Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) on Monday promised to subpoena former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo over his involvement in the nursing home scandal during the pandemic if Republicans retake the House majority in November.
At a “Justice for Victims” press conference in Rensselaer County, Stefanik announced House Republicans intend to investigate Cuomo’s involvement in covering up nursing home deaths and the total number of those deaths as part of House Republicans’ “Commitment to America.”
“There must be accountability. And there must be transparency and answers,” she said about Gov. Cuomo’s “fatal executive order” that “did not abide by CMS’s guidance” and “forced Covid-positive nursing home patients into nursing homes across this state.”
Stefanik, the third most senior-ranking House Republican, said Democrats from New York state and Washington, DC, have been curiously uninterested in investigating the deaths.
“Not a single Democrat member of Congress has focused on this important issue that has led to the loss of 15,000 seniors’ lives in New York state. House Republicans will,” Stefanik said. “So while all the Albany Democrats have refused to conduct a full scale investigation, while Washington Democrats have refused to conduct a full scale investigation, House Republicans will.”
Emergency Medical Service workers unload a patient out of their ambulance at the Cobble Hill Health Center on April 18, 2020, in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York City. The nursing home has had at least 55 COVID-19 reported deaths. (Justin Heiman/Getty Images)
“I’ve talked to numerous family members who lost their loved ones as direct result of the fatal nursing home executive order that Gov. Cuomo and then-Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul put into place,” she continued. “I’m proud to both lead that effort to both sound the alarm of the illegal actions of Gov. Cuomo and Lt. Gov. Hochul but also since then, demanding an investigation.”
Critics of Cuomo’s handling of Covid-positive seniors during the pandemic have called the act “criminal” and a “public fraud.”
An audit by the New York state comptroller in March revealed Cuomo failed to account for 4,100 nursing home deaths.
Cuomo was able to suppress nursing home death tolls by counting “only residents who had died in such facilities, excluding residents who died in hospitals,” which led to “an artificially lower tally of nursing home deaths that Mr. Cuomo used to argue New York had fared better than other states,” the New York Times reported.
The nursing home scandal began in 2021 when it was discovered that Cuomo’s administration directed nursing homes to accept recovering coronavirus patients, increasing elderly deaths. Reports continued to surface that Cuomo and his administration intentionally suppressed the death totals to protect the governor politically .
Meanwhile, Cuomo reportedly received more than $4 million to write a book about his supposedly successful management of the pandemic. During the pandemic, Cuomo was heralded as the perfect exact opposite of former President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
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