12 October 2021: Cuomo's Defense Strategy for COVID Nursing Home Deaths Scandals

Shine a light: Cuomo’s nursing-home defense document goes public

The editorial board of the New York Daily News have broken a big story this morning, uncovering the legal strategy Andrew M. Cuomo's attorneys are using to defend him from criminal charges associated with his administration's COVID nursing home deaths scandals.

In her letter to the Assembly Judiciary Committee Friday, Andrew Cuomo’s lawyer Rita Glavin asked for a thorough, independent examination of all allegations against her client and not just a rehash of the attorney general’s report on sexual harassment complaints. Fair is fair, and we agree with her seeking access to evidence, including the AG’s transcripts, which the panel has but otherwise remains secret.

Glavin’s final point in her 10-page letter is that the Judiciary Committee “properly consider and make public the written submission by outside counsel to the Executive Chamber” on COVID nursing home death data. She’s referring there to the document produced by Elkan Abramowitz, a private attorney retained by the Cuomo administration at hefty taxpayer expense, which makes the case that Brooklyn federal prosecutors are barking up the wrong tree as they consider criminal charges.

Today, we do our part in the name of transparency — and publish the 62-page brief. (Readers of the print newspaper should find this editorial on our website.)

At this point, we need to point you to editorial (archived version here) because we cannot embed the document.

Here is the editors' analysis of the memo's contents:

Abramowitz doesn’t make the case that Cuomo’s withholding of data on nursing home deaths was wise or honorable — it quite obviously wasn’t — only that the administration broke no federal laws when it stalled requests for information from the Legislature and the Empire Center for Public Policy and otherwise fuzzed up the facts.

While we don’t know what the feds may have, in general, Abramowitz makes a credible argument, that, based on the letter of the law and precedents including Bridgegate, criminal charges would be a heavy lift. At the same time, he makes claims that don’t hold water, such that Albany has sufficient oversight itself.

On 5 May 2021, Andrew M. Cuomo defended his COVID nursing home policies as "smart" in responding to questions about the administration's cover-up of the full extent of COVID deaths that resulted from its deadly 25 March 2020 directive. His defense attorneys aren't making the case to back that claim either.