30 June 2021: NY Assembly Impeachment Lawyers to Get Subpoena Power

Assembly to issue subpoenas coming in Cuomo impeachment probe

The attorneys conducting New York Assembly's impeachment probe got a boost by gaining the authority to issue subpoenas to compel testimony:

The lawmaker in charge of the impeachment probe into Gov. Cuomo announced Wednesday that the Assembly Judiciary Committee will be issuing subpoenas as it investigates allegations of sexual harassment against the governor and other scandals.

Assemblyman Charles Lavine (D-Nassau) also said that the independent law firm conducting the investigation will be allowed to “act as a commission,” meaning lawyers will have the ability to take “testimony from witnesses under oath.”

The firm, Davis Polk, has so far collected more than 100,000 pages of records, including emails, transcripts, texts, letters, contracts and other documents, and is seeking more information to corroborate existing evidence, Lavine said during a brief public update.

No word emerged on how long it might be before the Assembly's bottomless, endless impeachment probe might produce any findings.

30 June 2021: NY Assembly Collects 100,000 Pages of Documents

Lawmakers probing Cuomo amass trove of 100,000 documents

The New York Assembly's committee investigating Governor Cuomo's multiple scandals revealed it hit a magic number in probe:

New York lawmakers considering whether to impeach Gov. Andrew Cuomo have collected more than 100,000 pages of documents, including emails, texts, letter documents, photographs, contracts and transcripts.

A law firm working for the Assembly’s Judiciary Committee, which is probing accusations of sexual harassment and malfeasance, continues to gather “substantive evidence,” Chairman Charles Lavine said in a Wednesday meeting before entering executive session.

“I am very pleased with the continued progress of the investigation,” Lavine said. “The purpose of this process is to both gather substantive evidence, as well as to assess the credibility and corroborate information learned during interviews.”

100,000 pages sounds like it may be a lot, but is it really? The question now is what will they do with the documents they've gathered? Other than use them for PR purposes by claiming they've amassed 100,000 pages of documents?

30 June 2021: Governor Cuomo Feasts at Dinner with Big Donors

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Raises More Than $1 Million at First Fundraiser Since Investigations

Who wants to pay for play with scandal-plagued Governor Cuomo?

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo drew more than 150 guests to a $10,000-a-head campaign fundraiser Tuesday night, his first since the launch of state and federal investigations into sexual-harassment accusations against him and into his administration’s handling of the coronavirus at nursing homes.

Democratic Party officials, labor leaders, lobbyists and real-estate developers gathered at a space in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center, where Mr. Cuomo didn’t mention the probes during his remarks but warned of the rising power of socialist Democrats, attendees said.

The soiree was expected to raise more than $1 million for Mr. Cuomo’s re-election campaign, a haul that will be reflected in a campaign disclosure report due in July, two people familiar with the event said. In January, Mr. Cuomo reported $16.8 million in his campaign war chest.

Some attendees described the fundraiser as a show of political force as the Democratic governor prepares to campaign for a possible run at a fourth term in 2022.

Spokespeople for Mr. Cuomo declined to comment and the governor didn’t answer questions from a reporter as he entered the event through a loading dock. The governor said last year that he planned to seek a fourth term.

Getting re-elected and remaining in power presents Governor Cuomo with the best possibility of avoiding criminal liability in his multiple scandals. Then again, how much power does one have when they have to avoid using the main entrances of buildings where they might be confronted by people seeking answers to questions Governor Cuomo does not want to risk having to answer?

This report covers events that occurred on 29 June 2021.

30 June 2021: COVID in a NY State-Run Nursing Home

Piles of PPE Left to Rot Outside State-Run Queens Nursing Home

This report describes the current day problem of an abundance of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) at a state-run nursing home for veterans, the New York State Veterans' Home at St. Albans. It also provides background information from when it experienced shortages of PPE during the coronavirus pandemic, describing how the facility was operated during the period the Cuomo administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect. The following excerpts focus on that period:

Over a year ago, supply shortages at the height of the coronavirus epidemic were so acute that three nurses in a Manhattan hospital were forced to don garbage bags in lieu of medical gowns to protect themselves.

Staffers at the St. Albans veterans facility recall experiencing similar desperation at the time, when nursing homes were particularly hard-hit by the virus.

“When we needed the PPE we couldn’t even get it,” said one employee. “Now it’s being wasted.”

The facility is operated by New York's State Department of Health (NYDOH), which prioritized providing PPE to hospitals in early 2020. The next excerpt describes how care at the facility was provided and how the Cuomo administration's undercounting of COVID deaths among its residents was exposed:

As THE CITY has previously reported, staffers sounded the alarm in May 2020 that the state-run facility wasn’t properly isolating residents with presumed or even confirmed COVID, and kept them in shared rooms with a roommate not known to be ill.

The facility also failed to assign dedicated staffers to treat the residents known or presumed to have coronavirus — even though the state Department of Health required such separation in facilities with confirmed COVID cases to limit the potential spread of virus by staff.

Just before Memorial Day last year, staffers provided THE CITY with a list of the residents who had died of COVID-19, in an act of defiance intended to call attention to the state’s undercounting of deaths of veterans at the home.

The list identified 48 residents who died, at a time when state officials were acknowledging at most 35 coronavirus-related deaths.

Since the St. Albans nursing home is operated by NYDOH, it reflects how the Cuomo administration's disastrous COVID policies for nursing homes were implemented in a facility over which it had direct control. It's a microcosm of Governor Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals.

29 June 2021: NY Assembly Probe Won't Talk to Cuomo Security Detail

Troopers not interviewed in Cuomo's impeachment investigation

The law firm investigating Governor Cuomo's alleged offences for the New York Assembly's impeachment probe isn't doing much investigating when it involves talking to members of Governor Cuomo's personal security detail.

The law firm retained by the state Assembly to conduct an impeachment investigation of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has declined to interview numerous current and former state troopers who have worked on the detail that protects the governor and may have information about the culture and practices in the administration dating back years.

The troopers who have not been interviewed include high-ranking former members who worked for the State Police's Protective Services Unit and were close to the governor through their work, which included protecting him and his staff at the Capitol, the Executive Mansion in Albany, and residences where Cuomo has lived during his three terms in office.

The Times Union first reported June 11 that current and former troopers assigned to the elite unit were being interviewed by the state attorney general's office, which is probing sexual harassment and groping allegations that multiple women have been made against Cuomo. Those troopers said the attorney general's office contacted them several months ago, and some of the interviews led the investigators to contact additional State Police members.

But some of the same troopers interviewed for that story this week confirmed that the Assembly's investigative team, headed by the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, had declined to interview them despite being contacted about three months ago. At least one of those former troopers said he provided leads to the Assembly's investigators about members who were in the protective unit and might have information about the women's allegations or other purported misconduct.

You would think the investigators might want to follow up on those leads. The article cites an anonymous member of the New York Senate Judiciary Committee, who indicates the Davis-Polk law firm's investigators may be seeking the power to subpoena the troopers to compel their testimony. The committee will meet on 30 June 2021 where that topic is expected to be raised in a closed session.

We'll see what comes out from that.

29 June 2021: Allegations of Cuomo Sexual Harassment at HUD

Transcript: Mississippi native Karen Hinton discusses her storied political career

In the late 1990s, Andrew M. Cuomo served in the U.S. government as a member of President Bill Clinton's cabinet, specifically as the U.S. Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, from 1997 through 2000. Karen Hinton shared the following story during an interview with Mississippi Today's Bobby Harrison:

I’ve known him since 1995 and have had a on and off again type of work relationship with him. Literally as well as personally because he and I did not always get along, and we had disagreements, but you know, like most people you work with in that way, you try to figure out ways to work through the problem.

And he and I did, especially after I married a man who was good friends with him and his father, Mario Cuomo so I really had a reason to try to always have a good relationship as I could with him even though he and I often would disagree on paths to follow when I was his press secretary at HUD, but nonetheless I did have some issues with him.

And later on, several women came out publicly in New York and said that he had sexually harassed, sexually abused them when they worked for him when he was governor and the governor’s office. I was just taken aback by that, because I definitely have seen the same pattern of that behavior when he was at HUD.

It wasn’t as extreme as it has been in New York, but it was problematic for me as well as many other women I knew who worked at HUD. And I decided after I heard one woman in particular, talk about how he propositioned her in his office. She is very young. She’s 26, 25 years old. He is now my age. He’s 62, 63.

I was just appalled at that. And after all this time and all the things that I had been through, I just decided to tell my story as well so I gave an interview with the Washington Post about a moment where he had made a sexual overture to me long ago in 2000.

Later, she confirms she was interviewed by investigators from the New York Attorney General's office, where the following passage begins with her answer to the question of whether she feels confident the investigation will be thorough and produce results:

I do. They interviewed me, the investigators. And she does have private investigators who are taking this, who are handling the investigation. They’ve talked to me as well as many of the other women who have worked in the governor’s office, and they seem to me like you’re taking it very seriously. And so I have confidence that they will issue a report that will take these women seriously and won’t pass this up as confusion or as Andrew Cuomo has said, “misinterpretation of what he said, it was good intentions on his part, they just didn’t understand what he meant.”

I mean, and these harassment cases and sexual abuse cases, the perpetrator always comes up with another version of reality. And they twist things around in such a way so it makes a woman appear to be a liar or to be, you know, confused or incapable of understanding what was happening.

So that really has to stop and these women have to be taken seriously. And my incident happened so long ago because it was in 2000, you know, two decades ago. And because it happened in California, not in New York is not that relevant to them, but I think they were interested in my observation on the pattern over time.

So we’ll see. We’ll see what happens when they issue their report.

For more background into Hinton's allegations, here's her Washington Post interview from 6 March 2021. We haven't focused much on Hinton's allegations, but here's where she has appeared in the timeline:

• 6 March 2021: Team Cuomo Members Social Distancing Themselves from Governor Cuomo
• 16 March 2021: Peculiar Timing, Silences Involving Cuomo Sexual Harassment Allegations Raises Questions

28 June 2021: Opinion - Cuomo "Must Be Held Accountable"

Commentary: Cuomo must be held accountable for COVID choices

Tracey Alvino believes she lost her father as a direct consequence of the Cuomo administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive. In this op-ed, she calls for Governor Cuomo to be held accountable for the deaths that resulted:

Cuomo ordered 9,000 COVID-positive patients into nursing homes all over New York, an order that led to thousands of preventable deaths. My dad, Danny Alvino, was one of them. He might be an inconvenient number that was omitted from a report so Cuomo could nab a lucrative book deal, but to my family, he was everything and we are irrevocably broken.

More than 53,000 New Yorkers have died of COVID and we may never know the true number of deaths that were caused by the governor’s mishandling of the virus in nursing homes. Estimates are that over 15,000 senior citizens lost their lives due to contracting the virus in long-term care facilities. Celebrating the “end” of pandemic restrictions in the wake of so much death is callous.

She's concerned New York's political establishment will not hold the Governor accountable for the deaths of so many seniors from COVID in the state's nursing homes. What makes this op-ed stand out however is her call for the resignation of two State Senate Judiciary committee members for engaging in ethically suspect conduct that raises questions of their integrity:

Will Cuomo be held accountable for his fatally flawed directives and his attempt to cover up the truth about the nursing home tragedy? I’m increasingly skeptical after learning that two members on the Assembly Judiciary Committee — which is handling the Cuomo impeachment inquiry — recently dined with him at the Executive Mansion.

While the topic may have been infrastructure in Western New York, it was wholly inappropriate for Assembly members Monica P. Wallace and Karen McMahon to socialize with the governor while serving on a committee charged with investigating multiple accusations against him. It calls into question the integrity of the impeachment inquiry, and it’s a breach of trust for those of us seeking justice, leaving us to doubt whether our concerns will be heard or whether the inquiry will be fair and impartial. These Assembly members must resign their Judiciary Committee seats to bring the appearance of integrity back to the investigation.

Related coverage from the timeline:

• 1 June 2021: NY Dem Senators Enjoy Normalizing Nosh With Cuomo

27 June 2021: Opinion - Cuomo's "Crimes Against Humanity"

The Audacity of False Hope

Bill Asher's opinion piece addresses both Andrew M. Cuomo's pandemic "leadership" book and Anthony Fauci's upcoming 80-page book offering the ethically-troubled researcher's pandemic lessons. Here's the introduction:

War memoirs may be written for posterity or profit, or read as retroactive prophecies of victory at sea or evacuation by sea, of a battle for the survival of Christian civilization or a crusade for the good of Christians and Jews. But no record of final victory goes to print until victory is won. No memoir goes on sale in the midst of war, during the fog of war, by a wartime politician—except a book of lies, for the good of a political party, by a politician whose tenure is a study in failure.

But only Andrew Cuomo has the gall to play Caesar without the conquests of the worst or last Caesar, or the eloquence of Julius Caesar’s commentaries on Gaul. Only a politician among doctors can succeed Cuomo’s lies with a decalogue of his own. Only Dr. Anthony Fauci’s forthcoming book, Expect the Unexpected: Ten Lessons on Truth, Service, and the Way Forward, can match the audacity of Cuomo’s novel, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From the Covid-19 Pandemic.

The former is 80 pages, though Fauci has time to wax libelous and add to his catalog of misdeeds before the book’s release on November 2, while the latter is a work by a promoter of the blood libel. The latter bears the name of the governor who bore false witness against a specific people, who chose to rule more like the fifth governor of a Roman province than the 56th governor of the Empire State; who continues to rule 20 million people in spite of 53,923 deaths.

Memorializing this incompetence is necessary and just, so survivors may seek justice. Advertising this incompetence is wrong, however, just as paying Cuomo over $5 million for his memoir is criminal. His crimes may go unpunished, but historians must not acquit him of crimes against humanity.

How else to describe the sudden and deliberate transfer of 9,056 COVID patients from hospitals to nursing homes? How else to describe Cuomo’s indifference about where the old died, when he said “Who cares [if they] died in the hospital, died in a nursing home? They died.” How else to describe his order in the first place, when nursing homes were not his choice of last resort?

Indeed.

26 June 2021: Previous Cuomo Donors Withholding Support

Some Donors Sticking With Cuomo After Harassment Allegations

The authors of the headline for this media report metaphorically tried to put lipstick on a pig, but it never-the-less confirms Governor Cuomo's reduced political support within New York:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo's political star was dimmed by allegations he sexually harassed women and misled the public about COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes.

But will that hurt him with campaign donors?

Some of the Democrat's most reliable political contributors — including unions, wealthy executives and Democratic Party officials — say they still plan to give money to his expected campaign for a fourth term in office.

The key word in this passage is "some". In terms of communicating numbers, it ranks below "all", "most" and "at least half", which are the descriptions of the amount of donor support that should be expected for a well-established figure in New York's statewide politics.

The article is also interesting in that it focuses on donors who benefit from some degree of "pay-for-play" scenarios. Each stands to gain in areas over which Governor Cuomo exercises influence, including one who Governor Cuomo appointed to a paid patronage job at the Port Authority.

They also point to the importance of the upcoming findings from the various state and federal investigations of the Cuomo administration's multiple scandals, which may affect whether their support continues.

25 June 2021: New York Lifts State of Emergency for Coronavirus Pandemic

Cuomo formally lifts state of emergency, but some rules remain

This report marks the end of New York's state of emergency for the coronavirus pandemic. The state of emergency was originally set in place on 7 March 2020, marking the beginning of the events tracked in the timeline.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Friday formally lifted the order he issued in March of last year, declaring a "state of emergency" in New York due to COVID-19.

He also lifted the last vestiges of quarantine requirements for visitors to New York from other countries.

But that doesn't mean all the rules the state issued during the pandemic are gone.

The state is still imposing numerous rules on larger indoor event venues, public transit, homeless shelters, prisons, nursing homes and health care settings, and of particular interest, schools.

In these areas, the state will continue to closely adhere to guidance offered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while some other states have chosen not to in many areas, including schools.

This timeline entry was retro-actively posted on 26 June 2021.

25 June 2021: Cuomo's Chief PR Flack Questioned by Sexual Harassment Investigators

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Aide Questioned in Sexual Harassment Investigation

This report provides an indication of the progress of the New York state attorney general's investigation into Governor Cuomo's multiple sexual harassment allegations. The aide being questioned is Cuomo loyalist Richard Azzopardi, who was recently promoted to replace Governor Cuomo's former communications director Peter Ajemian.

Investigators with the New York state attorney general’s office have interviewed a senior adviser to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and are examining the environment in the governor’s office going back more than a decade, according to people familiar with the matter.

Investigators spoke recently with Rich Azzopardi, a senior adviser who is one of the governor’s principal spokespeople, the people said. He is the highest-ranking current aide to Mr. Cuomo known to have been interviewed as part of the investigation into sexual-harassment allegations against the governor overseen by Attorney General Letitia James.

People familiar with the probe said they expected the governor’s senior aides, including Mr. Azzopardi, to be among the last questioned in the probe, which was launched in March....

It couldn’t be determined which subjects or which time frame investigators focused on with Mr. Azzopardi. When asked about the investigation, he said in a statement, “As the AG’s office has said, disclosing testimony is a misdemeanor.” Mr. Azzopardi said the administration was respecting the process and expected other people to do so as well.

The senior adviser was one of several people close to Mr. Cuomo who had contacted former staffers in the administration in December after Lindsey Boylan, a former economic development official, accused the governor of sexual harassment.

Investigators are looking at the calls as part of their investigation, people familiar with the matter have said. Some of the women who received calls said they viewed them as a form of intimidation.

Mr. Azzopardi has said the calls were simply meant as an outreach to check in on former colleagues.

Azzopardi has a checkered history in serving as a mouthpiece for Andrew M. Cuomo.

24 June 2021: New Laws Set NY Hospital and Nursing Home Staffing Levels

Two New Laws Guard Against Understaffing At NY Hospitals And Nursing Homes

This report provides some analysis for New York's new laws setting minimum staffing levels at hospitals and nursing homes.

The hospital measure signed by Cuomo takes a substantially different approach than the one that unions originally proposed, giving medical centers more flexibility. Instead of state officials setting universal requirements for all hospitals, the new law requires each hospital to set up its own committee of frontline staff and administrators to determine appropriate staffing levels for each unit.

Hospitals must submit their staffing plans to the state by July 1st and implement them by January 1st. The state Department of Health will then be responsible for ensuring that each hospital adheres to its own staffing plan.

“The Department of Health is going to police and regulate those plans to make sure they are implemented and to penalize any violations,” Cuomo said at the press conference.

While that law has the support of both labor groups and the Greater New York Hospital Association, the law governing nursing homes is less flexible and more controversial.

The nursing home law says every facility must hire enough staff to provide each patient with 3.5 hours of daily care, on average. About a third of that care must come from nurses, and aides can provide the rest. Nursing home groups argued the legislation would be too costly to implement, while consumer advocacy groups said it didn’t go far enough to ensure adequate staffing and care.

During the coronavirus pandemic, a significant difference developed between for-profit and non-profit nursing homes with respect to residents who died from COVID, which appears directly related to their staffing levels, which did not affect the number but did influence where they died. For-profit nursing homes tend to have lower levels of staffing, where one in three residents who died from COVID in these facilities were sent to hospitals. That compares with one in four residents at non-profit nursing home facilities. This outcome suggests the the level of available staff plays a role in determining where nursing home residents receive health care when their medical conditions become more serious.

The COVID death data suggests New York's new laws for nursing homes would not have affected the fatality rate from COVID in nursing homes had they been in place before the pandemic. What they seem designed to do instead is to minimize the number of nursing home residents from being transferred to hospitals because of staffing level-related considerations.

23 June 2021: Should Nursing Homes Be Sued for Wrongful COVID Deaths in State or Federal Court?

Nursing Homes Fight Orders Sending Covid Death Suits to States

This report covers the legal question of which courts, state or federal, are the appropriate venues to consider COVID-19 related wrongful death cases. Legal arguments will begin today before the U.S. Third Circuit.

The Third Circuit Wednesday will become the first federal appeals court to hear oral arguments on whether state-law Covid 19-related wrongful death suits against nursing homes belong in state or federal court.

Similar appeals are pending in the Second, Fifth, Ninth, Eleventh, and District of Columbia circuits from federal district court opinions rejecting nursing homes’ arguments that the federal officer removal law gave them authority to hear the cases.

All but one of those courts also rejected arguments that the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act completely preempts state law in this area.

That issue probably will go to the U.S. Supreme Court, no matter which side wins, said Lori Semlies, head of the long-term care practice team at Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP, a national insurance defense firm.

In the case, the legal team representing nursing home operators will argue all these cases should be brought before federal courts, claiming they became extensions of federal agencies during the coronavirus pandemic.

That argument would seem to dismiss the role of state oversight and regulatory agencies, which had greater sway over the environment in which nursing homes in different states operated. We think that's particularly true in states that followed the Cuomo administration's policy of forcing nursing homes to admit patients known to have COVID-19 infections after they were discharged from hospitals seeking to free up the bed space they occupied. Four states adopted and sustained such a policy, including New York, New Jersey, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. California did as well, but rescinded it within a matter of days, which allowed it to avoid many of the deadly consequences.

Here's related coverage from the timeline:

• 25 March 2020: A Deadly Directive Is Issued
• 29 April 2020: COVID-Infected Staff Allowed to Work at NY Nursing Homes
• 18 March 2021: NY Nursing Homes "More Petrified" of NY DOH Than COVID
• 29 March 2021: NY DOH Director Howard Zucker and Cuomo Defender Beth Garvey Get Nasty on Call with Nursing Homes

The latter two entries from the timeline would appear to provide evidence that directly contradicts the argument being advanced by the nursing home operators seeking refuge in federal court. Nursing home operators very much remained under the thumb of state regulators.

22 June 2021: New York in the Bigger Picture for Nursing Home Deaths

Watchdog: Nursing home deaths up 32% in 2020 amid pandemic

This Associated Press report covers the extent of deaths among nursing home residents across the United States.

Deaths among Medicare patients in nursing homes soared by 32% last year, with two devastating spikes eight months apart, a government watchdog reported Tuesday in the most comprehensive look yet at the ravages of COVID-19 among its most vulnerable victims.

The report from the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services found that about 4 in 10 Medicare recipients in nursing homes had or likely had COVID-19 in 2020, and that deaths overall jumped by 169,291 from the previous year, before the coronavirus appeared.

“We knew this was going to be bad, but I don't think even those of us who work in this area thought it was going to be this bad,” said Harvard health policy professor David Grabowski, a nationally recognized expert on long-term care, who reviewed the report for The Associated Press.

New York accounts for 6.1% of the senior (Age 65 or older) population in the United States. The New York State Bar Association's report on the COVID deaths among the state's nursing home residents tallied 13,208 COVID deaths.

The total rises above 15,000 when COVID deaths of elderly residents of other types of assisted care facilities are included, but the lower number is specific to nursing home residents and would align with the figure reported for nursing home resident deaths nationally. The COVID deaths of New York's nursing home residents would account for 7.8% of the national total of all excess deaths in this study, considerably higher than New York's share of the senior population.

New York was the deadliest state for seniors during the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. The Cuomo administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive helped it achieve its worst-in-the-nation status for this measure.

21 June 2021: What Did Dr. Fauci Say to Governor Cuomo?

Peter and Daniel Arbeeny: We are COVID orphans. Here are 12 Qs for Dr. Fauci on Cuomo's nursing home moves

This op-ed by Daniel and Peter Arbeeny, whose father died of COVID-19 in Brooklyn after being discharged from a nursing home where he had been exposed to the coronavirus, picks up on one of Governor Cuomo's claims that he talked with U.S. COVID czar, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Our 89-year-old father, Norman Arbeeny, a lifelong Brooklynite, died at his home from COVID-19 on April 21, 2020, after contracting the virus at a nursing home.

Ever since his passing, we – his proud sons – have been on a quest to seek the truth about Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s now infamous March 25, 2020, nursing home advisory. Through that advisory, the governor sent 9,000 COVID-positive hospital patients into nursing homes, where they infected vulnerable residents and staff.

Cuomo has publicly stated that Dr. Anthony Fauci and he conferred on this matter during the early months of the pandemic. Curious to learn whether Fauci had endorsed the governor’s nursing home policy, we submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to uncover any potential written correspondence between Fauci and Cuomo or any of his staff.

HHS promptly replied that no such correspondence exists – or between Fauci and anyone from New York state government – in the early months of the pandemic. Now that Fauci’s emails are public, it is shocking that he never discussed public health policy via email with any governmental official in the ground zero state for the COVID-19 pandemic in America.

That's not to say no discussion between Governor Cuomo and Dr. Fauci ever took place, which is the point of several of the questions the Arbeeny brothers go on to raise in this op-ed. Many of the questions are of the sort that will be raised in upcoming legal proceedings, the answers to which are likely to raise additional questions. Follow the link above to the article to see what the Arbeeny's are seeking Dr. Fauci to answer.

20 June 2021: Governor Cuomo = Sergeant Schultz?

Eric Adams is our shot to restore order in NYC: Goodwin

With much of the Cuomo scandals past the "new allegations" phase and now well into the "legal development" phase, the pace of news out of Cuomoland has slowed dramatically. Still, we're seeing references to Governor Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals pop up in interesting places, such as this aside in an opinion piece that mainly argues in favor of Eric Adams becoming the next mayor of New York City:

Scandals show Cuo’s good for ‘nothing’

“Cuomo’s Inner Circle Raised Money for Aide Who Was Convicted of Bribery.”

That’s a New York Times headline about how Gov. Cuomo’s associates and sister Madeline raised money to help Joseph Percoco, convicted of taking $300,000 in bribes from firms with business before state authorities.

Cuomo claimed he knew nothing, nothing about helping Percoco, whom he once called a brother. Earlier, he said he knew nothing, nothing about how his family got preferential COVID testing. Still earlier, he said he knew nothing, nothing about the state’s deadly order forcing nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients.

Who knew New York elected Sgt. Schultz?

Since younger readers might not be up on who Sergeant Schultz is, here's a short video introduction featuring the 1960s-era comedy character's signature catch phrase:

Sgt. Schultz was portrayed by John Banner, who gave the catch phrase a life that has extended decades beyond his performance.

On a final note, periods of relative quiet like this in the news cycle may lead us to provide updates on Andrew M. Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals on a less-than-daily basis. To keep up with the timeline as new information is added, please do follow us by e-mail via the form in the right hand margin or track us via our RSS news feed on your preferred news reader.

19 June 2021: Deeper Inside the NYS Bar Association Task Force's Report

Cuomo administration directive led to nursing home deaths, report argues

This article provides additional bits of information that have not been widely reported on the findings of the New York State Bar Association's task force's recent findings. The following excerpt picks up on things that will not be surprising to our readers, but are nice to have laid out and summarized in a more succinct form than we've provided.

The New York Post, which first reported the findings of the Bar Association's 16-member task force, also reported that last Saturday, the report was adopted by 93 percent the NYSBA’s House of Delegates in a vote consisting of about 200 members.

The Department of Health directive, issued March 25, 2020, stated that nursing homes, as long as they could properly care for a person, could not deny re-admission or admission solely on the basis of a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.

Many nursing homes took the directive to mean that they were required to accept COVID-positive patients coming from a strained hospital system. And critics would soon contend the policy led to rampant infection within highly vulnerable populations.

The directive also barred nursing homes from requiring a previously hospitalized person who was determined to be medically stable from being tested prior to admission. The Bar Association report found that although a “determination of the number of additional nursing home deaths is beyond the capacity of the Task Force, there are credible reviews that suggest that the directive, for the approximately six weeks that it was in effect, did lead to some number of additional deaths.”

Specifically, the Bar Association pointed to the February findings of the Empire Center for Public Policy, a fiscally conservative Albany think tank, that found that COVID-positive admissions were responsible for nursing home deaths, ranging from “several hundred" to "possibly more than 1,000.”

“The Department of Health issued a report in 2020 in which it argued unconvincingly that the admission of 6,326 COVID-positive residents during the period the Health directive was in effect had no impact,” wrote the Bar Association task force. “That cannot be the case, and has now been shown not to be the case.”

The article also picks up on things we haven't covered in the timeline:

But the Bar Association added that the directive was not necessarily issued in error: In March 2020, the state believed that it was in need of thousands of additional hospital beds, with intensive care units filling up, as the virus hit New York first and hardest in the United States. The hospital system appeared overwhelmed and in danger of collapse, so “difficult decisions were being made.”

There were other factors cited in the report for nursing home deaths: an insufficient federal response to the pandemic, including its failure to marshal enough personal protective equipment, to gain information from China about the virus, or to make testing available.

“At the time, seeing nursing home beds as a hospital extender when hospital beds were not expected to be available was not an unreasonable decision,” the report found.

We think that particular view is subject to debate, because the Cuomo administration had viable options it could have pursued before implementing its deadly 25 March 2020 directive. Regardless, the task force's findings make very clear what it regards as unreasonable in the policy and its implementation:

Yet what was unreasonable, the report found, was the Cuomo administration’s failure to recognize that nursing homes needed just as much help as general hospitals. Nursing homes were given little assistance securing personal protective equipment, and the report noted that during an April 2020 press conference, Cuomo “roundly criticized” suggestions that nursing homes should have been aided further.

The Bar Association also found the “absoluteness” of the directive unreasonable, noting that the language disallowing the denial of medically stable patients. The directive was “commonly read” by nursing homes to mean they had to accept COVID-positive patients, regardless of another regulation stating homes should only accept patients they could properly care for. ,/p>

“The directive came at a time when regulations were routinely being overridden,” the report noted.

The report stated that it was unreasonable for the Cuomo administration to leave the directive in place for weeks after it was necessary. Emergency hospital beds set up at the Javits Center in New York City were barely used, the report noted, and the USNS Comfort, which was to be used for similar purposes, set sail for New York on April 23, 2020. The Navy hospital ship's beds also sat empty, the report noted.

Yet the Cuomo administration directive, meant to alleviate stained hospital capacity, remained in effect until May 10, 2020.

“The March 25th directive could have been rescinded on or about the date the Comfort set sail, if not sooner,” the report noted.

In this section, the article errs in identifying the timing of the USNS Comfort's arrival in New York City. The hospital ship arrived on 30 March 2020 and began accepting patients on 6 April 2020. The ship departed from New York on 30 April 2020, having only accommodated 182 patients during the two weeks patients were admitted on board. The ship has a regular 500 bed capacity and the ability to rapidly expand to 1,000 beds, most of which went unused.

We would suggest the 25 March 2020 directive could have been rescinded before 21 April 2020, which is the date the last patient was admitted onto the USNS Comfort. We say it could have been rescinded even earlier than that because the temporary New York City's Javits Center hospital facility was similarly underutilized and could easily have taken in all of the patients the USNS Comfort took on board during the period from 6 April 2020 through 21 April 2020.

Under the circumstances that existed and were known to the Cuomo administration and the New York Department of Health, we think it is unreasonable for the 25 March 2020 directive to have been sustained for any period of time after 6 April 2020 under the NYS Bar Association's task force's logic. Given their available options, they could have chosen to avoid implementing it for longer as well, which we think fails the test of reasonableness for it to have been implemented at all.

If it had never been implemented, Governor Andrew Cuomo would have become an undisputed hero in the coronavirus pandemic. But he did and he tried to cover up the deadly impact of his administration's deadly directive, which exposed he is anything but heroic.

18 June 2021: Inside the NYS Bar Association Task Force's Report

NYS Bar Association report: Plenty of shared blame for COVID-19 nursing home deaths

This report provides additional coverage of the New York State Bar Association's task force's findings on the impact of the Cuomo administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive on nursing home residents. The following excerpt presents task force member John Dalli's comments

An attorney, Dalli specializes in personal injury and medical malpractice litigation. He said one of the key findings of the 200-plus page report was the governor's March 25, 2020 directive requiring nursing homes to admit COVID-19 patients regardless of whether they were still positive and if that contributed to the death toll in those facilities and if keeping it in place for roughly six weeks was a mistake.

"It led to a disaster,” Dalli said. “They should have realized it within two weeks. They didn't. It went on too long and there's no doubt in my mind it lead to additional deaths that certainly contributed to that 15,000-plus number."

But Dalli said there's shared blame between the governor, the Department of Health and the nursing home operators who should have been aware the directive did not supersede public health law preventing them from admitting patients for whom they didn't have the ability to provide adequate care.

"Basically, if they're going to take the money to care for them, they're making a promise that they can for them properly and keep them safe and the governor and the Department of Health were operating under that assumption when they issued the March 25 directive,” said Dalli.

At the same time, the report points out the state failed to utilize resources from the federal government like beds at the U.S.S. Comfort and the Javits Center that could have been used for nursing home patients with COVID-19.

It also concludes the state made another key mistake.

"I think the immunity that he granted nursing home owners from civil liability and lawsuits, which was fortunately revoked in April of this year, that was certainly a mistake because it disincentivized nursing home owners from having the proper staffing and providing the adequate care," Dalli said.

Before we continue, we should note the lobbying group representing both New York hospitals and nursing home operators absolutely recognized what would happen as a result of the Cuomo administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive. After it went into effect, the lobby went into overdrive to secure legal immunity from COVID deaths they reasonably expected to occur from it before any deaths attributable to it were recorded. They obtained Governor Cuomo's pledge to provide them with legal immunity on 2 April 2020, who made sure it was inserted on Page 347 of an emergency budget bill New York's legislature approved in the early hours of the morning on the following day.

Governor Cuomo was well aware the impact would be negative, as confirmed by his public comments on 29 March 2021. His description of COVID and nursing homes as a "toxic mix" several days before the deal was struck almost certainly reflects the discussions he and his staff were having with the hospital and nursing home lobbyists behind the scenes.

Our working theory of the case suggests the deal was struck when Governor Cuomo agreed to provide New York hospitals and nursing homes with legal immunity from COVID deaths in return for their effective silence on deaths resulting from the deadly 25 March 2021 directive. In that respect, we think the 2 April 2020 deal marks the beginning of the Cuomo administration's cover-up of the full extent of COVID deaths among nursing home residents, which continued until Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa acknowledged the cover-up with Democratic Party legislators on 10 February 2021. That latter event became known to the public on 11 February 2021, which ultimately triggered a federal criminal investigation.

18 June 2021: NY GOP Chairman Calls Assembly Impeachment Probe a "Sham"

GOP chairman blasts ‘sham’ Cuomo impeachment probe

It seems we're not the only ones describing the New York Assembly's impeachment probe as a "sham". New York State Republican Party Chairman Nick Langworthy levied that charge on 17 June 2021. Here are the relevant excerpts from this report:

State Republican Party Chairman Nick Langworthy sharply criticized state lawmakers Thursday for ending legislative session without voting to remove Gov. Andrew Cuomo from office, and calling the Legislature's impeachment probe into the governor "a sham"....

Dozens of legislators have spoken out against Cuomo or called for his resignation since March. The state GOP chair said the Legislature has the votes to remove the governor [from] office.

"What they lack is the courage to call the question," Langworthy added. "They lack the integrity to actually bring articles of impeachment to the floor. It's a sham of a so-called investigation."

The report also covers the Republican party's efforts to remove mask mandates on school children and to strip Governor Cuomo's emergency COVID powers, which look to outlast the COVID pandemic in New York.

Cuomo's Emergency Powers Outlasting COVID Emergency

This report emphasizes Langworthy's comments related to the Governor Cuomo's continuing emergency powers:

“He can’t cancel every restriction and then still hold on to this power,” Langworthy said. “That’s just not fair.”

The first article expands the context for Langworthy's comments:

Langworthy on Thursday echoed the Republican leaders' sentiments, saying all remaining COVID-19 rules and restrictions in the state should be removed - especially the state of emergency, which continues the governor's broadened spending and executive powers.

We need to strip that power immediately," Langworthy said.

Those emergency powers could also be stripped through impeachment. At least they could be, if the New York legislature's impeachment probe wasn't being run in a way that naturally leads outside observers to keep describing it as a sham. That term was first linked to the Assembly's probe by Lindsey Boylan, a Democratic party candidate for Manhattan Borough President and the first woman to come forward to accuse Governor Cuomo of sexual harassment, back on 18 March 2021.

17 June 2021: Opinion - Cuomo's Fictional Victory

Churchill: Andrew Cuomo has little to celebrate

After taking apart several claims Andrew M. Cuomo made during his "COVID Victory" speech, columnist Chris Churchill gets to the meat of the New York governor's COVID failures:

The governor was terribly wrong, which is OK. Nobody should expect that politicians won't make mistakes, especially when confronting a terror as unique and complex as the coronavirus. But now, with the benefit of hindsight, a little honesty about what happened doesn't seem too much to expect.

Instead, Cuomo spins a fictional, self-congratulatory narrative positing that New York is a coronavirus success story. It isn't.

More than 53,000 New Yorkers have died from COVID-19. That's easily the highest number of any state and only New Jersey has a higher per-capita rate. In a worldwide context, just a handful of countries (Peru, Hungary and Bosnia among them) have worse COVID-19 death rates.

Many of New York's COVID-19 deaths occurred among residents of nursing homes, and this week the New York State Bar Association issued a report finding that a controversial directive issued by the Cuomo administration contributed to the death toll and should have ended sooner.

But Cuomo has never conceded that forcing nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients was a mistake. Instead, he waged a long and disgraceful effort to hide the full number of nursing home deaths. It's a cover-up that the FBI and U.S. attorney's office are investigating.

Churchill also finds a reason for Cuomo's "victory" speech:

It did, however, give a scandal-plagued governor one more chance to play the hero. It allowed him to distract attention from all the ongoing investigations, the possibility of impeachment — and also the news, broken by The New York Times, that Cuomo's inner circle continues to raise money for Joe Percoco, the disgraced gubernatorial pal.

In 2018, Joseph Percoco was convicted of soliciting over $315,000 in bribes in exchange for providing official favors from New York's state government during the periods he served as Executive Deputy Secretary to Governor Cuomo from 2012 to 2015. Cuomo's inner circle's continuing efforts to raise funds to benefit Percoco is a clear indication they don't believe the rule of law should apply to one of their own. Call it 'Il Privilegio del Cuomo'.

It would also help explain quite a lot of Governor Cuomo's conduct since all his scandals began coming to light.

17 June 2021: NY Dem Senators Enjoy Normalizing Nosh With Cuomo

Assembly Judiciary Committee members dine with Cuomo as they consider impeachment

It's behavior like what's described in this report that gives people the impression the New York legislature's impeachment probe is a total sham:

Four months ago, the state Assembly launched an impeachment inquiry into Gov. Andrews Cuomo’s conduct. He faces numerous allegations of sexual harassment, and stands accused of covering up the true number of deaths in nursing homes from COVID-19 in order to sell his memoir, published last year.

Right now, the Assembly's Judiciary Committee is conducting the investigation along with an outside law firm, and it will make a recommendation to the full Assembly when it’s findings are complete.

But earlier this month, two members of the Judiciary Committee dined with Cuomo at the Executive Mansion in Albany, the governor’s private residence, drawing criticism from Republicans.

“Do you think the U.S. Attorney would have dinner with someone he was prosecuting?" Nick Langworthy, the state Republican chairman, said. "These are two legal professionals that work in the court, and who I believe have prosecutorial experience. They know right from wrong. But they got invited to the mansion. And they got starstruck by the governor.”

The two members of the Judiciary Committee are Monica Wallace and Karen McMahon, both of whom are Democrats representing western New York. Langworthy has called on them to step down from the committee.

For what it's worth, neither Stirpe nor Magnarelli are among the legislators who have called for Governor Cuomo to resign.

The dinner took place on 1 June 2021, while this report confirming the dinner was published on 16 June 2021. We've added a "nearly" duplicate entry to the timeline for 1 June 2021 in case it turns out to be relevant in explaining upcoming events, considering Stirpe's and Magnarelli's roles on the New York State Senate's Judiciary Committee.

16 June 2021: NYS Bar Association: Cuomo Directive Contributed to COVID Nursing Home Deaths

Cuomo nursing home order did cause more deaths, should’ve been reversed sooner: task force

A 16 member task force assembled by the New York State Bar Association has determined the Cuomo administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive expanded the death toll from COVID among New York nursing home residents. The directive forced nursing homes to admit COVID patients being discharged from hospitals to free up hospital bed space without any testing to determine if they were still contagious.

Here's the introduction to an article well worth clicking through to read the whole thing:

The controversial directive for New York nursing homes to admit COVID-19 patients increased the death toll among residents — and Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s claims otherwise have been disproven, according to a New York State Bar Association report exclusively obtained by The Post.

The 242-page report by the NYSBA’s Task Force on Nursing Homes and Long-Term Care also blasts Cuomo for not reversing the Department of Health’s “unreasonable” mandate sooner than he did, saying it remained in effect weeks longer than necessary.

“Although a determination of the number of additional nursing home deaths is beyond the capacity of the Task Force, there are credible reviews that suggest that the directive, for the approximately six weeks that it was in effect, did lead to some number of additional deaths,” the report says.

The non-partisan Empire Center for Public Policy estimated the number of excess COVID deaths resulting from the Cuomo administration's deadly directive could exceed 1,000.

The article also contains this reaction from Assemblyman Ron Kim:

Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens) said Tuesday that he suspected the NYSBA report would be “the beginning of many other reports that will come to prove the deadly impact of the March 25 order.”

“The window of being truthful and asking for forgiveness is gone,” said Kim, whose uncle died in a Queens nursing home after suffering symptoms of COVID-19.

“I think there was a small window early on where they could have admitted their mistake and asked for forgiveness but now they have tripled down on their lies amid cover-ups, where if they admit the truth, they admit to acting criminally.”

The task force's 242 page report became public after Governor Cuomo celebrated lifting New York's COVID lockdown restrictions on 15 June 2021 without ever acknowledging New York experienced any COVID deaths.

15 June 2021: Cuomo Ignores COVID Deaths While Celebrating Lifting Lockdown

Cuomo has COVID’s over rally — without mention of 50K-plus who died on his watch

Governor Cuomo continues his tone-deaf distraction campaign:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo used a campaign-style rally that included a stage announcer and handing out plaques to union leaders to announce the lifting of New York’s coronavirus restrictions Tuesday — while conspicuously making no mention of the state’s estimated 50,000-plus deaths from the disease on his watch.

Cuomo’s victory-style speech — delivered in a loud and exuberant manner — glossed over the personal devastation wrought by the pandemic, even as he compared it to the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

And while the three-term Democrat never urged New Yorkers to remember those killed by COVID-19 — including about 15,000 nursing home residents, some of who may have died because of an administration directive — he choked up while noting that Tuesday was also the birthday of his late father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo, who died of heart failure at age 82 in 2016.

The reactions to Cuomo's announcement by his critics were harsh:

Cuomo’s performance struck a sour note with Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens), a fierce critic whose uncle died in a nursing home after suffering symptoms of COVID-19.

“I think many of us warned that if we don’t remove him from his position of power that he would milk every ounce of policy for his own gain — and we’re seeing that in real-time,” Kim said midway through Cuomo’s speech.

“It’s what we’ve seen over the past couple weeks, him traveling around the state using public resources to promote his image and his brand.”...

Kim also noted that the labor leaders who appeared with Cuomo “don’t have a choice, because if they don’t show up, it might impact their members and the governor might do something.”

Vivian Rivera-Zayas, who is the plaintiff in a lawsuit seeking to pierce Governor Cuomo's gift of legal immunity for COVID deaths at her mother's nursing home, picked up on his attempt to connect the pandemic to the September 11 terrorist attacks:

“We need a 9/11 commission to find the truth about what happened in nursing homes,” she said.

Somehow, Governor Cuomo and his PR team thought today's attempt at declaring victory against COVID was a good idea.

15 June 2021: Legal Arguments For and Against Retroactive COVID Legal Immunity for Nursing Homes

NY Hospital Lobby Slams COVID-19 Nursing Home Death Suit

This report from Law 360 provides greater detail on the amicus brief filed by two of New York's hospital and nursing home operators lobbies oppositing a lawsuit filed against a nursing home by the family of COVID victim Ana Martinez. The lobbies include the Greater New York Hospital Association and the Healthcare Association of New York State. The plaintiff's lawsuit was filed by Martinez' daughter, Vivian Rivera-Zayas. The Our Lady of Consolation nursing home is the defendant in the suit.

The hospital groups on Friday said the April repeal of the Emergency or Disaster Treatment Protection Act, which had largely immunized health care providers from criminal and civil liability since its passage in March 2020, should not apply retroactively and should shield Our Lady of Consolation from Rivera-Zayas' suit.

The liability shield had given broad immunity to hospitals, nursing homes, physicians and nurses except in cases of willful, reckless or criminal misconduct or gross negligence.

The groups said finding the repeal of the law to apply retroactively would have "far-ranging consequences, including potentially inhibiting the state's response to future pandemics and mass-casualty events."

"It would signal to health care workers that the New York State Legislature and government cannot be trusted," the groups said in the brief.

"The story of the EDTPA, with its partial repeal only a few months after enactment and its total repeal one year later — before the declared emergency is even over — already runs that risk," they added. "This court should not deem the Legislature to have offered safe harbor to frontline workers and care facilities during the toughest of times, only to retroactively repeal that protection in a flurry of hindsight once the emergency began to abate."

Rivera-Zayas' attorney was ready with a counterargument:

An attorney for Rivera-Zayas, Justin Varughese, told Law360 on Monday that the repeal applies retroactively because New York lawmakers have already determined that immunity was improperly granted given Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration's alleged undercounting of nursing home deaths.

In January, New York Attorney General Letitia James said health officials reported 6,645 nursing home deaths as of Nov. 16, when in reality those figures had been undercounted by as much as half.

"Many legislators acknowledged that they issued immunity initially under false pretenses (i.e. they didn't know the volume of the deaths due to inaccurate reporting), and they would not have issued the immunity if they had been aware of the actual statistics," Varughese said via email. "In addition, the attorney general issued a scathing report finding, amongst other things, that the liability protections may have incentivized nursing home executives to cut corners, putting both patients and frontline workers in danger."

We've previously identified Governor Cuomo's 2 April 2020 gift of legal immunity to a joint association of hospital and nursing home operators as marking the effective beginning of the Cuomo administration's cover-up of the full extent of COVID deaths among New York nursing home residents resulting from its deadly 25 March 2020 directive, which now is the subject of both state and federal criminal and civil investigations. Rivera-Zayas' lawsuit argues it is also a contributing factor to excessive COVID deaths in New York's nursing homes.

14 June 2021: Leftist NY Lawmakers Exploit Scandal-Weakened Cuomo for Gain

With Cuomo Weakened, N.Y. Lawmakers end Sesson With Flex of Power

This report describes how Andrew M. Cuomo has gone from a strong to a weak governor with reduced influence over laws made in New York's legislature.

Lawmakers clashed with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo over his 11th-hour proposal to restructure the leadership of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, one of Mr. Cuomo’s most important priorities. Democrats in the State Senate had reached a tentative agreement with Mr. Cuomo on the matter, but, in a surprise twist, the deal unraveled late on Thursday, and the Senate gaveled out of session without passing the governor’s measure.

The fallout was the latest indication of how Mr. Cuomo’s political power has diminished since his administration was buffeted by scandals, investigations and calls for his resignation from members of his own party. Earlier this year, the Legislature, where Democrats now enjoy a majority large enough to override a governor’s veto, scaled back Mr. Cuomo’s emergency powers and passed policies that the governor long opposed in the state budget.

“What I see in the past year, and to some extent it’s a result of the scandals that have dogged the governor, is that the legislative branch is becoming way more assertive in a way I haven’t seen in 20 years,” said Blair Horner, a longtime Albany lobbyist. “With the supermajorities in both houses, I feel like the Legislature has decided to stop getting pushed over by the executive.”

Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, was largely absent from the end-of-session negotiations, seemingly more focused on projecting an image of normalcy in the face of several sexual harassment allegations and scrutiny over his handling of nursing home deaths during the pandemic. Last week, he used news conferences in Manhattan and the opening of the Tribeca Festival to continue to herald the state’s economic reopening.

The governor may have also been trying avoid unnecessary altercations with lawmakers, who could move to impeach him.

And yet, many of the same lawmakers allowed Governor Cuomo to pick judges who would participate on the jury of his impeachment trial if they decide to go forward with it. If they think it is to their advantage to allow the current situation continue, why would they ever stop the gravy train by impeaching Cuomo?

14 June 2021: NY Hospitals and Nursing Homes Fight to Keep Legal Immunity from COVID Deaths

Hospital lobby moves to kill COVID suit seeking to hold nursing home liable

The powerful politcal lobbies for hospitals and nursing home operators, who scored immunity from penalties for COVID deaths from Governor Cuomo during the period when the Cuomo administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect, are fighting to preserve their legal privilege.

New York’s powerful hospital groups have taken steps to get a federal COVID-19 lawsuit against a Long Island nursing home tossed — calling it a potentially precedent-setting case that could have damaging, “far-ranging consequences” for the industry.

The Greater New York Hospital Association and NYS Health Care Association filed papers in Brooklyn federal court on Friday challenging the suit brought by Vivian Zayas, whose mom died of coronavirus last year following her stay at Our Lady of Consolation.

Zayas, who sued last August, is seeking to hold the West Islip nursing home liable in her mom’s death, saying it failed to take adequate preventative measures to keep the killer bug from spreading.

“They know my case could open the door for victims seeking accountability. We need to protect the residents, not the bottom line of these facilities,” Zayas said.

Without the immunity deal, it is certain the lobbies for nursing home operators would have been extremely vocal about the COVID patients being dumped out of New York hospitals to free up bed space that resulted from the Cuomo administration's deadly directive. We think the political price for their silence was legal immunity for COVID deaths, which means the 2 April 2020 deal marks the beginning of the Cuomo administration's acknowledged cover-up.

They're not going to give that privilege up without a fight.

Here is previous coverage on this topic from the timeline:

• 2 April 2020: Hospital Lobby Scores Legal Immunity from COVID Deaths
• 3 March 2021: How Cuomo's Gift of COVID Legal Immunity to Nursing Homes Became Fatal Mistake
• 9 April 2021: Governor Cuomo Forced to Sign Repeal of COVID Legal Immunity
• 14 April 2021: "An Overlooked Wrinkle"
• 15 April 2021: Ron Kim on Holding Nursing Homes Accountable and the Origins of Governor Cuomo's Cover-up
• 3 June 2021: A Legal Test of New York's Reformed COVID Immunity Law for Nursing Homes
• 5 June 2021: Analysis - A Lawyer Describes What's at Stake in a COVID Nursing Home Death Liability Suit

13 June 2021: New Cuomo-Appointed Judges May Sit on Impeachment Jury

Gov. Andrew Cuomo Scores Victory With Judicial Confirmations

Jury packing is "the practice or an instance of illegally or corruptly influencing a jury by making available for jury service persons known to be biased or partial in a particular case to be tried".

With that definition in mind, questions are being raised about Governor Cuomo's newest appointees to New York's Court of Appeals, which is the highest court in the state.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been weighed down for months by investigations into his alleged misconduct, leaving him largely removed from the fast-paced deal-making that typically marks the end of the state Legislature’s annual session.

But he notched a key win in the session’s final days last week when the state Senate confirmed his picks to fill two vacancies on the state’s highest court—both of whom would sit as jurors in a possible impeachment trial.

Mr. Cuomo is the subject of New York’s first impeachment investigation in more than a century. Democrats who dominate the state Assembly began an inquiry three months ago to look at accusations that the governor sexually harassed current and former aides and to examine his administration’s Covid-19 policies in nursing homes, the production of his memoir and how he granted priority access to coronavirus testing to close associates, including his brother.

It's almost as if the members of the majority party in New York's state senate aren't all that serious about Governor Cuomo's potential impeachment.

Related stories from the timeline:

• 22 April 2021: NY Senate Majority Leader Under Fire for "Normalizing" Cuomo

13 June 2021: Opinion - What Will Cuomo's Next Act Be?

Cuomo's future is unknown

Albany Times-Union columnist Fred LeBrun sees a very limited political future for Andrew M. Cuomo.

With a big bucks fundraiser set for Gotham at the end of the month, speculation has it that in spite of ongoing serious investigations against him that might deter a lesser politician, Andrew Cuomo is preparing to run for a fourth term as governor.

Sure, that’s what he wants.

Stark reality is he has very little choice. The din over how well he ran New York’s early pandemic response and how terrific he was as a national leadership role model died off long ago. We did not know the whole story at the time. Nor, actually, did he, which made the pandemic a case study in what not to do in the middle of a crisis, i.e., write a book about how it’s going to turn out. But, oh, the promise of aspirations that emerged out of those daily televised COVID-19 briefings. He had his own presidential fan club.

Not anymore. There’s nothing for him in Washington even in his old friend Joe’s administration, at any level. Andrew is toxic. While the possible outcomes of the several ongoing investigations by the state attorney general and the federal Eastern District of New York against him on an arc range from exoneration to criminal charges, even the stuff on the benign end he’s admitted to and defended in his treatment of women is bad enough to disqualify him nationally.

LeBrun concludes that even a fourth term run for New York governor would be limited by whatever findings emerge from the multiple state and federal investigations now underway.

On a side note, one name we're not seeing in any speculation for who should be considered a viable alternative to Governor Cuomo is New York's current lieutenant governor, the second highest-ranking elected official in New York's state government, Kathy Hochul. How much of an empty suit must she be for her name to not even be seriously raised as a potential contender to challenge Andrew Cuomo on the ballot?

13 June 2021: Opinion - "Mediocre" Cuomo Fails New York

Mediocre Men Have Failed New York

This opinion piece by Alexis Grenell appeared in The Nation. If the name sounds vaguely familiar, she the former Cuomo aide who raked Governor Cuomo's character over the coals back on 27 November 2020.

New York state Senator Alessandra Biaggi recently said something that so completely encapsulated American patriarchy at this moment, it should be tattooed on every woman’s exhausted face: “We’ve got to move on past talking about the bad behavior of below-average men.”

Doing so is made eminently more difficult when they refuse to get out of the way, lining up instead like testosterone-addled lemmings to compete in the pathetic pissing match that now passes for our elections. In this case, I’m talking about the current field of candidates for governor of New York. That includes the incumbent, Andrew Cuomo, who’s resisted calls to resign while arming himself with no fewer than four taxpayer-funded law firms to defend against an equal number of investigations. Every week seems to bring some fresh outburst. Whether he’s undermining the integrity of the New York attorney general’s investigation of a sitting governor despite the fact that he did the same when he held that role (“I’m not telling anyone to have faith in [the results of the investigation]”); contradicting part of the state’s definition of sexual harassment that he himself signed into law (“harassment is not making someone feel uncomfortable”); or slapping down a reporter’s question about the ethics of profiting off a pandemic to the tune of a $5 million book advance (“that’s stupid”), the whole thing is one yawning display of entitlement. Former governor Eliot Spitzer at least knew when to get off the stage, perhaps because he had some sense of shame and a family business that wasn’t politics to fall back on. Cuomo, it seems, can’t do anything else, so why not stick around even if it’s a raging embarrassment for you and everyone else?

After deviating to discuss Republican candidates she would never support, the opinion piece turns to discuss Letitia "Tish" James role in the Cuomo scandal investigations and potential political future.

Which brings us to the current attorney general, Letitia James. Although she was Cuomo’s preferred replacement for Schneiderman, he’s recently started attacking her as too politically motivated to properly investigate him. After the comptroller made a referral allowing James to investigate whether the governor had misused public resources to write his book, a spokesman bellowed back: “This is Albany politics at its worst—both the comptroller and the attorney general have spoken to people about running for governor and it is unethical to wield criminal referral authority to further political self-interest.”

There’s no indication that James is doing anything other than her actual job. Indeed, Cuomo himself was an attorney general with designs on running for governor when he investigated then Governor Spitzer. And it’s very hard to imagine a Black woman getting away with soliciting underlings for sex, lying about Covid nursing home deaths, cashing in on her crimes, and refusing to resign after nearly the entire New York congressional delegation, both of the state’s US senators, and the majority leader of the state Senate called for her to do so. Should James decide to run, she’d be a serious political threat, considering that Cuomo needs her base—the disproportionately Black and female voters in New York City—to win another term.

At this point, Governor Cuomo's chief PR flack has been the leading proponent of a James run for New York's governorship. As a politician however, James has other options. She could, for instance, choose to endorse another candidate for governor, which would also limit Cuomo's ability to access "her base" as described by Grenell.

Whatever she decides, her voice will have greater influence after her office completes its investigation of Cuomo's alleged ethical liabilities. We view the calls to draft James to run for higher office as both premature and self-defeating. No one should have the ambition of becoming the next Andrew Cuomo by copying his route to New York's governor's mansion.

12 June 2021: When Will CNN Fix Its Cuomo Integrity Problem?

What Is a Fireable Offense at CNN?

This media analysis piece asks questions that CNN's editors and managers would appear either incapable or unwilling to answer:

What if one of your top stars helps his powerful brother cover up a botched COVID response by obsequiously kibbitzing around with him during the outbreak of the deadliest pandemic in a century rather than asking useful questions, as Chris Cuomo did with his brother, New York governor Andrew Cuomo? What if Andrew sends the New York Department of Health out to Chris’s posh Southampton home to give his family special treatment even as he refuses to cover the fact that New York is sending the elderly into death traps? Nope?

What if Chris stages a fake coronavirus quarantine-emergence video for his gullible audience — even after receiving special treatment from the New York Department of Health and ignoring the nursing home deaths? And what if he participates in a communications-strategy call to help his powerful brother deal with the litany of sexual-harassment claims made against him even as the story is being covered by your network?

We're going to speculate that one possible reason CNN's problems have been allowed to fester over the past year is because its parent corporation, AT&T, has been working on a merger of its WarnerMedia division with Discovery.

AT&T owns CNN, HBO and Warner Bros. after it acquired Time Warner, since renamed to WarnerMedia. Discovery’s channels include Animal Planet, TLC and the Discovery Channel.

Zaslav said on the press call Monday that he believes the combined company will be able to differentiate itself from top streaming services like Disney+ and Netflix by offering a combination of news and sports on top of its entertainment properties like “Game of Thrones” and Harry Potter.

Zaslav also expressed confidence in CNN, which some had speculated would be spun off from WarnerMedia. Zaslav said Monday his new company plans to keep CNN with the intention “to take everything we have in news, combine it with CNN and be a world leader in news.”

But the merger requires federal approval, which may take a year or more. That delay will prevent Zaslav, who will be oversee CNN among the other media properties, from being able to directly implement the housecleaning CNN needs.

There's nothing stopping CNN's managers and editors from taking those desperately needed steps itself before then. If they don't, the more they risk becoming redundant in what will almost certainly become a thorough top-to-bottom housecleaning driven by their failure to restore CNN's journalistic integrity by the time the new boss arrives.

Unless they want to become the next Huffington Post.