While conservative media has been sounding the alarm since New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was packing nursing homes with coronavirus patients, it took nearly a year for the rest of the media, and regulators, to realize that perhaps something was going wrong there.
While we’ve known about New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s nursing home scandal and that deaths were undercounted in those nursing homes for a while now, a report from New York’s Attorney General exposing the undercounting finally forced the media to pay attention. While there were roughly 8,711 deaths recorded in New York’s nursing homes the day before the AG’s report, those stats didn’t provide an complete picture. If a nursing home resident caught coronavirus in the home and then was transported to a hospital where they later died, that wasn’t counted as a nursing home death. When counting deaths accurately, the AG report found that there an estimated 12,743 nursing home deaths, for undercounting of about 50%.
Not longafter, Albany Supreme Court Justice Kimberly O’Connor ruled that New York’s Department of Health broke the law by refusing to provide a government watchdog group with the total nursing home death toll.
Then we learned that Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa had apologized to Democrats out of concern that the scandal could hurt them – and she admitted that nursing home data was hidden so the feds wouldn’t find out, expressing concern that Trump would have them “used against us.” “Basically, we froze, because then 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 said.
A number of Cuomo’s top health officials have stepped down as this scandal has escalated, and nine Democrat Assembly members are looking to rescind Cuomo’s emergency powers. Meanwhile, Ted Cruz and other GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have called for a congressional probe.
And now the FBI is getting involved.
As Fox News reported:
The FBI and US attorney’s office in Brooklyn have begun an investigation into how New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration handled the state’s nursing home crisis during the coronavirus pandemic.
The investigation is not yet far along and is focused on top members of Cuomo’s coronavirus task force.
“As we publicly said, DOJ has been looking into this for months. We have been cooperating with them and we will continue to,” Cuomo senior advisor Rich Azzopardi said in a statement.
It is not clear whether Azzopardi’s statement refers to the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s probe, which the Times-Union describes as “in its early stages.” Azzopardi’s statement did not specify whether Cuomo’s office was in touch with FBI or US Attorney officials regarding a fresh investigation.
Will Cuomo finally be held accountable for his actions? We can only hope.
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