Andrew Cuomo is sticking to his story no matter how many wheels fall off: He is Never He will not admit his disastrous March 25, 2020, “must admit” directive that forced New York nursing homes to accept contagious COVID patients that hospitals wanted to abandon, nor his efforts to hide the excessive deaths that resulted.
Ahead of his public testimony Tuesday before a House committee, the former governor placed not one, but two columns (in the content-hungry Daily News and Daily Beast) reiterating his utterly dishonest defenses: They made me do it And Donald Trump was out to get me.
This, as the Post published exclusive details of the findings of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic: Then-Gov. personally edited a state report that undercounted the number of COVID deaths in New York nursing homes, despite warnings from officials that the lies would become a “major debacle.”
The March 2020 order, issued to satisfy the hospital lobby, major donors, led to thousands of additional deaths.
Cuomo has repeatedly claimed that the order was in line with CDC guidelines, and even that it was imposed by the Centers for Disease Control.
Yet Dr. Deborah Birx, then the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, said New York’s order “violated” federal guidelines.
As for the cover-up of the true death toll in nursing homes: When finally caught red-handed, Team Cuomo claimed that they had hidden the truth even from legislative scrutiny because they feared a Justice Department investigation.
Of course, they point out that it was the Asset The Justice Department, claiming that it would certainly be a partisan investigation, even though career professionals ran the Justice Department until the last weeks of Trump’s term: Donald Trump couldn’t even stop the insane and totally bogus Russiagate investigation.
But the “MAGA fear” button is pretty much the only one Cuomo has left, hence his attempt to blame Trump for the 1.2 million American deaths from the pandemic, even though more than half of them have occurred under Joe Biden.
Andrew still regrets his Emmy-winning days as a governor who provided the leadership Trump failed to provide.
It’s too bad that Cuomo’s televised briefings have been accompanied by disasters like nursing home orders, as well as absurd and arbitrary stay-at-home orders like “you must order real food with a drink” and “no bowling for you!”
Unfortunately, Governor Hochul has still not allowed the Empire State’s dirty COVID laundry to be fully aired: the “external report” she commissioned is a joke.
Yet state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli found that Cuomo “misled the public” by undercounting nursing home deaths by more than 50%; state Attorney General Tish James’ previous investigation put the deception in the same category.
Perhaps the House committee could be more transparent.
At the very least, the Post is committed to ensuring that Cuomo never gets away with his “alternative facts” lies.
