28 March 2021: Editorial - Available Evidence Is Sufficient to Impeach Cuomo Now

Assembly has enough Cuomo scandals to impeach the governor now (Editorial)

The Assembly could have — should have — drafted articles of impeachment weeks ago with the considerable evidence it has at hand. By choosing to throw the investigation to the Judiciary Committee, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie squandered considerable momentum in Albany for holding the governor accountable for his alleged abuses of power....

The fact-finding process by the Judiciary Committee’s hired-gun Albany law firm is an unnecessary delaying tactic. The Assembly could start impeachment proceedings today with the public admissions from the governor’s staff that they obscured the number of nursing home deaths from Covid-19, including an episode where they scrubbed a report of numbers that made their boss look bad. Then, Cuomo’s “vaccine czar” called county executives to gauge their political support, walking right up to the ethical line of trading vaccine allocations for loyalty. Now, the Albany Times-Union reports that Cuomo’s family and associates got special access to state Covid testing at a time such tests weren’t available to the general public....

There are other problems with Judiciary’s probe. It will not be transparent. Meetings and testimony will happen behind closed doors. There is no deadline for completion, though Lavine said to expect it to take months, not weeks. Outside counsel Davis, Polk & Wardwell is under fire for a perceived conflict of interest; a former partner is married to Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, whom Cuomo appointed. The Judiciary Committee is stacked with lawyers, yet they outsource the investigation to insulate themselves from the governor’s wrath.

It's looking more and more like the New York Assembly's impeachment probe of Governor Cuomo is designed to prevent Governor Cuomo from being impeached. "Sham" might be the right word to describe it.