(The Center Square) — Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is reportedly under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for allegedly lying to Congress about his response to the pandemic.
The investigation, first reported by the New York Times, comes after the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform sent a criminal referral letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi in April asking her to charge the Democrat with making false statements to Congress as part of an investigation into his administration’s response to COVID-19 nursing home deaths in New York state.
However, the probe comes as the former governor is running against incumbent New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat running for reelection as an independent. The DOJ recently dropped federal bribery and corruption charges against Adams after he voiced support for Trump’s immigration crackdown.
In a statement, Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi questioned the timing of the investigation and suggested that the Trump DOJ is trying to interfere with the mayoral primary race.
“We have never been informed of any such matter, so why would someone leak it now? The answer is obvious: This is lawfare and election interference plain and simple — something President Trump and his top Department of Justice officials say they are against,” he said.
In April, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform sent a criminal referral letter asking Attorney General Pam Bondi to charge Cuomo with making false statements to Congress as part of an investigation into his administration’s response to COVID-19 nursing home deaths in New York state.
In September, Cuomo was grilled by the Republican-controlled Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic about the controversial March 25, 2020, directive issued by his administration in the early days of the pandemic that required nursing homes and long-term care facilities in New York to admit COVID-19-positive patients.
The directive required nursing homes to begin accepting “medically stable” patients recovering from COVID-19 as they were discharged from hospitals. It was rescinded after several weeks, but Cuomo was widely criticized for contributing to the high death toll in the state’s long-term care facilities.
House Republicans accused Cuomo and his team of making “a deliberate decision to exclude scientifically significant nursing home-related COVID-19 deaths from mortality rates” and “heavily edited” New York State Department of Health documents “to shift blame away from Mr. Cuomo and his team.”
“Andrew Cuomo is a man with a history of corruption and deceit, now caught red-handed lying to Congress during the Select Subcommittee’s investigation into the COVID-19 nursing home tragedy in New York,” House Oversight Chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said in a statement Monday. “This wasn’t a slip-up – it was a calculated cover-up by a man seeking to shield himself from responsibility for the devastating loss of life in New York’s nursing homes.”
Cuomo, a Democrat who stepped down from office in 2021 amid sexual harassment allegations, has denied any wrongdoing and accused GOP lawmakers of conducting a “partisan” investigation. He pointed out that the DOJ had previously looked at the allegations against him and found no wrongdoing.
“Governor Cuomo testified truthfully to the best of his recollection about events from four years earlier, and he offered to address any follow-up questions from the Subcommittee — but from the beginning this was all transparently political,” Azzopardi said in his statement.
