House Oversight Chair James Comer is urging the Department of Justice to prosecute former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for allegedly lying to Congress regarding the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Comer, a Kentucky Republican, has accused Cuomo, a Democrat now vying for New York City mayor, of making criminally false statements concerning the pandemic’s impact on nursing homes. Former Rep. Brad Wenstrup, the chair of the now-disbanded House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, had previously referred Cuomo to former Attorney General Merrick Garland for prosecution. However, the Biden administration seemed to overlook this request.
Comer’s renewed push for prosecution hints at potential government action.
In a strongly worded statement, Comer demanded that Cuomo face legal consequences “to the fullest extent of the law.”
“Andrew Cuomo has a track record of corruption and deception, and is now caught red-handed lying to Congress during the investigation into the COVID-19 nursing home tragedy in New York,” Comer stated. “This was not an innocent mistake; it was a deliberate cover-up by an individual trying to evade accountability for the tragic loss of life in New York’s nursing homes.”
The Justice Department has not responded to requests for comments at this time.
“This is simply a baseless press release that was nonsensical last year and is even more so now,” Cuomo’s spokesperson Rich Azzopardi retorted in a statement. “As the DOJ consistently emphasizes, this transparent attempt at election interference and legal warfare violates their own guidelines.”
Cuomo, known for his nationally broadcast daily briefings during the early days of the Covid pandemic, is currently leading the Democratic primary race for New York City mayor. Nevertheless, the controversy surrounding nursing home deaths in 2020, coupled with sexual harassment allegations that led to his resignation as governor in 2021, is casting a shadow over his political comeback.
Cuomo has been deflecting blame for his March 25, 2020 nursing home directive, which mandated elder care facilities to admit Covid-positive patients. However, his rivals in the mayoral primary, aiming to challenge incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, have united to spotlight Cuomo’s decision to expose a vulnerable population to the deadly virus and accuse him of underreporting deaths in elder care facilities resulting from his directive.
Cuomo defended his actions at a congressional hearing last year, asserting that “all credible studies now indicate that COVID entered nursing homes through community spread and infected staff, not hospital admissions or readmissions.”
Yet, Cuomo now faces renewed scrutiny over the allegations made by House Republicans during that period. The initial referral for prosecution, sent by Wenstrup, who currently serves on President Donald Trump’s Intelligence Advisory Board, alleged that Cuomo lied to Congress during a transcribed interview with the select panel. Cuomo denied involvement in a New York State Department of Health report on the nursing home crisis, but the Republican-led panel concluded that Cuomo did, indeed, attempt to alter the report to conceal the fallout.
The Trump administration has formed an unexpected alliance with Adams, who is now running as an independent candidate. Administration officials recently moved to drop federal corruption charges against Adams, who was accused of accepting bribes from Turkish officials, after the mayor expressed willingness to allow Immigrations and Customs Enforcement back into the city’s Rikers Island jail complex.
Adams also appeared before Comer’s committee during a March hearing on so-called sanctuary cities alongside three other Democratic mayors and received a notably warmer reception from House Republicans compared to the mayors of Denver, Boston, and Chicago.
“I would like to acknowledge that you have publicly stated your readiness to collaborate with ICE in detaining the most criminally illegal immigrants,” Comer commended Adams. “And I want to express my gratitude for that publicly.”
