31 January 2022: Oswego County DA Drops Cuomo Sexual Harassment Case, Says "Not an Exoneration"

DA drops Andrew Cuomo’s last sexual harassment criminal case

The last county district attorney investigating Andrew M. Cuomo's sexual harassment of an alleged victim in their county has decided against prosecuting Cuomo. Oswego County DA Gregory Oakes however has made a different version of the statements of other county DAs who have investigated Cuomo, who described the witnesses and alleged victims charging Cuomo with misconduct as "credible". The following excerpt features the Oswego DA's variation on that theme:

An upstate district attorney’s office is dropping its criminal investigation of sexual harassment allegations against Andrew Cuomo — shutting down the last of five criminal cases involving the disgraced ex-governor.

But Oswego DA Gregory Oakes told The Post on Monday that while there’s not “sufficient legal basis” to bring charges based on allegations of unwanted physical contact by accuser Virginia Limmiatis, “this decision is not an exoneration.”

“After a thorough review of the available evidence and applicable law, the Oswego County District Attorney’s Office has concluded that there is not a sufficient legal basis to bring criminal charges against former Governor Andrew Cuomo based upon the allegations of unwanted physical contact made by Virginia Limmiatis,” Oakes said in a statement Monday.

“To be clear, this decision is based solely upon an assessment of the law and whether the People can establish a legally sufficient case under controlling precedent. In no way should this decision be interpreted as casting doubt upon the character or credibility of Ms. Limmiatis, or how harmful the acts she experienced were,” he added.

Oakes told The Post in a phone interview that he’s worked special victims cases for 20 years and believes Limmiatis’ description of events.

The Oswego DA's decision to not proceed with criminal charges against Cuomo marks the end of this particular aspect of Andrew M. Cuomo's multiple scandals. With respect to the various sexual harassment allegations that led to Andrew M. Cuomo's resignation as New York governor in disgrace, the next legal phase will begin when civil litigation cases seeking damages against Cuomo are filed by his alleged victims in various county courts in New York state.

31 January 2022: Baseline for Connecticut COVID Nursing Home Deaths

On 6 January 2022, Connecticut's top public health official Manisha Juthani issued guidance requesting nursing homes accept COVID-positive patients from Connecticut hospitals to free up their bed space. While similar to Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive, the Lamont adminstration's guidance differs in not forcing Connecticut's nursing homes to admit these potentially contagious patients into their facilities, which like New York, house those most at risk of death if exposed to the variants of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.

Connecticut reports COVID data related to nursing homes on a two-week cycle. The following report is from Friday, 21 January 2022, which would cover the period from when the Lamont administration's guidance was first issued. We're presenting this report because it provides information about the levels and trends for both COVID cases and deaths at Connecticut nursing homes.

CT Nursing Home COVID Infections and Deaths Are On The Rise

Let's go straight to an excerpt from the report:

Among the general and otherwise healthy population of Connecticut, coronavirus-related hospitalizations and infections continue to decline. It's a different story inside nursing homes.

In the latest report from the Connecticut Department of Public Health, the number of cases among nursing home residents have nearly doubled from 829 to 1,616 in the past two weeks. Deaths have more than quadrupled, from 13 to 53, in the same period.

But when it comes to vaccine booster shots, the facilities haven't kept pace, according to the governor. Less than 80 percent of the residents have received their third shot, Lamont said, and only around a third have been boostered. That, despite an executive order signed by the governor in January mandating the third jab.

On Wednesday, Lamont issued another order, requiring all nursing home visitors to either show proof that they have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or have recently tested negative for the virus in order to enter the facilities, beginning Saturday.

We find the numbers to be rather stunning.

What is not known at this time is how many COVID-positive patients might have been transferred from Connecticut hospitals to nursing homes during this period. It's quite possible the answer to that question is zero, and if that's the case, the state's data for COVID nursing home cases and deaths confirms how incredibly bad these facilities are at containing the spread of coronavirus infections. That information would put the Lamont administration's guidance into a different light which, in our view, could constitute flat-out medical malpractice.

But what is the answer to the question of how many COVID-positive patients were transferred from hospitals to Connecticut nursing homes in each day since the Lamont administration's bizarre guidance was issued?

30 January 2022: Editorial - Investigation needed: State DOH head doesn’t want to review nursing home scandal

Editorial — Investigation needed: State DOH head doesn’t want to review nursing home scandal

The editors of Batavia's Daily News have noticed that replacement NY Governor Kathy Hochul's pick to lead New York's Department of Health, Mary Bassett, is strangely uninterested in learning any lessons about the spread of COVID in New York's nursing homes during the period Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive. The following excerpt picks up on a key point from Bassett's confirmation hearing in New York's state senate.

Oddly, she claimed to have never read the March 25, 2020, memo from the state DOH. Bassett also said that she had no intention of looking backward.

“I decided when I took up this post that I wasn’t going to try and unravel what had happened in the nursing homes under the previous commissioner,” she said, WXXI reported. “But simply look forward.”

This was an alarming admission by the woman seeking to lead this vital agency. Compounding the problem with this directive was the fact that the state Legislature approved a bill to offer immunity to heath care and nursing facilities for treatment provided to patients during the pandemic.

This struck many as a heavy handed, backroom deal. The administration of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo put the squeeze on nursing homes to admit patients who had suffered from COVID-19, and they enjoyed legal protection from civil and criminal actions if other residents became sick and died as a result.

It’s imperative that we find out how these policies came to be drafted and implemented. We need to know who approved them and how to prevent outside pressure from adversely influencing public health procedures.

Bassett must agree to a thorough investigation of this scandal. It includes a revelation by the office of state Attorney General Letitia James that authorities misreported the number of nursing home residents who died due to COVID-19.

Bassett said that as a doctor, she would not follow a directive like this. But Dr. Howard Zucker, her predecessor, also is a doctor and took the same oath to do no harm. Yet he went along with this disastrous plan.

Such a probe wouldn’t merely assist Bassett in heading the state DOH. It would benefit all of us.

It’s essential that we know how our government operates and when those in charge make serious errors. We will only discover this if officials conduct an in-depth scrutiny of what happened in this case. Then we as constituents and voters can make informed choices.

Bassett's strange lack of interest represents an abdication of responsibility on her part. It can also be construed as a tacit admission she believes the public health officials who played roles in developing, implementing, and enforcing the Cuomo administration's deadly directive are guilty of grave misconduct for which they should face legal consequences. After all, investigating what happened would mean finding out how extensive their misconduct was. As a leader, if she learned all that about the people she now supervises and did nothing about it, as seems to be her plan, she would become a complicit accessory to a crime after the fact.

Does that seem like a more plausible explanation for her weird lack of interest as a leader than what she's claims?

29 January 2022: Slowing News Cycle for Cuomo's COVID Nursing Home Deaths Scandals

Regular readers have almost certainly noticed it, but news about Andrew M. Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals slowed to a crawl during the past week. Which is to say those stories are now being paced entirely by legal developments and by political activity. We'll continue following those stories as they progress, but we anticipate the timeline may have extended periods without daily updates.

We're also continuing to follow related stories in the other states whose governors chose to copy and sustain policies similar to Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive, which we're afraid may now include Connecticut in 2022. the timeline will present some analysis for that state in the near future.

27 January 2022: JCOPE Subpoena Probes Cuomo Pandemic 'Volunteers'

Subpoena probes Cuomo's pandemic 'volunteers'

Since Andrew M. Cuomo left power, New York's Joint Commission on Public Ethics has become more interested in abuses of power that occurred by members of his administration, contrasting with the troubled ethics oversight commission previous lack of such interest. This report indicates JCOPE will investigate the individuals whom Cuomo put into positions of authority while exempting them from scrutiny under the state's public officers law by declaring them to be 'volunteers'. Here's the introduction to the report, summarizing JCOPE's action and interest:

On Tuesday, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics passed a motion to issue the informational subpoena concerning the activities of volunteers in assisting Cuomo's COVID-19 pandemic response, according to the commissioner who made the motion.

While unpaid by New York’s government, some of the volunteers – such as one-time top Cuomo aide Larry Schwartz – held crucial roles in Cuomo’s response to the crisis.

Schwartz served as the state’s “vaccine czar,” leading efforts to distribute vaccines to the state’s population, while continuing in his day job as chief strategy officer at OTG Management, an airport concessions company that has extensive interests before state government.

Under executive orders issued near the pandemic’s outset in 2020, Cuomo exempted COVID-19 volunteers from rules normally requiring state employees requiring them to file financial disclosures, intended to ban them from receiving valuable gifts from people seeking state business, and other ethics provisions. (Schwartz did have to file an annual financial disclosure as a board member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.)

JCOPE Commissioner Gary Lavine said that under his motion made on Tuesday, the subpoena would seek a list of people who were deemed “volunteers” and were exempted from the state Public Officers law; all volunteers for whom a conflict of interest had been expressly indicated, including with the individuals' normal, private sector work duties; and any arrangements that had been made for dealing with those conflicts.

The Albany Times Union's report indicates the newspaper has previously attempted to acquire the information JCOPE is now seeking back in 2020 through a Freedom of Information Law request, but were stonewalled by the Cuomo administration. With the administration of replacement NY Governor Kathy Hochul increasingly willing to turn a blind eye toward wrongdoing by state officials under Cuomo during the pandemic, its response to JCOPE's new subpoena will give a measure of how interested it is in probing members of Cuomo's still-existing political crony network within the state government.

26 January 2022: Cuomo Crony Exits from Cushy Patronage Job

Cuomo Crony Larry Schwartz Departs MTA Board

The Metropolitan Transit Agency (MTA) is maybe best described as a patronage scandal wrapped up as a transportation agency. That's why its no surprise back in 2015 when Andrew M. Cuomo appointed his crony, Lawrence Schwartz to the MTA's board. It was an extremely cushy assignment with a large paycheck for a loyal ally, who had preceded Melissa DeRosa in serving as Secretary to the Governor.

It was more surprising when Cuomo appointed Schwartz to be his COVID vaccine czar in New York. Less surprising was when he used his role to determine how much political support Cuomo had among the state's county executives after the COVID nursing home deaths scandals broke and as Cuomo started to face allegations of sexual harassment advanced by multiple women, which came with the implication of the counties' access to COVID vaccines being conditioned on their political support for Cuomo. Touched by Cuomo's scandals, Schwartz resigned as vaccine czar shortly after Cuomo's resignation took place.

This report confirms that Schwartz has now resigned from his cushy seat on MTA's board, marking the latest departure for a close Cuomo crony from a position to which they were appointed by Cuomo.

One of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s controversial top advisors has finally quit the MTA board.

Larry Schwartz officially resigned from the transit board on Dec. 31, after announcing his imminent departure in October, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office said Tuesday....

The longtime Cuomo confidante was mentioned 29 times in the state Attorney General Letitia James’ probe of the ex-governor’s alleged harassment of multiple women while in office. Schwartz’s official resignation was first reported by amNew York.

He was specifically accused of using his role as state COVID-19 vaccine czar to run cover for Cuomo amid investigations into sexual-harassment allegations against him.

For a report that Andrew M. Cuomo's personal attorney contends is misleading and incomplete, it's amazing how many Cuomo appointees named in it have been forced out of the positions Cuomo appointed them to fill.

25 January 2022: Opinions - What Michigan Governor Whitmer Did Wrong in Not Counting Nursing Home Deaths

This timeline entry presents two opinion pieces appearing in smaller Michigan news outlets. One is an op-ed by a state representative, the other is an editorial.

Michigan’s nursing home death numbers remain under scrutiny

Michigan state representative Greg Markkanen (R-Hancock) has an op-ed in the Iron Mountain Daily News addressing the findings of Michigan's Auditor General that the Whitmer administration grossly undercounted nursing home deaths in the state. Like New York's Andrew M. Cuomo, Governor Gretchen Whitmer imposed a version of Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive forcing nursing homes in the state to admit COVID patients. In the following excerpt, he describes how the Whitmer administration's failures in compiling COVID death data from the state's nursing homes and long term care facilities has created a new scandal - one which served to hide the full extent of COVID deaths occurring in these facilities while her version of Cuomo's deadly directive was in effect:

Overall, the numbers DHHS have for COVID-19 deaths in long-term care facilities is 30% lower than what the Auditor General found.

This is a significant difference — and one that could have shaped a better strategy for our most vulnerable if more effort had been made to get more accurate numbers. In a recent joint House-Senate Oversight Committee hearing, DHHS downplayed and disputed this difference. The department’s director stated they only had information to go on from long-term care facilities that were reporting and trusted those numbers when they provided them to the public.

That’s government-speak for doing the absolute bare minimum. And the blunt solution is to pick up the phone and call a few people. The Auditor General managed to identify 923 deaths from facilities that were not required to self-report COVID-19 deaths to the department. A number that high going virtually unnoticed by the administration – and little attempt being made to verify numbers that were available for public consumption — is staggering. The department’s attempts to discredit the review was yet another case of how the governor and her agencies have operated during this pandemic: follow the data when it suits you and flush it when it refutes you.

Not counting COVID nursing home deaths makes Michigan's case different from New York's, where the Cuomo administration counted the deaths, but manipulated it to conceal the full extent of nursing home deaths. If you think of concealing the full extent of nursing home deaths as the outcome desired by state officials, Michigan's approach involved a lot less work on their part....

Not counting nursing home deaths unacceptable

We're presenting this editorial in full because it covers how the Whitmer administration's COVID nursing home deaths undercounting scandal was initially discovered and makes a number of essential points about how the Whitmer administration is addressing its undercount after it has been confirmed.

Numbers matter, especially when policymakers’ decisions have life or death consequences.

That’s precisely why we waited in anticipation of the release of a Michigan Auditor General’s report that determined state public health officials undercounted the number of people who died in nursing homes during the first year of the pandemic.

That report, months in the making, determined state public health officials didn’t include 2,386 COVID-19 deaths in the state’s fleet of smaller long-term care facilities in their ongoing assessment of the virus’ impact.

We’re frustrated the report followed more than half a year after a Record-Eagle reporter – through an enormous amount of public records footwork – pinpointed the data deficiency. It’s frustrating because our reporting alerted officials at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to a blind spot in their numbers, a void that likely veiled both deaths and illnesses from public accountings of the pandemic’s human toll in our state.

It’s frustrating because outsiders like us noticed the gap, raised alarm, and the people overseeing the count took no discernible action to fix the flaw or collect the information.

Instead they claimed local health departments were tracking those small care operations. We checked, they weren’t.

By the spring of 2021, when Reporter Mardi Link pinpointed the problem, most of us (journalists especially) had become pretty skeptical of much of the data our governments collected and distributed.

Not because of anything particularly nefarious, but because those who spent much time asking questions about the numbers knew both state and national public health information collection processes had some gaping blind spots.

At that time, we already knew the first year of the pandemic had exacted a brutal toll on medically vulnerable Michiganders who live in long-term care facilities.

Throughout the first nine months of the pandemic, between 30 and 50 percent of weekly reported deaths occurred at nursing facilities.

But they weren’t just uncounted, they were largely ignored.

It seemed like common sense – to us at least – that state numbers should include all nursing homes, not just the big ones. That excluding homes licensed for fewer than 13 beds would overlook thousands of potential illnesses and deaths from COVID-19, creating a substantial oversight gap that would disproportionately cast a data blind spot over rural areas.

Unfortunately, a preemptive letter sent from the director of MDHHS to the state auditor on the eve of the report’s release shows the agency’s attitude toward collecting accurate information on COVID in those small facilities hasn’t changed.

No, instead of collecting and disseminating its own data, MDHHS appears more interested proffering reasons it shouldn’t heed the auditor’s findings. They’re offerings that seem fixated on justifying an incomplete count, instead of seeking trustworthy numbers. Responses that lead us to wonder why MDHHS wouldn’t do the work of fixing its information deficiency itself after we pointed it out?

Such resistance seems both arbitrary and capricious at a moment when we face a fast-spreading new strain of the virus and even fully vaccinated nursing home residents once again face substantial risk if they’re exposed and infected.

Michiganders deserve trustworthy data that provides a complete picture of the pandemic’s impact on our most vulnerable.

Likewise, we simply shouldn’t accept life or death decisions informed by untrustworthy or incomplete numbers.

You would think getting trustworthy and complete numbers would be something the Whitmer administration would want. Unless they think those numbers wouldn't reflect well on their policies.

24 January 2022: Hochul Budget Offers No Settlement for Victims of Cuomo's COVID Nursing Home Deaths Scandals

Nursing home families blast Hochul for excluding victims fund in state budget

This report indicates something big is missing from replacement NY governor Kathy Hochul's budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year.

Family members who lost loved ones in nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic slammed Gov. Kathy Hochul for failing to include a $4 billion victims compensation fund in her $216.3 billion state budget.

“We believe the victims compensation fund should be included in the budget as a final admission of guilt. That will give the families closure and some sense of accountability,” said Vivian Zayas, who lost her 78-year-old mother, Ana Martinez in a Long Island nursing home in April 2020.

Initially proposed last year by state Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens), the 9/11-style Nursing Home Victims Compensation Fund would earmark $4 billion to families whose relatives died amid the state’s nursing home debacle at the start of the pandemic.

The next excerpt reveals the surviving members of the families are not taking Hochul's glaring budget omission very well:

Brett Leitner, Zayas’ lawyer, blasted Hochul for not following through.

“The former governor took millions of dollars in donations from the millionaire nursing home owners, gave those friends blanket protection for their negligence which led to 15,000 deaths, and then tried to hide those deaths from the public,” said Leitner – referencing the past donations Cuomo’s campaign had received from the healthcare industry.

“In what appeared to be a change from the usual ‘pay-for-play’ tactics of the former administration, a few months ago, Gov. Hochul offered a formal apology to the victims’ families for the pain the former governor caused, and pledged in effect to do right by them.

“It appears this was an empty promise.”

Finally, Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens), who introduced a bill proposing the fund, points his finger at the difference between how New Jersey and New York are addressing the same problem with a nearly identical cause:

“I think it’s embarrassing because New Jersey already settled with the veteran nursing home families and we should be leading the country in making the families and nursing homes whole — especially because we had private conversations with [Hochul] last year,” he said.

The settlement in New Jersey applies only to two nursing homes for veterans that were run by New Jersey's state government. It does not apply to the privately-run nursing homes that were compelled by Governor Phil Murphy's version of Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive to accept COVID-positive patients being dumped out of the state's hospitals to free up their bed space. The deaths that resulted from the Murphy administration's own deadly directive have yet to be settled.

Altogether, this report presents more evidence to support the hypothesis New York's Democratic party politicians are seeking to protect their own political interests and hold on power by dropping probes into Andrew M. Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals.

23 January 2022: Cuomo Attorney Attacks Credibility of Sexual Harassment Victims

Cuomo attorney assails credibility of women who leveled most serious allegations

After having succeeded in getting several county district attorneys to stop pursuing criminal charges against Andrew M. Cuomo related to his alleged sexual harassment of multiple female victims, Cuomo's personal attorney Rita Glavin is now moving to attack their credibility.

That's because Cuomo faces multiple lawsuits, where civil damages could easily total in the muli-millions. That's also an uphill climb because each of the district attorneys choosing to not pursue criminal charges against Cuomo related to the various incidents in their jurisdictions have described the victims' allegations as credible.

That's the background for the content contained in this lengthy report, where we'll excerpt the introduction:

Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's top aides and his attorney are continuing a crusade to clear his name of sexual harassment allegations, citing a trove of materials, received through pre-trial discovery in his recently dismissed criminal case, that they say reveal inconsistencies in the accounts of some of the women who accused him of misconduct.

Cuomo attorney Rita Glavin said documents turned over by the Albany County District Attorney's office also raise questions about the thoroughness of an investigation by the state attorney general's office last year that concluded Cuomo had sexually harassed or acted inappropriately with multiple women.

Still, the documents — in addition to the public statements of women who have accused Cuomo of misconduct — also confirm that at times the governor's admitted behavior, including kissing, touching and hugging his aides and a female trooper on his protective detail, arguably violated the state's regulations governing workplace conduct.

The attorney general's office and multiple district attorneys who investigated many of the women's allegations found their accounts credible. But under New York's statutes, three of the district attorneys said, the allegations could not be successfully prosecuted as crimes. An investigation by the state Assembly's Judiciary Committee also concluded that many of the allegations were valid and that the governor had engaged in sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior.

"Another day, another attempt by the former governor to attack the brave women who called out his abuse," state Attorney General Letitia James' office said in a statement issued after Glavin attacked the credibility of the investigation two weeks ago. "Thousands of pages of transcripts, exhibits, videos, and other evidence have already been publicly released, but these lies continue in an effort to mask the truth: Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women."

The remainder of the article reviews Cuomo's attorney's various attempts to discredit his female accusers. Please do click through to the article if you're interested to see what nearly a million dollars worth of legal fees spent through the end of 2021 on Glavin's work can buy a wealthy client in terms of pre-trial legal arguments that attempt to influence potential juror pools for the upcoming civil litigations.

22 January 2022: Editorial - New Health Commissioner Owes It to New Yorkers to Probe Health Department's Role in COVID Nursing Home Deaths

EDITORIAL: Look back into Cuomo nursing home policy

The editors of Schenectady's Daily Gazette are not impressed with New York's new health commissioner's commitment to willful blindness:

“I decided when I took up this post that I wasn’t going to try and unravel what had happened to cause that massive electrical blackout under the previous power supplier. But simply look forward.”

“I decided when I took up this post that I wasn’t going to try and unravel what had happened to cause that bridge to collapse under the previous highway superintendent. But simply look forward.”

“I decided when I took up this post that I wasn’t going to try and unravel what had happened in the nursing homes under the previous commissioner. But simply look forward.”

Three statements, all equally mind-boggling in their cluelessness.

The first two, we made up. The last one was actually uttered by new state Health Commissioner Mary Bassett during her Senate confirmation hearing earlier this week.

And it raises serious questions about her willingness to get to the root of a dangerous policy of the Cuomo administration.

We've argued for some time that the choice to seriously pursue sexual harassment allegations brought forth against Andrew M. Cuomo rather than really dig into Cuomo's COVID nursing homes deaths scandals was made with an eye to limit the damage to members of New York's Democratic party and their interests. As scandals go, the sexual harassment scandal was much smaller, involving far fewer officials, that the much larger COVID nursing home deaths scandals.

Bassett's statement of deliberate cluelessness lends support to that assessment. The editors put their fingers on what the top public health official in New York state is failing to address by not looking back at the actions of many who are still working within the state government department she now runs:

Bassett can say all she wants that she would never support a policy like the nursing home decision and that she would be open with such numbers in the future.

But people at the time of the nursing home order — those with credentials and authority equal to hers now — somehow managed to make that decision under the pressure of an emergency. Certainly there were factors they considered and processes that they followed before handing it down.

Wouldn’t it be in the best interests of all New Yorkers, and particularly nursing home residents and other vulnerable individuals, to know what those where and what specific steps are being taken in response to ensure they’re not repeated in some way? If you don’t look back, how can you look forward?

The commissioner’s dismissal of the question was not only disappointing, it was irresponsible and potentially dangerous.

Let’s hope she reconsiders the value of hindsight and provides New Yorkers a full picture of what really led to that decision.

There are many questions yet to be answered with respect to Andrew M. Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals.

21 January 2022: New NY Health Commissioner "Would Resign" Rather Than Implement Cuomo's Deadly Directive

NY health boss Mary Bassett would resign before enacting Cuomo-style nursing home order

Replacement New York Governor Kathy Hochul's pick to fill the role of New York's Health Commissioner, Mary Bassett, was confirmed for the position by New York's state senate. This report picks up on an interesting comment she made to distinguish herself from her ethically compromised predecessor Howard Zucker.

Dr. Mary Bassett was grilled Wednesday by state Sen. Jim Tedisco (R-Glenville) about “lessons learned” from the state Health Department’s nursing home policy under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, particularly her thoughts on the March 25, 2020 order.

“I decided when I took up this post that I wasn’t going to try and unravel what had happened in the nursing homes under the previous commissioner, but simply look forward,” Bassett said during a Senate Finance Committee meeting, as she was questioned ahead of her confirmation by the legislature’s upper chamber as Gov. Kathy Hochul’s DOH commissioner.

“Honesty is the best policy and that transparency about data is always appropriate even when the data don’t show what we wish they would show.”

Tedisco pressed, “If this governor, or any governor comes to you, or would have come to you and said, ‘We have to accept the diversity, we can’t discriminate against people who have a very contagious disease, and we’re going to implement allowing them to come from hospital if they have this to go to nursing homes.’ What would you say to that governor?”

Bassett answered: “I’m a doctor first and foremost. I’ll never give advice that I think will harm people. I will never give that advice and I won’t agree to follow it. I would offer to resign, to be clear.”

While her offered resignation pledge puts her in a much higher ethical league than either Andrew M. Cuomo or Howard Zucker, Bassett's additional statements give cause for concern. They indicate she's giving a free pass to public health officials who participated in implementing Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive.

Failing to hold subordinates accountable for engaging in what you acknowledge as a leader to be unethical and damaging conduct that would compel your own resignation represents a lost opportunity to rebuild the public's trust in New York's scandal-plagued Department of Health. Worse, it is a statement of failed leadership by design.

Had Bassett pledged to clean house at the department, her confirmation could have gained bipartisan support. She didn't, where majority Democrats in the state senate who voted for her confirmation have effectively endorsed sweeping the role of the state's public health officials in Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals under the rug.

21 January 2022: Analysis - Michigan Knew Its Nursing Home COVID Death Count Was Wrong

Commentary: Michigan Knew Its Nursing Home Covid Toll Was Wrong

Charlie LeDuff and Steve Delie have done perhaps the most work to keep the story of Michigan's Whitmer administration's undercount of the state's COVID nursing home deaths alive. In this commentary, they describe the following:

• The Whitmer administration's "bizarre rebuttal" of Michigan's Auditor General's findings.
• An effort by Whitmer administration officials to find out the real number of COVID nursing home deaths in August 2020 after the Associated Press reported the New York's Cuomo administration undercounted COVID nursing home deaths.
• State officials giving up on their effort to audit COVID nursing home deaths.
• The failure of top state health official Robert Gordon to provide accurate information and his subsequent resignation and the unusual bonus he received.

There's a lot of information to mine in LeDuff's and Delie's short analysis. We recommend clicking through to the article to get the full picture it paints in context. That picture suggests a near Cuomo-level cover-up on the part of Whitmer administration officials.

20 January 2022: Transcripts - Cuomo Was Desperate for Better PR People

We keep saying it, because it's true. Andrew M. Cuomo is desperately seeking better PR people and more legal help. The following excerpt from this report confirms that truth:

After then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s offer of $100,000 a month didn’t convince PR exec Maggie Moran to handle crisis communications when sexual harassment allegations emerged last year, the disgraced pol’s office tried “Italian guilt” as a lure.

It didn’t work either.

The revelation is included in a transcript of a July 2021 deposition during which Moran, a Cuomo ally who served as campaign manager for his 2018 re-election bid, answered questions from lawyers with the New York Attorney General’s Office, which was at the time investigating accusations of improper behavior by Cuomo. New York Attorney General Letitia James released the 232-page document on Thursday as part of the final tranche of official materials related to the probe.

The report also provides a window into the disturbing morality of PR people:

Moran, who was then a managing partner at high-powered PR agency Kivvit, testified during the deposition that “Cuomo world” had asked her and Kivvit to help prop up the governor’s rapidly declining image. While Cuomo was fending off the sexual harassment claims, he was simultaneously being investigated by state authorities for allegedly undercounting COVID-19 deaths in New York nursing homes by as much as 50 percent.

“The nursing home [issue], to me, was a different deal,” Moran said in her testimony. “You know, [Cuomo aide] Melissa [DeRosa] said one word out of context, they probably disclosed the numbers, nobody had a playbook during the pandemic, that felt, to me, like something that was worthwhile to work on.”

But the harassment allegations, Moran continued, “I just didn't really want any part of.” She said she decided not to help with the nursing home probe “once the allegations started.”

PR person Maggie Moran now works hard to improve the image of the cannabis industry.

20 January 2022: NY Attorney General's Office Releases Final Batch of Cuomo Sexual Harassment Probe Transcripts

Final set of transcripts, exhibits released in former NY governor Andrew Cuomo investigation

The New York State Attorney General's office has released the final transcripts and documentation it compiled as part of its investigation of Andrew M. Cuomo's alleged sexual harassment of multiple women.

The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) released the final transcripts, videos and evidence from the independent investigation into allegations of sexual harassment by former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Last year, Cuomo was accused by several women of sexual harassment, or inappropriate behavior. Cuomo has repeatedly denied those allegations.

The Attorney General's office says it was asked by several district attorneys to hold off on releasing the transcripts, as well as other evidence until they could investigate and determine if criminal charges should be filed against Cuomo.

The release of the final transcripts indicates the remaining two of five county prosecutors investigating allegations of Cuomo's sexual harassment of women within their jurisdictions may be nearing a conclusion for whether they will charge Cuomo. Previously, district attorneys in Nassau County, Westchester County, and Albany County announced they would not prosecute Andrew M. Cuomo, despite finding the allegations against Cuomo to be credible. Of these, the decision of Albany County's district attorney has raised the most questions of whether Cuomo's political influence and connections affected the Albany County DA David Soares' choice to drop the prosecution of the most serious allegations Cuomo faced that were documented in the NY AG's report of its investigation.

Links to the various transcripts and video testimony may be found through the report.

20 January 2022: Cuomo Insider James Malatras Cashes In Golden Parachute

Cuomo crony Malatras bags $450K SUNY ‘leave,’ $186K tenured post after resignation

Jim Malatras, the embattled and abusive CEO of the State University of New York, officially resigned on 14 January 2021 according to his exit contract, but not before exploiting the golden parachute he was provided. The following excerpt from this report provides the financial details of the rewards he collected:

James Malatras, the pressured-to-resign State University chancellor, is being paid $450,000 for his recently started year-long “study leave” — and next year he’ll get a six-figure tenured SUNY faculty position, his approved exit contract reveals.

The SUNY Board of Trustees officially greenlit Malatras’ employment contract, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, three days ago, on Jan. 16 – meaning he’s already started his $450,000 paid leave.

Once the year is up, he’ll assume a tenured faculty position at SUNY Empire College – where he used to be president – and he’ll be paid a $186,660 annual salary.

Among other abuses, Malatras participated in the Cuomo administration's doctoring of a New York Department of Health report, which concealed the full extent of COVID deaths among nursing home residents during the period Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect.

Editorial: SUNY’s failed leadership

The Albany Times Union's editors have a few things to say about James Malatras'

Somewhere on the itemized bill State University of New York students get should be a future line item that could well be called the “Jim Malatras Golden Parachute Fee.” Or the “SUNY Trustees Malfeasance Fee.”

That would at least be full disclosure from a board whose refusal to call out Mr. Malatras for his behavior seems likely to cost SUNY, and state taxpayers, millions in years to come.

Mr. Malatras, who stepped down as chancellor last Friday, announced in December he would resign after a series of embarrassing revelations — his role, while he was a SUNY college president, in a deceptive Health Department report on nursing home resident fatalities in the pandemic; his involvement in discussions about ways to discredit a woman who complained about a toxic work environment in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office; and a recording of him berating a woman while he was president of SUNY’s Rockefeller Institute of Government. He finally quit, saying it had all become “a distraction.”

But that’s not the end of the story. Mr. Malatras — a former top aide to Mr. Cuomo hired in 2020 as chancellor by an obeisant SUNY board without a national search at the administration’s behest — signed a deal earlier this week providing him with $450,000 to take a paid year off, and a lifetime tenured professorship at Empire State College that pays $186,660 (his original contract called for $245,000)....

We’ve already called on board holdovers from the Cuomo years to resign, and this latest wrinkle in the saga only affirms our view. It was bad enough that the board’s support of Mr. Malatras sent a terrible message to students, faculty, and all New Yorkers about its values and misguided loyalties. It’s all the worse to be stuck with the bill for the board’s malfeasance.

SUNY's board represents the worst of political patronage. Replacement governor Kathy Hochul is not doing herself any favors by failing to fully clean out the Cuomo crew from all levels of New York's state government and institutions.

19 January 2022: Connecticut's Lamont Ups Hypocrisy Level with Latest Nursing Home Order

Lamont signs order requiring COVID vax or negative test to visit CT nursing homes

If you wanted additional proof of complete hypocrisy on the part of Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, you'll find it in this story. Lamont has signed an order requiring visitors to Connecticut nursing homes to either prove they have been vaccinated against COVID or have tested negative for coronavirus infection. Here's an excerpt from this report describing Lamont's order, which will take effect on 22 January 2022:

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont signed an executive order Wednesday mandating that all nursing homes require visitors be vaccinated against COVID-19, or provide a negative test.

The order mandates that nursing home visitors provide proof of full vaccination, which includes a booster if approved under FDA guidance.

Otherwise, visitors must bring paper or electronic proof of a negative COVID test from a rapid test within 48 hours or a PCR test within 72 hours....

The order said nursing homes have to deny entrance to those who test positive for COVID-19 or refuse to take rapid test. It also said it cannot deny entry to visitors who would take a rapid test, but cannot because the home can’t provide one.

The reason Lamont's order is so hypocritical is because the Lamont administration has been asking nursing homes to admit hospital patients who test positive for having COVID infections so they can free up hospital bed space since 6 January 2022.

How exactly the Lamont administration will try to justify its efforts to directly inject of COVID-positive patients into nursing homes while now blocking the family members of nursing home residents from visiting unless they're vaccinated or test negative in order to protect nursing home residents from becoming infected with COVID remains to be seen. Especially since the current vaccinations neither prevent the vaccinated from becoming infected with the latest COVID variants nor spreading it when they do become infected.

Just so we're clear, Governor Ned Lamont is well aware that can happen and has been since at least 23 December 2021.

Here is previous coverage from the timeline:

• 8 January 2022: Connecticut Looking to Dump COVID Patients Into Nursing Homes
• 16 January 2022: Scenes of COVID Policy Hypocrisy from Connecticut

19 January 2022: Whitmer Medical Adviser Attempts to Downplay COVID Nursing Home Deaths

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/whitmers-top-doc-downplays-covid-nursing-home-deaths-tough-decisions-have-to-be-made

This report suggests the Whitmer administration is changing tactics from disputing the definitions used to count COVID nursing home deaths that occurred under Governor Gretchen Whitmer's version of Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive to instead claim their policy of dumping COVID patients from hospitals to nursing homes was justified for medical reasons.

Embattled Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s top medical adviser downplayed the COVID-19 nursing home deaths that have scandalized the governor’s administration.

Michigan’s chief medical executive Natasha Bagdasarian, who joined the Whitmer administration after the scandal broke, said the two-year pandemic has illustrated that "tough choices have to be made."

"It’s difficult for me to comment on things that occurred before I was both working at the state and, actually, before I was even in Michigan," Bagdasarian said. "However, I can say that, during the pandemic, what we’ve really seen is that tough decisions have to be made, sometimes with very little notice as we learn new information and as the virus changes."

"So, this whole pandemic has just been an opportunity to learn and to be as agile and nimble as possible," she continued. "And it’s difficult, I think, to second-guess some of those decisions that were made early on in the pandemic when, again, we were still learning about the virus and learning about how it behaved in certain settings."

Just so we're clear, it was known before the end of March 2020 that COVID and nursing homes would be a "toxic mix" and that "coronavirus in a nursing home can be like fire in dry grass". While Dr. Bagdasarian may not have been responsible for what happened in Michigan, her statement would appear aimed at attempting to assist the Whitmer administration in avoiding having to face consequences for its actions.

19 January 2022: Opinion - Federal Investigation of COVID Nursing Home Deaths Needed

COVID nursing home deaths deserve a federal investigation

Janice Dean penned this op-ed piece calling for a federal investigation of COVID nursing home deaths. In the article, she specifically references Andrew M. Cuomo's actions in New York, where her mother-in-law and father-in-law both died of COVID in nursing homes during the period when Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect and Michigan's now confirmed COVID nursing home deaths undercount scandal, which echoes Cuomo's attempted cover-up, before calling for a federal investigation.

It’s time for all of us to ask for a full, bipartisan federal investigation into all these states that acted so recklessly. If I’m a betting woman, what happened in New York and Michigan more than likely happened in Pennsylvania, California and New Jersey. We need to find out and raise our voices to demand the truth.

Elections have consequences and there’s never been a better time to ask for accountability.

Our loved ones deserve that for unknowingly risking their lives. It’s the least we can do in their memory to make sure this never happens again to another person or the family that loved them.

Based on what we know today, New Jersey certainly falls in that category, which we know from how the Murphy administration operated state-run nursing homes for veterans. Pennsylvania is a strong contender for similar abuses as what happened in New York, Michigan, and New Jersey. We think including California with these other states is a stretch because unlike these other states, the Newsom administration didn't sustain its version of Cuomo's deadly directive for more than a few days.

Regardless, federal investigations of COVID nursing home deaths in New York, Michigan, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania are warranted, because the policies the governors in these states put into place that exposed nursing home residents to the risk of deadly coronavirus infections would constitute criminally negligent homicide or manslaughter under federal law. In New York and Michigan, we view the undercounts of the COVID deaths that resulted in each state's nursing homes and long term care facilties as presenting evidence of fraud intended to cover-up the more serious crimes.

19 January 2022: Cuomo Spends $2M in Campaign Cash on Lawyers and PR

Cuomo spent $2 million in campaign cash since resigning, still has $16 million war chest

We have a running joke about Andrew M. Cuomo's desperate need for more legal help and better PR people. This report confirms Cuomo agrees, because he's spent $2 million just on those two things since resigning-in-disgrace as New York's governor.

Former governor Andrew Cuomo still has a hefty $16 million in his campaign coffers, financial disclosures filed with the state Board of Elections revealed on Tuesday evening.

Since resigning in disgrace following a bombshell report detailing a pattern of sexual harassment and bad behavior in August 2021, Cuomo has spent about $2 million on attorneys and a spokesman, the records show.

The next excerpt details where most of the money spent has gone:

One of the 64-year-old’s biggest expenses since stepping down in August has been his legal costs.

According to the filings, Cuomo has paid Glavin PLLC about $899,000.

Cuomo’s campaign also paid $800,000 to Sullivan & Cromwell, a law firm that represented him in the state attorney general’s investigation into the harassment claims made by nearly a dozen women....

Cuomo also has a few former state employees on his payroll. Records show he’s paid about $42,000 to Bulldog Strategies, a communications firm run by one-time senior adviser Rich Azzopardi.

Former top aide Stephanie Benton, who served as director of the governor’s offices and featured prominently in Attorney General Letitia James’ report detailing the “toxic” work environment in the Cuomo administration was paid around $16,000 from the campaign account.

So far, these expenditures have gone toward addressing criminal charges being considered against Cuomo. Very little has been spent to address civil litigation, where multiple cases are expected but have yet to be filed by Cuomo's alleged victims.

18 January 2022: NY Senate Bill Seeks to Close Barn Door After Cuomo Horse Has Fled

Cuomo's use of staff for book spurs Senate bill

The Oneonta Daily Star reports on a new bill intended to prevent elected officials from utilizing state government resources and employees for personal profit or benefit the way Andrew M. Cuomo exploited for his pandemic "leadership" book.

Sen. Todd Kaminsky, D-Rockville Centre, has introduced S.7613 in the Senate to prohibit public officers from using their authority to compel or coerce subordinates to use their official government work time to perform activities intended to benefit a private business or other compensated non-governmental purposes.

“The concept of superiors compelling public employees to “voluntarily” assist with outside projects or business endeavors is clearly unethical,” Kaminsky wrote in his legislative justification. “When public officials use state resources for personal gain, it is unfair to taxpayers. Current law prohibits public officers from using state property or resources for private business or other compensated non-governmental purposes, but it should also be made clear that public officials cannot exercise their power to force their employees to use their time for such purposes.”

Kaminsky’s bill was introduced three days after the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics ordered Cuomo to repay $5.1 million the former governor was paid to write “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.” The staff of the commission granted approval of the deal in July 2020, when his counsel told the commission Cuomo agreed to not use any state personnel or resources to produce his book and that he would write it “entirely on his own time.” But complaints later surfaced that state property, resources and personnel were used to prepare, write, edit and publish the book....

Cuomo has acknowledged that state employees helped with tasks including editing the manuscript. But he’s claimed that those employees were volunteering their private time. A separate state Assembly investigation released last month found evidence that Cuomo, who resigned in August, had his staff spend large amounts of time on the book project. Junior and senior staff members told investigators they were asked to perform book tasks during their work day, including transcribing dictations, printing and delivering documents, and attending meetings with agents and publishers. One senior state official sent and received 1,000 emails about the book, the legislative report said.

“The Assembly’s recent impeachment investigation report portrayed a clear example of such exploitation. The report concluded that the former Governor utilized the time of several state employees, as well as his own, to further personal gain through the writing of his book. Members of his senior staff were also found to have done extensive work for the book, including drafting parts of the book during normal work hours and meeting with agents and publishers. The report also noted that certain tasks, which senior staff assigned to subordinate employees during official work hours, were not in fact voluntary,” Kaminsky wrote. “These actions are plainly unethical and illegal, but demonstrate that further clarity in the law is warranted. Under this legislation, there will be no question as to whether officials may exercise their authority, directly or indirectly, to compel their staff to use their work hours for another official’s private benefit. The bill will do this by making it explicit that any such acts would be a violation of Public Officer Law, prohibiting officials from using their power to make their subordinates “volunteer” for outside projects during work hours. Under this law, supervisors may not ask their subordinates to use their official time or resources of the state unrelated to the discharge of their duties for the benefit of a private business or for other compensated nongovernmental purposes.”

Had Cuomo hired non state government employees to produce his pandemic "leadership" book using his own money, or even using money from his political campaign organization, the book deal would not have be the scandal it has become. But then, if he had, it would have cut into his profits.

17 January 2022: Michigan Auditor General Releases Report Finding Whitmer Administration Undercounted COVID Nursing Home Deaths

Michigan auditor general releases review of COVID-19 deaths in long-term care facility

A report from Michigan's Office of the Auditor General that concluded a higher number of patients at long-term care facilities had died from COVID-19 than what the state health department was reporting dropped on Monday.

The report, which received media coverage and criticism ahead of its publishing on Jan. 17, announced it identified 7,010 COVID-19 deaths linked to LTC facilities between Jan. 1, 2020 and July 2, 2021. That's 1,511 more deaths than what the state had reported.

The figure is disputed by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, which argued last week and doubled-down Monday that differences between the report and its own totals were because the departments used different definitions when defining long-term care facility deaths.

The figures cited in this exerpt apply specifically to Michigan nursing homes and long term care facilities whose COVID deaths among residents were underreported by the Whitmer administration according to Michigan State Auditor General Doug Ringler's report. It's rather remarkable the Whitmer administration is doubling down on semantics as its primary argument in its attempt to discredit the report. Meanwhile, Representative Steve Johnson (R-Wayland), who chairs the state House's Oversight Committee, puts his finger on what the report really represents:

Johnson previously argued the report, which explicitly stated was not an audit of the nursing home figures, revealed a "shocking undercount."

"Make no mistake – this is a large discrepancy, and the report makes that clear," Johnson said last week.

Here's a link to the Michigan State Auditor General's report. Here's a short summary of its main findings, which appears in a letter sent to Representative Johnson, which directly addresses part of the Whitmer administration's attempt to discredit the findings:

Regarding COVID-19 deaths linked to LTC facilities, we identified a total of 8,061, including 7,010 deaths assoicated within the LTC facility types required to report. LTC facilities self-reported 5,675 of those 7,010 deahts as of July 2, 2021. MDHHS disagreed with 1,511 deaths included in our total because it questioned the reliability of the MDSS address field. Based on our rationale identified on page 4, including conducting further procedures to corroborate the addresses, we contend the address field is reliable.

16 January 2022: Scenes of COVID Policy Hypocrisy from Connecticut

On 8 January 2022, Connecticut's state government asked nursing homes to start accepting COVID-positive patients being discharged from hospitals in the state to free up their bed space. We've pulled a number of news stories from recent months in the state to demonstrate Governor Ned Lamont's administration has full knowledge of the risks associated with their new public health policy for the population most vulnerable to fatal outcomes from exposure to coronavirus infections.

New COVID-19 visitor policies in place at several Connecticut hospitals

This 6 October 2021 report describes the restrictions several Connecticut hospital were placing on visits by friends and families of patients in response to an increase in COVID infections in the state.

New visitor policies are in place at several Connecticut hospitals, which now require visitors to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test to enter building.

Nuvance Health, which runs Danbury, Norwalk, and New Milford hospitals, put the new policy in place.

Hospital officials will now need visitors to provide proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test within 72 hours to enter.

Since this report, other Connecticut hospitals have instituted similar restrictions.

8 dead, 89 infected after Covid outbreak at Connecticut nursing home

This 16 November 2021 report confirms the introduction of COVID infections in Connecticut nursing homes led to deadly results in the weeks preceding the report.

Eight residents of a Connecticut nursing home have died since the start of a coronavirus outbreak that has infected 89 others, officials said.

Twenty-two staffers and 67 residents of Geer Village Senior Community in North Canaan have tested positive for Covid since Sept. 30, according to a statement from the facility. North Canaan is on the Connecticut-Massachusetts border.

“Sadly, we have lost 8 residents with serious underlying health issues,” the statement said.

Connecticut's public health officials in the Lamont administration would be very familiar with this outcome.

State Suspends In-Person Visits To Prison Due To High COVID Rates

This story from 3 December 2021 indicates the Lamont administration was concerned enough about the potential risk of spreading COVID in the state's prison population to take steps to suspect visits by family and friends to protect the health of inmates. The following excerpt describes the state's policy:

The Department of Correction suspended visits by family and friends to all prisons due to Connecticut’s COVID-19 positivity rate which has been over 5% all week.

“Our COVID pandemic plan establishes a 5% community positivity rate as the threshold to temporarily suspend in-person social visits,” Karen Martucci, spokesperson for the agency, said. “The daily rate has been above 5% for the past four days.

Martucci said the visits would resume as soon as possible once the positivity rate goes back down. Connecticut and the DOC have seen a slow escalation in the number of people who have tested positive for COVID-19 in recent weeks.

Just over one month later, the Lamont administration broke with the practices in place at hospitals and which it put into practice at state prisons, that would specifically place known COVID-positive patients into nursing homes that they know can lead to deadly outcomes.

If former Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance had not strangely chosen to drop his county's criminal probe of Andrew M. Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals without explanation on 3 January 2022, demonstrating no legal repercussions would follow from them, do you think Connecticut's Ned Lamont would have greenlighted his new Cuomo-esque policy?

15 January 2022: Michigan Auditors Report 2,400 More Long-Term Care COVID Deaths

Michigan auditors report 2,400 more long-term care deaths

The Associated Press obtained access to the Michigan State Auditor General's report on COVID deaths in the states nursing and long-term care facilities.

Michigan auditors found nearly 2,400 additional COVID-19 deaths linked to long-term care facilities over an 18-month period, both at places that report coronavirus deaths to the state and homes that do not.

The figure was disclosed in a review that was obtained by The Associated Press on Friday before its public release by the auditor general Monday. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration has disputed the methodology and conclusions in the report.

Auditors reported 8,061 confirmed or positive COVID-19 deaths tied to nursing homes, homes for the aged and adult foster-care facilities as of early July. The difference between that number and what the state health department had reported — 5,675 — is nearly 30%.

Doing the exact math, the total of 8,061 COVID deaths among residents of Michigan's nursing homes and other long-term care facilities for the elderly represents an increase of 2,376 (or 29.6%) above Michigan's state government's official total, which indeed is nearly 30%.

LeDuff: Report On Undercount Of Elderly Covid Deaths In Michigan Spells Political Trouble For Whitmer

In this report on the attempt by the Whitmer administration to discredit the state auditor general's report before it is released, Charlie LeDuff takes on the Michigan State Health Director Elizabeth Hertel's arguments. The following extended excerpt pokes holes in Hertel's attempt and also indicates how his higher estimate of 42% of COVID deaths going underreported in Michigan is arrived at.

Hertel has challenged the abilities of state Auditor General Doug Ringler, telling anyone who doesn’t know any better that many of the deaths in his report do not fit the “legal definitions” used by her department or the CDC.

But even with these lame attempts to deflect criticism, the Health Department has been forced to admit that at least three of every 10 Covid deaths at long-term-care facilities were never properly counted. If true, this would amount to a 42-percent increase in the number of deaths over what MDHHS is claiming. Welcome to Cuomoville.

Director Hertel argues that she did not require smaller facilities to report deaths to the state government. That statement alone shows the scope of the Department’s failure. It begs the question: Why did MDHHS choose not to track these facilities that are licensed by the state? Aren't their residents as elderly and vulnerable as the others?

When the Whitmer administration issued her executive orders requiring the admission of Covid patients to nursing homes, she continually cited to science and data as justifying her decisions. Failing to track deaths at facilities housing our woefully vulnerable elderly simply because they were not legally required to report hardly suggests the most scientific or data driven approach.

Worse, Hertel's statement tacitly admits that half of the facilities that MDHHS did track undercounted deaths. Which would mean that even in these facilities MDHHS was doing a terrible job.

The director’s letter to the auditor general has been quoted as stating: “I fear that your letter will be misinterpreted to question the work and integrity of long-term care facilities local health departments, coroners and other frontline workers who we rely on to report data.”

Those fears are well-founded, but not because the auditor general applied capricious and flawed methodology. Rather, it’s because the auditor general discovered that MDHHS wasn’t keeping an accurate count. And whether that amounts to a lack of integrity by reporting facilities, or an incompetent tracking program, the numbers don’t lie.

At a minimum, Michigan's state health department failed in an essential task during a public health emergency. There needs to be consequences in the Whitmer administration for tolerating that level of failure.

14 January 2022: Opinion - Albany County DA Soares Should Have Charged Cuomo

Soares should’ve charged Cuomo: His dismissal smells of politics

Albany County District Attorney David Soares' choice to drop forcible touching misdemeanor charges against Andrew M. Cuomo may have been tainted with political considerations according to this op-ed by Wendy Murphy, a Boston-based women's rights activist. In the following excerpt, she argues Soares engaged in sex discrimination by dropping the case:

Last October, when Albany Sheriff Craig Apple filed a misdemeanor criminal charge of “forcible touching” against disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, he did so without the district attorney’s advance knowledge or approval. Many people rightly interpreted the move as a sign that the sheriff and the DA, David Soares, did not agree about pursuing the case. By taking unilateral steps against Cuomo, Apple was letting us all know that Soares was opposed to prosecution, and that Apple saw this decision as unacceptable.

Soares’ decision to drop the case last week was based on politics, not law.

When Soares made his announcement, he accompanied it with the predictable and offensive statement that he remained “deeply troubled by allegations like the ones at issue here” and considered the complainant “cooperative and credible.” He simultaneously said the evidence was not strong enough to win a conviction: “we cannot meet our burden at trial.”

In a case where the only evidence is the word of one woman, a prosecutor who says something like this is essentially saying the word of a woman is not good enough. Such prosecutors should be impeached, or at least voted out of office at the next election.

District attorneys have wide discretion to pursue or not pursue charges, but they are forbidden to discriminate, and they can be sued for declining to pursue a case based on race, sex or other protected classes. A prosecutor who says a woman is credible and simultaneously refuses to file charges is engaging in sex discrimination because no prosecutor can know in advance what a jury might conclude about a credible victim’s testimony.

The incident of forcible touching involving state government employee Brittany Commisso was the most serious of all the allegations of sexual harassment involving Andrew M. Cuomo's personal conduct. As more becomes known of the situation, Soares' strange choice to drop the charges appears more and more inconsistent with his public statements about their credibility. It also appears more and more likely a pro-Cuomo fix was in.

14 January 2022: Michigan's Whitmer Administration Disputes Auditor's Report Finding State Underreported COVID Nursing Home Deaths

Whitmer Administration Disputes Pending Report On Nursing Home Deaths

The administration of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is disputing a soon-to-be-released report from Michigan's Auditor General finding her administration grossly undercounted the full extent of COVID deaths among residents of Michigan's nursing and long-term-care homes. Here's a short summary:

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration disputed the methodology and conclusions in a pending report that is expected to say there were nearly 30% more coronavirus-related deaths tied to nursing homes and other long-term care facilities in Michigan than reported by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS).

Auditors plan to release their review next week. But in a rare step, MDHHS Director Elizabeth Hertel sought to publicly preempt it by questioning how the data was compiled.

Quick side bar: the "rare step" being mentioned confirms the Whitmer administration views the report as highly damaging to its interests in remaining in power. Picking up now on how the administration is attempting to discredit the auditor general's pending report:

In a letter written Sunday and released Wednesday, Hertel referenced “serious concerns” to the state auditor general’s office — including with its plan to combine COVID-19 deaths at facilities that are subject to state or federal reporting requirements and those that are not. That would add 1,036 deaths to the 5,675 that long-term care facilities had reported as of early July, almost half of the additional 1,700 or so deaths to be revealed.

Hertel also said auditors will define reportable deaths differently from a federal standard. They are counting residents who were discharged before their deaths, including those who recovered from COVID-19 and returned home or went to hospice. Also being added are residents who were hospitalized for a non-virus reason like a fall but were infected in the hospital, and residents who lived at independent or assisted living facilities that share a campus with a nursing home, she said.

Hertel's strategy of disputing Michigan's audited findings is similar to that used by New York's Cuomo administration, which played similar semantic games to dispute the full extent of COVID deaths among New York nursing home residents. In New York, any deaths of nursing home residents that occurred outside a nursing home wasn't counted to the total attributed to those facilities. This practice allowed the Cuomo administration to conceal the full extent of COVID deaths among nursing home residents, who often died after being transferred out of the facility, whether to hospitals, hospices or other locations.

In particular, her attempt to omit deaths of residents of shared campus facilities is really questionable, because many serve the same highly vulnerable population of patients. The difference between residents in the various care settings within each of these campuses would mainly be determined by their level of care requirements. Since they would also share staffing, it is very reasonable to consider these to be extended facilities of the nursing homes.

Keep in mind that all this is happening *before* the auditor general's report has been made public. There's much more to come.

14 January 2022: Cuomo Attorneys Restart Smear Machine Ahead of Civil Lawsuits

Andrew Cuomo lawyer levels accusations of her own against alleged victim Lindsey Boylan

Andrew M. Cuomo's legal team stepped up its attacks on 13 January 2022, seeking to discredit both New York's state attorney general sexual harassment probe and the first woman to allege she was sexually harassed by Cuomo. Here's an extended excerpt to give a sense of the claims:

The lawyer defending former Gov. Andrew Cuomo against multiple sexual harassment allegations leveled some accusations of her own Thursday.

Attorney Rita Glavin held a virtual press conference where she alleged that one of Cuomo’s accusers got “more than professional” with the state’s economic development czar — and later used a special, super-secret messaging app to threaten him.

Glavin said evidence recently turned over to her by state Attorney General Letitia James revealed that Empire State Development CEO Howard Zemsky told investigators about a time in late 2017 when he and Cuomo accuser Lindsey Boylan, then his chief of staff, were “more than professional.”

“I’ll leave it at that,” Glavin said of Zemsky’s admission at her own virtual press conference. Cuomo was not in attendance....

Glavin also said Boylan later used the Confide app — which sends encrypted text messages that self-destruct and can’t be captured in screenshots — to contact Zemsky after he and other officials disputed her allegation that Cuomo asked her to play strip poker during a flight on his official jet.

“I can’t wait to destroy your life, your [sic] s–t follower,” Boylan allegedly told Zemsky, according to Glavin.

“And I presume Ms. Boylan is referring to herself and knowing something about Mr. Zemsky.”

After getting Boylan’s text, Zemsky “changed his story” but she was never questioned by James’ investigators about sending it or using the app, Glavin said during a nearly two-hour, virtual news conference.

“The AG had evidence that Ms. Boylan was tampering with a witness, trying to get him to corroborate her and threatened to destroy his life if he didn’t,” she said.

Cuomo's personal attorney also made a point of attacking the media:

Also during her marathon news conference — which at times seemed more like the closing defense argument after a months-long trial — Glavin repeatedly attacked the news media for its coverage of the allegations against Cuomo and accused lawmakers of rushing to judgment against him.

But Glavin never acknowledged that government leaders are held to higher standards than private citizens, although she admitted at one point, “I’m not an elected official, I don’t have to run for reelection.”

With three separate county district attorneys having dropped criminal sexual harassment-related cases against Cuomo that each described as "credible", we view Cuomo's attorney's comments as an indication they are gearing up to defend Cuomo against multiple civil litigation lawsuits that could cost Cuomo millions in damages.

14 January 2022: State Auditor to Report Michigan Undercounted COVID Nursing Home Deaths by Wide Margin

LeDuff: Michigan undercounted COVID-19 nursing home deaths

Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Charlie LeDuff broke the news that Michigan's Auditor General will report Michigan substantially undercounted the full extent of COVID deaths among that state's nursing home residents. This report summarizes the basics of what he is reporting (since he did so through his Facebook page on 13 January 2022):

A report from Auditor General Doug Ringler scheduled for a Monday release is expected to show the state undercounted COVID-19 long-term care deaths.

On Wednesday, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie LeDuff posted on Facebook:

“Covid Deaths in Michigan's long-term care facilities are 42% higher than the Whitmer Administration admits, according a preliminary report by state's Auditor General. This puts Whitmer's Michigan on par with Cuomo's New York in terms of concealing the truth about LTCFs. More to come.”

LeDuff sued the state's health department last May, alleging it undercounted COVID-19 nursing home deaths and other long-term care facilities (LTCF).

What we know of the pending state auditor general's report suggests LeDuff is right: Michigan undercounted COVID nursing home deaths.

That's significant because that puts Michigan into the same category as New York, where Andrew M. Cuomo purposefully covered-up the full extent of COVID nursing home deaths during the period his deadly 25 March 2020 directive. Michigan's Governor Gretchen Whitmer issued her own version of that directive, joining New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania as the only states to adopt and sustain such a such a policy.

Unlike New York, where state officials possessed detailed data on where COVID victims lived, which is what the Cuomo administration covered-up, Michigan public health officials stopped tracking where COVID victims lived, so it never compiled that data in the first place.

LeDuff's reporting indicates the state auditor's report will find the number of COVID deaths among Michigan nursing home and long term care residents is 42% higher than Gretchen Whitmer's administration officially acknowledges.

In a previous interview with The Center Square, LeDuff compared the situation to New York, where former Gov. Andrew Cuomo suppressed the real number of COVID-19 nursing home deaths.

“New York kept count and lied about it. Michigan started looking into it, found a number they didn’t like, and they stopped counting,” LeDuff said. “Which is worse?"

It's a different form of cover-up, one that could potentially be attributed to incompetence on the part of Michigan state government employees. If there is evidence Whitmer administration officials purposefully terminated efforts to trace where COVID victims lived and contracted their fatal coronavirus infection, that would make Michigan's undercount of COVID nursing home deaths worse, because it indicates a more sophisticated level of corrupt premeditation.

13 January 2022: Cuomo to Fight JCOPE Clawback of Pandemic "Leadership" Book Profits

Cuomo won’t give up $5M book payday without a fight, says lawyer

This report follows up the legal chest thumping by one of Andrew M. Cuomo's lawyers featured in this timeline entry. The following excerpt provides more context for the developing legal situation:

Andrew Cuomo is ready to fight the very ethics panel he created to try and keep his $5.1 million pandemic-windfall book deal.

A lawyer for the forced-to-resign ex-governor threatened Wednesday to sue the state’s ethics board for trying to claw back the payday Cuomo received for his written-on-the-job memoir about the COVID-19 scourge — and accused officials of acting “for improper political reasons.”

In a letter to the chairman of the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, Cuomo lawyer James McGuire formally put the agency’s commissioners and staffers “on notice that they must preserve all records” related to their consideration of the controversial book deal.

McGuire said JCOPE had violated Cuomo’s “rights to the protections of due process under the United States and New York Constitutions, and expose JCOPE and its commissioners to liability under [federal civil rights law].”

The flip side of Cuomo filing suit against JCOPE to try to keep the proceeds from his pandemic "leadership" book that was produced by state government employees is that it would also expose Cuomo to legal discovery by JCOPE's attorneys, which could form the basis of additional actions against Cuomo.

If that happens, well, it's time to pop some popcorn....