New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been a busy guy over the past year. As his daily COVID-19 briefings were portrayed daily by the media as the appropriate way to handle the pandemic, Cuomo took advantage of his newly found fame and wrote a book, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
But one thing you won’t find in his now bargain priced book is what the Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa recently told other New York Democrats, which recently emerged in a report.
According to DeRosa, they withheld data on COVID-19 deaths at nursing homes to avoid federal scrutiny.
The New York Post first reported that Melissa DeRosa, secretary to the governor, told leading Empire State Democrats that the administration feared the data could “be used against us” by the Justice Department during a video conference call.
Cuomo made the unbelievable decision at the beginning of the pandemic to send COVID-19 patients to nursing homes, where the most vulnerable citizens resided.
9000 nursing home patients died before Cuomo reversed his decision on May 10, 2020. What is not revealed in those deaths are patients that were transferred to a hospital from the nursing home and then died.
The DOJ began investigating nursing home coronavirus deaths in four states back in August – and New York was one of them.
“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,” DeRosa told the lawmakers, according to the Post report.
“The second most powerful person in state government and top aide to Gov. Cuomo admitted on video to the premeditated and willful violation of state laws and what clearly amounts to federal obstruction of justice,” said state GOP Chairman Nick Langworthy. “Andrew Cuomo has abused his power and destroyed the trust placed in the office of governor. Prosecution and impeachment discussions must begin right away.”
Fox News reported that a Freedom of information data released Wednesday revealed that the nursing home death toll was far higher than previously reported. And those numbers emerged just two weeks after the state’s attorney general found that numbers released before the end of January were also underreported.
According to the new data, at least 14,100 nursing home or assisted-living facility residents have died from the coronavirus – with another 949 victims from other adult-care facilities confirmed or presumed to have died from the illness, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
