Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was blasted by fellow Democrats running against him to be the next mayor of New York City for lying to Congress, an allegation pushed by Republicans that the Trump administration is currently investigating.
Cuomo repeatedly dismissed questions throughout Wednesday night's debate on whether he lied to Congress about his role in drafting a New York State Department of Health report that officials determined had undercounted the number of nursing home deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, Cuomo blasted the current investigation as a symptom of partisan politics and insisted the report in question "did not undercount the deaths."
"The people died and he still won't answer your questions," Cuomo's opponent, Michael Blake, a former state assemblyman from the Bronx, said after Cuomo failed to provide a straight answer.
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Blake's retort resulted in one of the debate moderators asking Cuomo once again to respond to the allegations that he lied to Congress about his role in drafting the report that undercounted the number of COVID-19 nursing home deaths. This time, he engaged.
"No, I told Congress the truth," Cuomo relented. "No, we did not undercount any deaths," he added. "When they are all counted, we're number 38 out of 50, which I think, shows that compared to what other states went through, we had it first and worst, and that only 12 states had a lower rate of death - we should really be thanking the women and men who worked on those things."
"It's just a yes or no question," the moderator shot back at Cuomo. "Were you involved in the producing of that report?"
However, Cuomo still did not address the question directly, leading to laughter from his opponents.
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"It's not only that Andrew Cuomo lied to Congress - which is perjury - he also lied to the grieving families whose loved ones he sent in to those nursing homes to protect his $5 million book deal," said Brad Lander, New York City's comptroller. "That's corruption."
Last month, the Trump administration's Department of Justice opened a criminal investigation to get to the bottom of whether Cuomo lied to Congress about the decisions he made during the COVID-19 pandemic while serving as governor.
In March 2020, Cuomo issued a directive that initially barred nursing homes from refusing to accept patients who had tested positive for COVID-19. The directive was meant to free up beds for overwhelmed hospitals, but more than 9,000 recovering coronavirus patients were ultimately released from hospitals into nursing homes under the directive, which was later rescinded amid speculation that it had accelerated outbreaks.
Subsequently, a report released in March 2022 by the New York state comptroller found Cuomo's Health Department "was not transparent in its reporting of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes" and it "understated the number of deaths at nursing homes by as much as 50%" during some points of the pandemic. New York Attorney General Letitia James similarly released a report amid the pandemic showing New York state nursing home deaths had been undercounted.
