Fmr N.Y. Gov. Cuomo Blames ‘Unknown Staffer’ for COVID Policy

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Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo testified before a House committee on Tuesday that he was unaware of a controversial policy, reportedly edited by his own office, that required nursing homes to admit COVID-19 patients, a directive that helped fuel the deaths of 15,000 people in nursing homes, according to multiple reports.

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., told the Washington Examiner that Cuomo blamed the March 25, 2020, order on an “unknown staffer” in the New York State Department of Health.

Cuomo appeared for closed-door testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic after having been subpoenaed in March.

Cuomo testified that he didn’t know about the order until a month later despite a draft that was edited by his own staff for more than two days before it was issued, the Times Union reported Tuesday. Further, Health Department officials told the FBI in an ensuing probe that Cuomo was frequently on their calls with his coronavirus task force, according to the Times Union.

Malliotakis said Cuomo’s assertion of ignorance doesn’t pass the smell test, considering the former governor held daily press briefings on the pandemic from March 2 through June 19 of 2020.

“Is it that the governor did not know what was going on in his own state?” Malliotakis asked, according to the Examiner. “Everybody else knew about it: all the local legislators, all the state legislators. The nursing homes were complaining about it to our offices.”

Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., framed it this way: “Anybody who knows anything about Andrew Cuomo and knows anything about how New York State government was run under Andrew Cuomo knows that that is a flat-out lie. Nothing happened in New York without Andrew Cuomo’s signoff,” Lawler said, according to CBS News.

An investigation led by New York Attorney General Letitia James found that as many as 9,800 people died in nursing home deaths as a direct result of the policy, according to the Examiner. She also found that the number of nursing home deaths from the Department of Health report had been edited by the governor’s office.

“A lot of his answers today are putting the blame on others. At the end of the day, the buck stops with you,” Malliotakis said, according to CBS News.

Cuomo resigned from office in August 2021 in the aftermath of a sexual harassment scandal.