the NYS Department of Health calculated to be 826 in Suffolk County, 813 in Erie County – which includes Buffalo -- and 623 in Queens County.
"Mr. Cuomo will be questioned about his Administration’s issuance of unscientific guidance that forced New York nursing homes and long-term care facilities to admit COVID-19 positive patients," an announcement for the hearing read.
Cuomo, a Democrat, previously sat for a seven-hour transcribed interview with the subcommittee. The panel also interviewed Cuomo’s former secretary, Melissa DeRosa, and then-NYS Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., a Staten Island lawmaker who sits on the subcommittee, said in an interview Tuesday that Cuomo still refuses to take responsibility for his orders and their repercussions.
She recounted how no one in Albany could point to exactly where the order partitioning nursing home patients came from.
"We still don't know who approved that directive because the governor saying he didn't know about it, he's claiming that [Zucker] knew about it before it went out. And yet somehow they've been unable to identify who the person was that approved it and issued it, which is so negligent for a directive like that to go out without the health commissioner approving it at minimum," she said.
The New York lawmaker also pointed to then-President Donald Trump dispatching a military medical ship to New York Harbor, the Jacob Javits Center, and the availability of a mental hospital in her district for the purposes of treating and partitioning serious COVID-19 patients.
"They weren't being used. So why you have that directive in place, forcing the nursing home to take the COVID positive patients, even when you had alternatives? That was a big failure because at that point he was very clear about this directive." --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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