David Zimmermann of National Review Online reports an interesting recent action from a top congressional Republican.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) is asking the Department of Justice to criminally prosecute former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for lying to Congress about his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic that resulted in the deaths of many nursing home patients.
Comer renewed the criminal referral to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi after her predecessor, Merrick Garland, had declined to act on the congressional request filed in October. The committee chairman wrote in a Monday letter that the Biden administration “ignored” the referral, despite clear evidence of Cuomo’s false statements.
The referral stated that Cuomo allegedly helped draft and review the New York State Department of Health’s July 2020 report that undercounted the total number of deaths in nursing homes by 46 percent, citing documents and testimony from other witnesses proving so. Cuomo testified that he was involved in neither the drafting nor the review of the report — testimony that the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic said amounts to a lie.
“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,” Chairman Comer said in a statement. “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 also lied about not having any discussions about the July 2020 report’s being peer-reviewed and not knowing whether the report was reviewed by people outside New York’s health department, according to the 107-page referral.
“Let’s be clear: lying to Congress is a federal crime. Mr. Cuomo must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Comer said.
