News
In Fiery Hearing Exchange, Cuomo Admits He Never Consulted Health Officials on Nursing-Home Directive
Washington, D.C. — Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo admitted during a congressional hearing that he did not consult public-health authorities before his administration ordered nursing homes to allow Covid-positive patients into their facilities.
Representative Brad Wenstrup (R., Ohio), chairman of the coronavirus subcommittee, sparred with Cuomo over his March 25, 2020, directive ordering New York nursing homes to take in patients who had tested positive for Covid to relieve pressure on hospitals. The order arguably defied federal guidance instructing nursing homes not to admit Covid-positive patients unless they could follow the Centers for Disease Control’s prescribed safety procedures.
Wenstrup repeatedly asked Cuomo if he called public-health authorities to ensure the order complied with federal guidelines, and Cuomo conceded that he did not, while noting that the New York state health department was constantly putting out public-health guidance early in the pandemic.
Cuomo appeared before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic after the panel reviewed over half a million documents and brought in Cuomo and numerous top officials from his administration to testify behind closed doors.
“In search for best pandemic practices, today’s hearing is focused on New York and the March 25, 2020, directive from the New York State Department of Health issued under Governor Andrew Cuomo’s leadership,” Wenstrup (R., Ohio) said in his opening statement, setting the tone for a contentious hearing.
“You are the leader. The buck stops with you — or at least it should. It’s important to look at your Administration’s record. Two weeks after you learned about the order, your office changed the methodology of how nursing home fatalities were categorized: You removed out-of-facility deaths that occurred at the hospital, altering the full accounting of nursing home deaths,” he added.
The resulting order caused coronavirus to spread in nursing homes and caused thousands of extra deaths during the pandemic, while Cuomo was being hailed by national media organizations for his leadership. More than 9,000 individuals were admitted and readmitted to nursing homes thanks to the order.
Defiant and well-prepared, Cuomo began his testimony by accusing House Republicans of peddling former president Donald Trump’s talking points about the nursing-home order and claimed Trump’s administration weaponized the Justice Department against his state to deflect blame on how he handled the coronavirus pandemic.
Taking Cuomo’s lead, Representative Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) and other Democratic lawmakers spent a considerable amount of time at the hearing re-litigating the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic. Cuomo often attempted to shift the conversation away from his own management of the pandemic onto Trump’s erratic behavior and political attacks.
Claiming innocence, Cuomo repeatedly cited a New York Attorney General study that he believes exonerates his nursing-home order and proves it complied with federal guidance, despite evidence to the contrary. Republican lawmakers repeatedly contested Cuomo’s claim that his nursing home order complied with federal guidance, citing the language from the Centers for Disease Control and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The coronavirus panel issued a memo Monday detailing the role Cuomo played in issuing the directive and covering up the death totals by ordering the drafting of a misleading report from his administration’s health department.
Cuomo insisted that he only found out about the heath department directive when he was asked about it at a press conference a month after it was issued. He and multiple Republican lawmakers went back and forth over the exact language of the nursing home directive and whether it was a legally binding document or simply a set of recommendations. Cuomo refused to plainly admit his administration made a mistake with the nursing home directive and deflected responsibility onto guidance from public health authorities.
Representatives Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) were among the GOP lawmakers who confronted Cuomo over his management of the pandemic and rhetoric during his testimony. Greene pressed Cuomo on the indictment of alleged Chinese spy Linda Sun, a former staffer of his and sitting New York governor Kathy Hochul.
While acknowledging the seriousness of the charges against Sun, Cuomo said Chinese infiltration is an important issue but suggested Sun was a low-ranking staffer he would not recognize.
Disputing the notion that his directive caused coronavirus to enter nursing homes, Cuomo repeatedly suggested that asymptomatic nursing home staffers unknowingly brought the virus into care facilities, in part because of an inadequate supply of testing early on in the pandemic. He did not address the possibility that asymptomatic staffers could have brought coronavirus into nursing homes at the same time as coronavirus patients who were admitted to nursing homes under his administration’s watch.
When pressed on why his administration excluded the out-of-facility deaths from the July 2020 report his office ordered, Cuomo repeatedly suggested his administration lacked confidence in the accuracy of the data, and noted that it did not alter the overall coronavirus death total. He mentioned that out-of-facility deaths, where nursing home patients died of the virus after being admitted to hospitals, were one of many death sub-categories his administration evaluated.
Behind closed doors, Cuomo expressed a lack of remorse over the excess deaths in an email obtained by the committee, asking, “Who cares?” about the altered death statistics. A few lawmakers condemned his callous remarks and pointed out the families of deceased nursing home patients sitting in the gallery behind him. Cuomo did not apologize to the family members even though he was given multiple opportunities to do so.
Before he testified, Cuomo’s attorney threatened the subcommittee over its effort to investigate his administration’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Cuomo was compelled to testify by a subpoena issued by the committee.
Eventually, the nursing-home scandal and allegations of sexual harassment sank Cuomo’s political career after he became one of the most powerful state executives in America over a decade in the governor’s mansion. He has consistently maintained his innocence against the sexual-harassment allegations.
His brother, former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, heavily promoted the governor during the coronavirus pandemic and left CNN after it was revealed that he had privately helped his brother handle the sexual-harassment allegations.
At the hearing, Wenstrup announced the next step of the subcommittee’s investigation into Cuomo’s management of the pandemic. The panel is sending a subpoena to Hochul for more documents from the Cuomo administration that her office is allegedly refusing to hand over. Hochul is Cuomo’s former lieutenant and took over after he resigned in disgrace in 2021.