House Republicans on Tuesday subpoenaed former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to testify in connection with his resolution to allow COVID-19 patients into nursing homes at the height of the pandemic.
Coronavirus Pandemic Select Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) said Tuesday that Cuomo’s nursing home policies “have had fatal consequences for New York’s peak population. “
“Former Gov. Cuomo owes answers to the 15,000 families who lost loved ones in New York nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Wenstrup said. “His testimony is crucial to uncover the circumstances that led to his misguided policies and for ensuring that fatal mistakes never happen again.”
Cuomo’s nursing home guidance issued on March 25, 2020, prevented nursing homes from refusing to admit or readmit patients with shown cases of COVID-19 to their facilities, which Cuomo said in compliance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rules at the time. .
The subcommittee is also seeking to ask the former New York governor about his administration’s efforts to downplay the negative consequences of the policy.
“This is an apparent journalistic farce: They are issuing a subpoena in the form of a press release,” Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi told the Washington Examiner in reaction to a request for comment. “Congress is officially a circus, and they are just clowns. “
In a letter accompanying the subpoena, Wenstrup alleges that Cuomo’s workplace “greatly altered, or at least leaked,” knowledge related to nursing home deaths from the New York State Department of Health, which They accounted for only 6,432 deaths even though Before. Previous versions of the report put the death toll at more than 9,800.
A report by New York Attorney General Letitia James released in 2021 found that COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes likely would have been “undercounted by [the NYSDOH] by about 50%. “
Cuomo resigned from his position in August 2021 in the wake of a report from James that found he had sexually harassed 11 women, including staffers and others who did not work for his administration.
Wenstrup wrote that Cuomo and his attorney, Rita Glavin, “repeatedly and systematically rejected, deflected or ignored all questions and requests” related to New York’s nursing deaths after the March 25 directive.
The subcommittee has been soliciting voluntary testimony from Cuomo since May 2023. After several weeks of communication between the subcommittee and Cuomo’s attorney, the subcommittee informed Cuomo in mid-February that it would begin examining “the evaluation of the use of mandatory procedure” to discharge his testimony.
In February, Cuomo’s attorney provided dates in August 2024 that Cuomo would be available for interviews, more than a year after the subcommittee’s initial transcribed interview request.
“It is now clear that their strategy, from the beginning, has been to delay and undermine our investigation,” Wenstrup said.
Azzopardi said that the robbery “is their responsibility, ours. “
Glavin responded to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment by calling the subcommittee’s description of the events “misleading” and “political nonsense intended to get their names out in the press. “
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“They don’t need a subpoena, and they know that. And their letter shows that they already made a decision before they even heard from Governor Cuomo. Pure political theater,” Glavin said.
“It’s long past time for Cuomo to stop shirking his day-to-day jobs in Congress and start responding honestly to the American people,” Wenstrup said.