Sunday, June 06, 2021

6 June 2021: FBI Focusing on Cuomo Nursing Home Deaths Cover-up

Nursing home mortality remains focus of FBI's Cuomo probe

The Albany Times-Union's Brendan J. Lyons has a long article getting into what exactly the FBI is investigating. He leads with a description of how the Cuomo administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive was drafted, which is new information:

Fifteen months ago, New York was becoming deluged with coronavirus cases when state health department officials received an urgent late-night call from a top administrator at a Newburgh hospital. He informed them a van had just dropped off more than 15 nursing home residents who had tested positive for COVID-19, and if more followed it could create a critical shortage of beds.

Although none of the nursing home residents clinically required hospitalization, the scene was not unique. Other nursing facility operators were also beginning to move COVID-positive residents to hospitals out of fear they could spread the illness in the assisted-living facilities.

That same month, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had been publicly declaring that New York would not be able to maintain enough hospital beds for coronavirus patients if infection rates continued to climb. Inside the governor's office, that March 2020 phone call from an official at Montefiore St. Luke's hospital in Newburgh prompted the administration to craft a hastily prepared memo that directed nursing homes to allow residents afflicted with COVID-19 to remain in or return to those facilities, even if they were being discharged from hospitals while still testing positive.

After reviewing how the Cuomo administration sought to present itself in its presentation of COVID deaths data, including in Governor Cuomo's pandemic book project, Lyons turns to the Cuomo administration's collection and reporting of COVID death data from nursing homes, which it blocked from being reported to state legislators and the public, which appears to have become a primary focus of the FBI's investigation:

Now, roughly six months into a federal criminal investigation of Cuomo's administration that is being steered by the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn, many of the investigative interviews have focused on why the administration — under the direction of top members of the governor's task force — had begun "stockpiling" information on people who were presumed to have died of COVID-19 in nursing homes. At one point last year, the number of unreported deaths in that category rose into the hundreds, a person briefed on the investigation said.

In early May 2020, the hiccups in the state health department's reporting of nursing home deaths were also revealed when more than 1,600 "presumed" deaths were suddenly added to the state's nursing home fatalities dashboard overnight on a Sunday. That increase in deaths attributed to COVID-19 pushed the number of New York nursing home deaths to more than 4,800 — a figure that would eventually top 15,000.

The federal investigation is focused in part on current and former health department officials who were involved in the data gathering and reporting of the nursing home fatalities — and what they were directed to do by top Cuomo aides. According to interviews with people familiar with the probe, it also is examining the administration's reporting of COVID-19 deaths to the CDC; alleged efforts to list nursing home fatalities as hospital deaths; and whether data on nursing home fatalities were deliberately withheld or delayed.

The report also provides an overview of the history of the U.S. DOJ's investigation, giving this summary of the personnel changes over time and an indication of what resources the DOJ has committed to the investigation:

The Cuomo administration had initially attributed the inquiry to Justice Department officials with political ties to administration of President Donald J. Trump. But the investigation by the U.S. attorney's office in the Eastern District of New York has continued even after Mark J. Lesko was appointed acting U.S. attorney in Brooklyn in March by the administration of President Joe Biden; Lesko succeeded Seth DuCharme, who had been appointed U.S. attorney in that district last summer by Attorney General William Barr.

That transition has not derailed the federal investigation and, notably, the Eastern District is continuing to devote several FBI agents, assistant U.S. attorneys and investigators with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to the probe. Given those resources, people familiar with federal investigations and with knowledge of the case said they do not believe politics are influencing the direction of the case.

Overall, the report presents a lot of background information that we haven't seen summarized in a single account elsewhere, including more information than we've excerpted here. If you have the time, we recommend reading the whole thing.

The article refers to a number of events that are documented in greater detail within the timeline:

-