The U.S. Department of Justice sent letters out on 22 July 2021 confirming it will not investigate excess COVID deaths among nursing home residents in Pennsylvania and Michigan, despite both states adopting policies similar to New York Cuomo administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive. Here are the headlines and brief excerpts:
- Justice Department says it won’t investigate how Pa. handled nursing homes during pandemic
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The Justice Department told Gov. Tom Wolf’s office on Thursday that it has decided not to open an investigation into whether Pennsylvania violated federal law by ordering nursing homes to accept residents who had been treated for COVID-19 in a hospital.
The letter comes 11 months after the agency told the governors of Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey and New York that it wanted information to determine whether orders there “may have resulted in the deaths of thousands of elderly nursing home residents.”
- Department of Justice not opening probe of Michigan nursing homes
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The U.S. Department of Justice says it's not opening a civil rights investigation into Michigan nursing homes after requesting information from the state last yearamid intense scrutiny during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In August, when former President Donald Trump's administration was still in office, the federal department requested data from Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as it examined executive orders for nursing homes issued in some states led by Democrats.
The Department of Justice joins Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel in declining to probe the policies on which Republicans have focused attacks. While GOP lawmakers have pressed to uncover more information about how the orders impacted the virus' spread among a vulnerable population, the lack of law enforcement inquiries hinders their efforts.
The termination of the DOJ's civil rights probes in these states may be viewed as a partisan initiative by the Biden administration, which has actively sought to avoid continuing the investigations initiated during the Trump administration. President Biden has appointed a number of officials who oversaw the implementation of these states' policies to federal positions, where continuing the investigations would risk their removal from their appointments because of the ensuing scandals.
The report covering Pennsylvania had two additional bits of information regarding similar DOJ probes in New York and New Jersey:
It was not clear Thursday whether New Jersey or New York received letters.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s office did not immediately respond to requests, while Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s spokesperson Richard Azzopardi said he was checking to see if the administration had received such a letter.
At this writing, there is still no indication that the DOJ has delivered similar communications to officials in these states. We'll see what happens, but we think it is likely the newly politicized DOJ will drop its civil rights probes in these states as well, for the same political reasons. We think the DOJ is unlikely to drop its other probes of the Cuomo administration however, since they involve violations of additional federal criminal statutes.
