31 March 2022: NJ Lawmakers Say Governor Murphy Needs To Face The Music For Nursing Home Deaths

Governor Murphy Needs To Face The Music For Nursing Home Deaths, Legislators Say

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy copied Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive for reasons that have never been adequately explained, contributing to his state's COVID death toll at its nursing homes. This report describes how several New Jersey lawmakers, from the minority party in the state legislature, are seeking to investigate the consequences of Murphy's copycat version of Cuomo's deadly directive.

The following excerpt focuses on the lawmakers' statements:

On the second anniversary of the initial confirmed COVID infection at a state-operated veterans’ home, Senator Joe Pennacchio and Senator Ed Durr are demanding accountability from the Murphy Administration, the NJ Senate Republicans said in a statement today.

“It has been two long, painful years for the families who lost loved ones in the veterans’ facilities, and we’re no closer to getting to the truth about what happened than we were in the heart of the pandemic,” said Pennacchio (R-24).

“Governor Murphy has repeatedly referred to an eventual investigation of his pandemic decisions as a ‘post-mortem,’ which is a post-death examination. Even he seems to recognize that his orders for nursing homes and veterans’ homes to take sick patients at the start of the COVID crisis proved deadly,” Pennacchio continued. “We deserve to know why he took that step and fully understand the devastating impact of that order.”

“After the Governor’s fateful directive requiring nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients and prohibiting administrators from testing for the virus, 10,000 vulnerable seniors were lost, including more than 200 in veterans’ homes operated by the state,” the GOP caucus announced.

“Now that the public health emergency is over and there is no imminent threat from the virus, the families of the victims in those facilities are owed the detailed investigation the governor promised repeatedly but continues to sidestep,” said Durr (R-3). “Grieving families haven’t forgotten, and neither have we. That’s why we need a committee with subpoena power. There is still plenty of unfinished business.”

“State residents feel like the Governor is giving them the run-around. It is disrespectful and indefensible,” said Pennacchio, who has been pressing for a bipartisan Senate investigative committee since May 2020. “How about the people in my district were more concerned about how their parents and grandparents were slaughtered in nursing homes because of State policies than the legislatures obsession with Woke policies of protecting prisoners.”

“It is becoming more of a bipartisan effort to get to the truth,” said a hopeful Pennacchio. “This is about people, not politics. The Democrats in the Legislature are protecting their Governor when New Jersey families should be the priority. Both sides of the aisle should come together and pass SR-48. Murphy needs to know it is time to come clean.”

In December 2021, New Jersey became the first state to pay damages to the surviving family members of nursing home residents who died of COVID at state government-run nursing home facilities. That situation by itself would justify an independent investigation by state legislators into the state's COVID nursing home deaths during the period the Murphy admininstration's copycat version of Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly directive was in effect.

Despite some bipartisan support, New Jersey's legislature, under the control of Governor Murphy's Democratic party, has already established a track record against probing the impact of Murphy's copycat deadly directive at nursing homes in the state, deferring to an ongoing probe by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Little news about the federal probe has come forward in the months since it began, which raises the question of whether President Biden's DOJ is willing to pursue cases that may harm the political interests of Biden's Democratic Party. That probe appears to have stalled since early October 2021.

28 March 2022: NY Nursing Home Case Involving COVID Death Will Move Forward

Nursing home case involving COVID death will move forward

This report is from 21 March 2022. This is the first lawsuit we've seen involving a nursing home resident who became infected and died from COVID-19 during the period Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect.

A judge has ruled a lawsuit against a Buffalo nursing home, for a COVID-19 patient death, can move forward.

A complaint was originally filed in April 2021 by Cecelia Robertson on behalf of the estate of her sister.

64-year-old Annette Herron died of COVID at the Humboldt House and Rehabilitation Nursing Center in April 2020....

The nursing home attempted to have the complaint tossed out, arguing the state's Emergency Disaster Treatment Protection Act provided "immunity" to health care providers from potential liability from COVID.

But State Supreme court Justice Jeannette Ogden rejected the argument, allowing the case to move forward.

“The defendants argued that the case should be dismissed because they were protected by the immunity law. We argued that they weren’t. That it was repealed and that it intended to be retroactive as well as the fact that our claims for gross negligence was not included under the immunity law even if it did still exist,” Ciaccio remarked.

One year ago, March 2021, the state senate voted to repeal the immunity law and it was signed by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo last April. That was around the same time the Cuomo administration was facing a federal investigation over nursing home deaths.

In stripping away the legal immunity that Andrew M. Cuomo gifted to hospital and nursing home operators, this case represents a bellwether event for families seeking justice for what happened to the loved ones they lost. We're surprised the story hasn't yet been covered by larger news outlets - we discovered it during our weekend sweep of stories from smaller outlets.

While the case focuses on alleged neglect and abuse at the nursing home, it will be interesting to see how long it will be before Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly directive is named as a contributing factor. We can see where either the plaintiff or the defendant might make that connection in arguing their sides of the case.

If that happens in one case, it will happen in all the others that follow it. One might say "like fire through dry grass", if we borrow Andrew M. Cuomo's turn of phrase from 29 March 2020, just four days after his deadly directive and four days before he gifted legal immunity to the powerful political lobby of hospital and nursing home operators.

28 March 2022: Opinion - Cuomo Lucky He Escaped Punishment for COVID Nursing Home Deaths

Cuomo for governor? He’s lucky he escaped punishment for COVID nursing home deaths (opinion)

Staten Island's Tom Wrobleski takes on Andrew M. Cuomo's hints he wants to return to New York's Executive Mansion after he resigned in disgrace rather than face being impeached by the state legislature. Here's the central portion of his critique of Cuomo's leadership failures as New York's governor:

Cuomo created a toxic work environment. He faced legal peril because of the accusations. He’d lost the moral authority to lead. He couldn’t continue as governor.

But as bad as the harassment allegations were, the Cuomo-created controversy surrounding COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes gave New Yorkers a true picture of what the former governor is made of. And none of it was good.

A Cuomo policy in March of 2020 forced nursing homes to accept potentially COVID-positive patients from hospitals. The nursing homes weren’t even allowed to test the incoming patients for the virus.

Imagine that. People these days run to a COVID testing site every time they have a sniffle, cough or a sore throat. But nursing homes weren’t allowed to test people for the virus at the very height of the deadly pandemic.

It was later revealed that Cuomo and his staffers hid the truth about the number of virus deaths in nursing homes out of fear that their horrific, misguided policy would be blamed.

The people died, Cuomo said. Who cares where they died?

This is an American tragedy that has never been fully addressed. How many family members suffered the loss of a loved one because of Cuomo’s policy?

The best estimate we've seen puts the number of excess COVID deaths among New York's nursing home residents in the hundreds, if not thousands. Those are deaths that would not have occurred if not for the effect of Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive. The number of family members who suffered a loss of a loved one because of Cuomo's policy is therefore well into the thousands.

26 March 2022: Opinion - Cuomo's Obligation to COVID Victims' Families

Andrew Cuomo’s obligation to COVID victims’ families

This op-ed is by Peter Arbeeny, one of the surviving family members whose father died after being infected with COVID-19 at the nursing home where he lived during the period Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect.

Written in the form of a letter to Cuomo, he retells the story of the death of his father and puts in the context of the policies Andrew M. Cuomo and his administration enacted. Here's an extended excerpt:

I’ve seen you sticking your feet back in the waters of public life with some high-profile speeches and ads. It reminded me of something. Today marks the two-year anniversary of your March 25, 2020, directive forcing nursing homes to admit COVID-19-positive patients at a time when, lacking the proper resources‚ such as basic staffing, PPE and infection control processes, the homes were not adequately equipped to do so.

Can we talk about that, please? I know you’d rather attack Attorney General Tish James for what you view as a political hit job. But the nursing home mandate is painful and personal to me, because I believe it led directly to the death of my father, Norman Arbeeny. My father was in Cobble Hill Nursing Home in Brooklyn for reasons unrelated to COVID, and less than 24 hours after we took him home, he became sick. He passed away before his COVID-19 test came back positive. Because he died at home, his death was never included in the nursing home death toll, even though that was clearly where he contracted the virus.

Instead of admitting the March 25 directive — which the Health Department reversed — was a mistake, so that we could all learn and grow, you and your administration proceeded to falsify nursing home death numbers. State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli’s newly released audit shows the multiple ways your Health Department intentionally hid the true number of deaths from the public and failed to account for approximately 4,100 lives lost due to COVID-19 in nursing homes. DiNapoli said, “Our audit findings are extremely troubling. The public was misled by those at the highest level of state government through distortion and suppression of the facts when New Yorkers deserved the truth.”

It is clear from the comptroller’s report that playing with the numbers made New York’s performance look better than other states’ — while helping boost your reputation as a bold pandemic warrior and ultimately sell copies of “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Not that so many were sold.

Yet when my family was denied answers by your administration, we spoke up loudly and demonstrated. Your spokesman accused us of being right-wing agitators. Do you really stand by that?

Even though our feelings were hurt, we invited you to our father’s family home in Brooklyn multiple times, to discuss our beloved father and the way for families like us to receive empathy from our governor. We only wanted closure — and to make sure something like this could never happen again.

It didn’t happen. Instead of visiting my family in Brooklyn this anniversary month, you visited a church in Brooklyn to complain about being a victim of “cancel culture.” You apologized for being unaware that your behavior towards the women who accused you of sexual misconduct was “politically incorrect.” But you still haven’t frankly apologized for the nursing home debacle. Maybe then, as you say God isn’t finished with you yet, the surviving families are not finished with you yet.

There's more, but we think what makes Arbeeny's op-ed stand out is that it could only be written as it was because Andrew M. Cuomo has neither accepted responsibility nor has been held accountable for the deadly consequences of the 25 March 2020 directive he implemented during the coronavirus pandemic.

25 March 2022: Two Year Anniversary of Deadly Directive

Two years ago, the administration of Andrew M. Cuomo issued a deadly directive. It forced New York nursing homes to blindly admit COVID patients being dumped out of New York hospitals to free up their bed space, even though New York had access to thousands more beds for patients that went unused throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

In doing so, Andrew M. Cuomo used the force of New York's state government to introduce infections from the highly contagious SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus into the residences of the portion of the population most at risk of dying if they became infected. The consequences of hundreds, if not thousands, of additional deaths from COVID than would have occurred without the deadly directive was easily predictable. Cuomo knew the risk, and did it anyway, also abusing his power in office to cover-up the consequences of his and his administration's actions from the very beginning.

Though he was later forced to resign in disgrace as New York's governor, an action Cuomo chose to avoid being impeached over credible allegations of sexual harassment raised by multiple women, he has not yet been held accountable for the consequences of his COVID nursing home deaths scandal, nor his attempt to cover it up.

For a general overview of Andrew M. Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals, see the timeline entry for the Major Milestones in Governor Cuomo's Nursing Home Deaths Scandals. We're overdue in updating it to capture the events that have transpired since his resignation, but will do so over the next several weeks.

24 March 2022: NY Pols Call for Probe of Cuomo COVID Nursing Home Deaths

NY pols mark 2 years after ‘killer’ Cuomo nursing home order, demand probe

A bipartisan group of NY politicians are calling for an independent probe of Andrew M. Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals on the eve of the second anniversary of Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive. Here's an excerpt from this report:

During a press conference in Albany, an ideologically diverse coalition rallied behind a bill to designate March 25 as “We Care Remembrance Day,” and another to create a body tasked with studying the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic response on deaths in nursing homes.

Friday marks exactly two years since the state Department of Health under then-commissioner Howard Zucker implemented a directive that required nursing homes to readmit residents who tested positive for the coronavirus.

“It wasn’t just an executive order — it was a declaration of eldercide in the state of New York,” charged Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens), a fierce Cuomo critic whose uncle died in April 2020 of COVID-19 in a Flushing nursing home.

“This executive order was one of the biggest mistakes in the history of the state of New York,” Kim said.

Indeed, it was. The report provides a summary of the consequences of the deadly directive:

The infamous state Department of Health order, rescinded under public pressure on May 10, 2020, forced sickened seniors into facilities housing those most vulnerable to COVID-19 and increased the death toll among residents of them, according to a New York State Bar Association report.

It led to a spike of “several hundred and possibly more than 1,000” fatalities in state-regulated nursing homes, according to a watchdog report released in February 2021.

Here's what the politicians propose to do about it:

... a bipartisan group of state lawmakers are backing legislation (S. 2067/A. 3162) that would establish “a temporary state commission to study and investigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic response on deaths in nursing homes.”

Unfortunately, the bipartisan group of politicians don't have enough votes among themselves to pass the bill establishing a commission to probe Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals. New York's Assembly and State Senate are dominated by members of the state Democratic Party, for whom such a probe would adversely impact the interests of party members holding positions within the state government, particularly at New York's Department of Health.

We don't think they're doing themselves any favors by taking that position. Yet that's what they're choosing to do, from replacement NY governor Kathy Hochul on down. Then again, that's why they ousted Cuomo over sexual harassment allegations instead of the much more serious nursing home deaths scandals - it provided the means to surgically limit the damage to their apparent interest in holding as much power in New York's state government as they can.

24 March 2022: Hochul Seeks to Pay Legal Fees for Ex-Cuomo Staffers

Hochul seeks to pay $5 million in legal fees for ex-Cuomo staffers

This report describes replacement NY Governor Kathy Hochul's efforts to pay the legal bills of Andrew M. Cuomo's staffers, in what looks like her putting the financial interests of Democratic party insiders/Cuomo staffers ahead of New York taxpayers. The following excerpt shows how bad legal advice from one of Cuomo's attorneys, who also happened to be on the state government payroll, led a number of staffers to hire private attorneys to defend their tangental roles in Andrew M. Cuomo's multiple scandals.

Gov. Kathy Hochul is seeking to spend up to $5 million in taxpayer money to pay the legal bills of dozens of current and former state employees who got caught up in the sexual harassment scandal that forced ex-Gov Andrew Cuomo from office, The Post has learned....

The state workers hired private lawyers on the advice of Cuomo’s former special counsel and senior adviser Beth Garvey after James launched a probe that led to a blockbuster report in which she accused the thrice-elected governor of sexually harassing 11 current or former state employees, the source said.

Cuomo has denied any wrongdoing but admitted in his resignation speech, “There are generational and cultural shifts that I just didn’t fully appreciate.”

None of the legal retainer agreements signed by the workers were pre-approved by the Comptroller’s Office and several of them have been unable to obtain reimbursement for their bills, the source said.

Had the staffers received better legal advice, directing them to obtain approval from the Comptroller's office before hiring their own private attorneys, this situation could have been avoided. And because they followed the advice they were given, they were screwed....

“Upon taking office, we conducted a thorough and extensive legal review and determined there was no legal basis to authorize these contracts and make these payments,” spokeswoman Hazel Crampton-Hays said.

But not, if they set aside funds to pay for any of these staffers' private lawyers, the state might be put on the hook for the actions of the staffers who are intricately involved in Andrew M. Cuomo's scandals, such as former Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa:

It’s unclear if Hochul will try to prevent DeRosa or others accused by James of taking “retaliatory” actions against Cuomo’s accusers from getting their bills paid, with the source saying “it’s premature” but adding that Hochul was reviewing all “legal options.”

We think Hochul isn't going to be capable of separating the unfortunate from the corrupt in determining which lawyers will be paid among all of Andrew M. Cuomo's staffers.

Additional Sources

The Wall Street Journal has deeper coverage of the story.

21 March 2022: Editorial - DiNapoli Audit Is Final Nail in Andrew M. Cuomo's Political Coffin

DiNapoli’s belated nursing-home audit the final nail in Cuomo’s political coffin

The New York Post's editors point to NYS Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli's audit of Andrew M. Cuomo's leadership performance during the coronavirus pandemic as Exhibit 1 in the case against Cuomo having any political future in New York. Here's the introduction:

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is reportedly considering a run against Gov. Kathy Hochul, but a devastating audit Tuesday by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli should nip that crazy notion in the bud.

Instead of providing model “leadership” in the fight against COVID, as Cuomo continues to pretend he did, DiNapoli says New York’s response at nursing homes was among the worst in the nation.

Plus, the comptroller charges Team Cuomo with politicizing the Department of Health — intentionally misleading the public and suppressing facts in reporting COVID deaths at nursing homes.

DOH “was not transparent,” the audit states bluntly. It “routinely underreported death counts,” by as much as 100%. From April 2020 to February 2021, it failed to account for 4,100 nursing-home lives lost to the virus, falling “far short” of its “moral” responsibilities.

And here's the editors' bottom line:

At least it’s another blow to any Cuomo comeback. The ex-gov brags that he’s escaped criminal charges for all those allegations of sexual abuse. But the scathing reports of his nursing-home fiasco are indictment enough: Andrew Cuomo should never hold any political office again.

Indeed. He shouldn't.

21 March 2022: Editorial — Investigate New York's Department of Health

Editorial — Investigate the DOH: State legislators must look into public health officials’ actions

The editors of NNY360 call for elected officials to investigate New York's Department of Health for their role in contributing to excess COVID deaths that resulted from their implementation abnd enforcement of Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive.

Many Americans held Cuomo up an example of an experienced public servant calmly steering the ship through perilous waters. He published a book titled “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic” in October of that year. He also received the International Emmy Founders Award from the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his daily briefings.

But in key aspects, Cuomo’s demeanor throughout the health care crisis was a charade. While projecting a level-headed approach, he was misleading New Yorkers about what was occurring in nursing homes.

State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli last week released the findings of an audit conducted on how the state Department of Health presented information on the coronavirus, mostly under the direction of then-state Health Commissioner Howard A. Zucker. The report confirmed that deaths of nursing home residents was undercounted by thousands of individuals.

“The state Department of Health was unprepared to respond to infectious disease outbreaks at nursing homes, even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit New York, an audit released today by New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli found. DiNapoli said that a persistent lack of funding for public health over the last decade forced DOH to operate without critical information systems and staff that could have identified and helped limit the spread of COVID-19 at nursing homes,” according to a news release issued Tuesday by DiNapoli’s office. “State auditors also found that DOH did not provide the public with accurate COVID-19 death counts and became entangled in the undercounting of those deaths as the [Executive Chamber] took control of information provided to the public. DOH would not provide auditors with a breakdown by name of the nursing home residents who died from COVID-19, and the actual number of nursing home residents who died is still uncertain. The audit revealed that, on many key indicators, New York significantly trailed other states in surveying nursing homes and developing strategies to stop infections from spreading in facilities.”

The incidence of undercounting nursing home deaths was first documented a year ago by the office of state Attorney General Letitia A. James. Cuomo resigned in August as a result of another report indicating that he sexually harassed and assault several women, but the revelations over the nursing home scandal further eroded people’s faith in his actions.

It’s unacceptable that state Health Commissioner Dr. Mary T. Bassett refuses to conduct an internal investigation into this matter. Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul and state legislators must launch one themselves.

Zucker and other public health officials sat by silently as Cuomo distorted the narrative of what was going on. We need to know how this was allowed to happen and what will be done to prevent it from occurring again.

The absence of any probe of Andrew M. Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals remains the biggest political failing of legislators and Cuomo's successors in the Executive Mansion. There's no legitimate excuse for not conducting and independent and comprehensive investigation of how the deadly directive came to be enacted and was enforced.

20 March 2022: Opinion - Impeach Andrew Cuomo - Now

Impeach Andrew Cuomo — now

The New York Daily News gave Ana Maria Archila, who is running to be New York's Lieutentant Governor, a platform. After going through a display of narcissistic vanity, she used it to demand the post-resignation impeachment of Andrew M. Cuomo, which we think would not be legal under New York's state constitution.

Here's a sample of what she had to say on the topic:

... [Cuomo's] attempt to return to public office without accepting responsibility or facing real accountability is offensive and grotesque, and he must be stopped.

The good news is that there’s a clear path to preventing his political return. The Assembly, which had begun the process of impeachment before he resigned, should now move immediately to impeach Cuomo. Once they have acted, the High Court of Impeachment, made up of all sitting senators save the majority leader, plus the members of the Court of Appeals, should then proceed with a trial. A Senate conviction could, and should, permanently bar Cuomo from holding statewide public office again.

While the process of impeachment after resignation has not been tested in New York before, and the ever-litigious Cuomo would likely challenge it, there is precedent in common law and practice that permits it. It is also just common sense; as many Americans understood after Donald Trump’s actions before, during and after Jan. 6, simply resigning should not absolve a public official of facing consequences for abuses of power. That would make avoiding accountability all too easy.

Legislators should therefore resume their proceedings to ensure real accountability for Cuomo’s abuses of power. Every action he takes further demonstrates his refusal to accept responsibility for the harm he’s caused. If lawmakers won’t do it, no one will.

Archila's position is clearly outside the mainstream thinking of the very left-leaning Democratic Party members who make up the majority in New York's Assembly and State Senate. With that being the case, we anticipate Archila will neither draw support for Andrew M .Cuomo's impeachment nor find electoral success in her campaign to be New York's next lieutenant governor.

19 March 2022: JCOPE Orders Cuomo to Repay Pandemic "Leadership" Book Deal Millions to Publisher

Ethics commission orders Cuomo to repay $5.1M from book deal

New York's Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) has opened a new legal front in its battle to force Andrew M. Cuomo to give up the millions he received to write his pandemic "leadership" book deal, after confirming he lied to the commission about using state resources to produce the book. The following excerpt describes what is different in the commission's new attempt from its previous effort:

New York's ethics commission passed a motion late Friday again ordering former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to repay $5.1 million in book royalties. And this time, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics is taking a near-certain legal battle with Cuomo into its own hands.

The motion was proposed by Commissioner David McNamara at the beginning of the specially called meeting on Friday afternoon. McNamara detailed the motion, then they went into executive session, where it's possible there were minor amendments during the confidential portion of the meeting that have not yet become public.

Cuomo is already stating that he will contest JCOPE's order in court, and will not comply....

As described by McNamara at the beginning of the meeting, JCOPE is ordering the former governor to repay the millions in book proceeds to the publisher, Penguin Random House, within one month. The publisher struck the lucrative 2020 deal with Cuomo to publish "American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic."

Instead of state Attorney General Letitia James' office enforcing the order and deciding how to handle the directive to recoup the proceeds, as the commissioners prescribed in an original Dec. 14 motion, they have now authorized JCOPE itself to hire outside counsel to enforce the repayment. While the attorney general's office has traditionally been charged with enforcing such orders, JCOPE commissioners contend they, too, have that authority.

McNamara's motion left the door open for James to enforce the original December order, should her office decide to do so.

JCOPE's previous effort was hampered in part by the demand the money Cuomo received be potentially distributed to New York's state treasury, which stretched the commission's defined powers. By directing the funds Cuomo received be returned to the publisher, the commission is on much firmer legal ground in its new disgorgement order.

Less certain is the commission's ability to prevail in court. Under the political influence of Andrew M. Cuomo over the first 10+ years of its history, JCOPE has been an especially weak agency for rectifying ethical wrongdoing among the state government's power elite. As such, the commission is breaking new ground now that it is out from under Cuomo's influence, which contributes to the uncertainty for success in its actions.

18 March 2022: Opinion - Creepy Andrew Cuomo Won’t Stop Gaslighting New Yorkers

Creepy Andrew Cuomo Just Can’t Stop Gaslighting New Yorkers

This opinion piece by the Daily Beast's Harry Siegel has the subhead "The man whose policies as governor created nursing home deaths he took pains to hide is up in arms about "social death penalty". The following excerpt contrasts Cuomo's idea of being subjected to a "social death penalty" with the actual death penalty Cuomo inflicted upon nursing home residents through his deadly 25 March 2020 directive and subsequent cover-up:

Having stepped down with $18 million in campaign funds still at his disposal, he’s running TV ads promoting himself and his decade as governor. He’s also giving speeches, with one Thursday as the guest of an infamously virulent homophobe. Before an audience including a former lawmaker expelled from the New York City Council for sexual harassment and ethics violations, the former governor decried a “cancel culture” he called “a social death penalty” and “modern day stoning.”

In addition to the $18 million in campaign funds, Cuomo left office with the $5.1 million he was paid for his since-pulped quickie book on the “Leadership Lessons” he supposedly provided while “leading” New York through a pandemic that killed nearly 70,000 New Yorkers. The death toll included thousands of nursing home deaths that resulted from his policies while he did his damndest to keep that information from coming out.

That was a death penalty, and not a “social” one.

But wait, there's more....

“When people die, it’s the No. 1 issue,” Cuomo said, about crime. It takes chutzpah for the governor for the last 10 years to say things are terrible because of the politicians.

It takes nerve for him to say that about “when people die” given the deaths on his watch from a virus that he kept trying to wish away, long after the threat was clear (again, sound familiar?). He just droned on about how “Worse than the virus right now is the fear pandemic“ and then, after finally acknowledging the danger, needlessly created deadly delays to bigfoot New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

As he goes about his gaslighting campaign, which we think is really aimed at influencing the potential pool of jurors who will decide the outcome of the civil lawsuits he expects to face, Andrew M. Cuomo is following both a PR and a legal strategy. Andrew M. Cuomo desperately needs better PR people and more legal help.

18 March 2022: Cuomo Staffers Try Escape Being Defendants in Trooper's Sexual Harassment Lawsuit

Top Cuomo aides seek to get out of lawsuit filed by female trooper

This report covers an attempt by two of Andrew M. Cuomo's top staffers, former Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa and chief PR flack Richard Azzopardi, to escape being held responsible in a civil lawsuit for their actions related to Andrew M. Cuomo's alleged sexual harassment of a female state trooper.

Here's an excerpt (do click through to the article to read the whole thing):

Two of Andrew M. Cuomo's top former aides are seeking to be removed as defendants in a lawsuit filed by a State Police investigator who accused the former governor of sexually harassing, kissing and inappropriately touching her while she was assigned to his protective detail.

An attorney for former Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa and Richard Azzopardi, who remains a spokesman for Cuomo, wrote a letter to U.S. District Court this week indicating he will file a motion to have the federal complaint against them dismissed. DeRosa is accused in the lawsuit of aiding and abetting Cuomo's alleged misconduct, and both are accused of retaliating against the female trooper.

The accusations by the trooper — identified in the attorney general's report as "Trooper 1" — were among the most damaging leveled against Cuomo, who had urged a senior investigator on his protective detail to offer the now-31-year-old female investigator a job on the special unit that protects the governor. Two years ago, when pressed about the governor's role in getting the trooper on his detail after meeting her at an event in New York City, Cuomo had denied having any role in her transfer.

The attorney general's report also confirmed information that Times Union had asked Cuomo's office in 2020: the State Police's minimum qualification rules had been changed in order to get the female trooper on the governor's protective detail. She alleged Cuomo later routinely engaged in inappropriate conduct, including touching her, kissing her on the cheek and asking her questions about clothing, personal life and marriage.

Paul Shechtman, an attorney for DeRosa and Azzopardi, contends that neither DeRosa nor Azzopardi retaliated against the trooper, whose identity is being withheld by the Times Union. He said they were "private citizens" at the time they made comments accusing the trooper or her attorneys of trying to "extort" money from the governor.

Acting Nassau County District Attorney Joyce Smith described the female trooper's allegations as "credible, deeply troubling, but not criminal under New York law" when she announced she would not pursue criminal charges on 23 December 2021. Cuomo's own personal attorney, Rita Glavin, has publicly acknowledged Cuomo "may have very well touched the state trooper’s back", in which "she may have understood it one way and he understood it another way", which is slimy lawyerese for admitting there is real substance behind the trooper's allegations.

Since then, the state of New York has passed several laws to address the legal deficiencies in the state's laws for sexual harassment that provided the loopholes that effectively allowed Cuomo to escape criminal prosecution.

Of the two staffers, Azzopardi had not been included as part of the original lawsuit filing. That changed thanks to his incredibly tone-deaf statements made on behalf of Andrew M. Cuomo several weeks ago, which earned his place as a defendant in the lawsuit.

Here's relevant background from the timeline:

• 12 June 2021: Cuomo's Protective Detail Interviewed by Atty General Investigators
• 3 August 2021: NY Attorney General: Cuomo Sexually Harassed Multiple Women
• 4 August 2021: Team Cuomo's Cover Up of Cuomo Harassment of Female State Trooper
• 8 August 2021: Cuomo's Attorney Admits Victim #11's Allegation of Touching "May" Be True
• 23 October 2021: State Trooper Heading Governor's Protective Detail Replaced
• 30 November 2021: Cuomo's PR Flack Called Out for False Statements
• 23 December 2021: Cuomo Won’t Be Charged for "Credible, Deeply Troubling" Sexual Harassment of Female State Trooper
• 17 February 2022: First Civil Lawsuit Filed by Alleged Cuomo Sexual Harassment Victim
• 18 February 2022: Andrew M. Cuomo's PR Staff Could Dearly Cost Cuomo in Civil Lawsuit

This story has all the elements confirming why Andrew M. Cuomo desperately needs better PR people and more legal help.

18 March 2022: JCOPE Tries Again to Get NYS AG to Enforce Order Compelling Cuomo to Give Up Book Deal Proceeds

Ethics chair makes last push to force Cuomo to repay book profits

The chair of the Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) is still trying to get NYS Attorney General Letitia James to enforce an December 2021 order issued by JCOPE aimed at stripping Andrew M. Cuomo of the millions he received for his pandemic "leadership" book deal.

As New York's ethics commission mulls a new strategy to force ex-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to repay $5.1 million in book royalties, its chairman is making a final push to have state Attorney General Letitia James take action following months of resistance by her office.

According to a person with knowledge of the matter, Jose Nieves, the chairman of the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, sent a letter to James on Thursday again asking her office to enforce a JCOPE order demanding Cuomo disgorge the royalties from writing his 2020 book, "American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic."

Nieves' letter comes as JCOPE commissioners are set to hold a special meeting on Friday. Ahead of the meeting, a draft resolution is circulating among commissioners who could vote on it at the meeting....

In his letter to James, Nieves was said to have written that JCOPE possessed the legal authority to enforce a repayment order itself, but did not itself possess the "legal resources" to proactively stop Cuomo from enriching himself "unjustly."

The draft resolution soon to be considered by JCOPE's commissioners would use different legal approach to force Cuomo to give up the millions he received from the book deal, one that would not require the participation of the state attorney general's office. We anticipate we'll be following that potential outcome up in the near future.

16 March 2022: Opinion - Nursing Home Audit Highlights Cuomo Pandemic Failures

Churchill: Nursing home audit highlights Cuomo failures

In this opinion piece, Albany Times-Union columnist Chris Churchill describes the new and damning information about Andrew M. Cuomo's pandemic leadership that's contained in NY state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli's audit report of COVID nursing home deaths in New York during the coronavirus pandemic.

The DiNapoli audit, released Tuesday, is a detailed reminder of the awful behavior and another rebuttal to Team Cuomo claims that the former governor was undone by political subterfuge. Read the report and the real reasons for Cuomo's downfall become clear.

But the audit is more than just a reminder of an old scandal. It breaks ground in highlighting how New York was poorly prepared for the pandemic, especially in regard to nursing homes, and how badly the state responded when COVID-19 arrived.

Among other findings, the report details poor Heath Department oversight of nursing home conditions and finds that lines of coordination with local health officials were often broken. It also found that New York significantly trailed other states in developing strategies to keep the virus out of nursing homes.

The report also says this: "The department was plagued by a threatening environment of intimidation, closed ranks, and lack of commitment to openness — at the expense of the public's trust."

The audit doesn't just highlight the Cuomo administration's dishonesty, then. It shows its incompetence.

The timing for the former governor is lousy, given that he only recently launched a return to public life. In fact, a new Cuomo ad attempts to portray the Democrat as an effective commander who "led this nation through the frightening COVID-19 crisis."

The DiNapoli audit renders that already laughable claim ludicrous, which helps explain why a Cuomo spokesman was quick to attack the report as motivated by politics. As always, you see, our former governor is the victim, the poor fellow.

DiNapoli's audit findings reveal the Cuomo administration's decade-long groundwork of failed leadership and neglect that ensured New York's nursing homes were almost universally unprepared to prevent the spread of coronavirus infections within them. Deficiencies that quickly became apparent very early during the coronavirus pandemic and were known by top Cuomo administration officials when they imposed Cuomo's infamous deadly 25 March 2020 directive.

That's a key reason why Cuomo gifted legal immunity for COVID deaths to the state's hospital and nursing home lobby a week later, which is the act we believe marks the true beginning of the administration's cover-up of the excess COVID deaths that resulted among New York's nursing home residents during the period it was in effect. While many point to Cuomo's pandemic "leadership" book deal as a factor in driving the cover-up, we think it really provided Cuomo with a strong incentive to both impose his "leadership" over the state Department of Health's response and to continue the cover-up of nursing home deaths for as long as possible.

The cover-up lasted until his administration was forced to acknowledge them on 11 February 2021.

DiNapoli's audit also confirms something else we've been driving home here at the timeline. Cuomo's deadly directive required the complicit cooperation of hundreds of state government employees, particularly at the state's Department of Health. New York has a very long way to go in fully cleaning house following Andrew M. Cuomo's decade of neglect and abuse of power in service of his political interests.

16 March 2022: Chris Cuomo Seeks $125 Million from CNN Over His Firing

Chris Cuomo Serves CNN With $125M Arbitration Demand

We've reached the bottom story of the day, which here at the timeline, means we get to talk about the hapless, journalism ethics-challenged Chris Cuomo, the younger brother of the resigned-in-disgrace former New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo. In this episode, Chris Cuomo is seeking to arbitrate his way to a $125 million payday from his former employer, CNN. Here's the story from The Hollywood Reporter:

Former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo is demanding $125 million from CNN following his termination from the cable news channel last year.

In a demand for arbitration filed with the dispute resolution giant JAMS, Cuomo alleges that his firing was not justified and that former CNN president Jeff Zucker failed to abide by the terms of Cuomo’s contract “by failing to instruct CNN employees not to disparage Cuomo.”

In fact, the complaint alleges that there was a “calculated campaign to smear Cuomo and destroy his reputation” by some CNN staff.

The $125 million claim, filed by Cuomo’s attorneys at Freedman + Taitelman and Clayman Rosenberg, includes $15 million that he says is owed for the remainder of his contract, but also “future wages lost as a result of CNN’s efforts to destroy his reputation in violation of the Agreement.”

By "disparage", Chris Cuomo really means "accurately describing his actions supporting his powerful politician brother while working at CNN as a 'journalist'".

Cuomo's main argument supporting his claim to $125 million is "my bosses did it too!"

“CNN, including Zucker and [CMO Allison] Gollust, knew of Cuomo’s role as a confidant and sounding board to his brother, and the details of his interactions with Gov. Cuomo and his staff, long before the transcripts of the NYAG investigation were publicly disclosed,” the arbitration filing states. “Cuomo had no reason to believe that his assistance to Gov. Cuomo was inconsistent with CNN’s or Turner’s policies nor its expectations, especially given the fact that Zucker and Gollust had encouraged him to do so and had themselves provided advice to Gov. Cuomo.”

The last we checked, both Jeffrey Zucker and Allison Gollust were likewise fired/compelled to resign for their actions in support of the political interests of Andrew M. Cuomo. As for the merits of Chris Cuomo's $125 million arbitration demand, we'll observe that his future value to any employer in the news media was greatly diminished when his powerful politician brother resigned in disgrace.

For more on the bottom story of the day, here's another angle, focusing on Cuomo's sniping at his former colleagues who remain employed at CNN at this writing:

• Chris Cuomo Takes Aim at Jake Tapper, Brian Stelter, Don Lemon in $125 Million Demand Against CNN

16 March 2022: Opinion - Cuomo Disgraced. Not Cancelled.

Andrew Cuomo Thinks He Got “Canceled.” Actually, the Word Is “Disgraced.”

This opinion piece by Ross Barkan appeared in the very left-leaning Jacobin magazine. Here's the timeline's obligatory selection of excerpts:

Andrew Cuomo, New York’s disgraced former governor, is hoping to mount a political comeback. But his posturing as a victim of “cancel culture” can’t change the fact that his comeuppance was richly deserved....

The open secret of Cuomo’s eleven years in power is that he was, often, a lousy governor.

He failed to contain the initial spread of COVID, dithering until it was too late, and engineered an egregious cover-up of deaths in nursing homes, which helped lead to his downfall....

Beyond the fact that Cuomo is so unrepentant for his behavior, what makes his attempted comeback dubious is his lack of ideas. Cuomo has nothing to offer and nothing to say. He has no genius strategy for helping Democrats avoid a midterm wipeout — he sabotaged Democrats in his own state and won elections comfortably with the sort of fundraising practices that are forbidden in Congress. He cannot speak credibly on governing or election reform because New York, for much of his tenure, had some of the worst voter laws in America. Cuomo was a master at consolidating power for himself, and occasionally he did wield it for better ends. More often than not, though, he simply acted on petty grievances and stymied real change.

Which is worse: the cover-up of the excess COVID deaths at New York's nursing homes or the policies Cuomo enacted that contributed to them?

16 March 2022: New York Plugs Hole in Laws for Sexual Harassment by Elected Officials

https://www.wxxinews.org/capitol-bureau/2022-03-16/after-cuomo-hochul-signs-anti-sexual-harassment-laws

Influenced by the decision by five county prosecutors to not pursue criminal charges against Andrew M. Cuomo over what they described as "credible" allegations of sexual harassment, which revealed deficiencies in the laws for such misconduct by elected officials, New York's legislature has acted to pass a new law to plug those holes. This report covers replacement NY governor Kathy Hochul's signing of that legislation into state law. Here's an excerpt:

Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a package of anti-sexual harassment bills into law today that, for the first time, hold New York’s elected officials more accountable for workplace misconduct.

Saying everyone has the right to a “safe, secure workplace,” Hochul closed a loophole that made state elected officials exempt from the consequences of sexual harassment, because they were not technically employed by the state or a municipality. The new law makes the state, town or city accountable for the actions of its elected officials.

“Let’s close the loophole once and for all,” Hochul said, adding, public employees in New York will now have “all the protections that are out there in the private sector.”

Another measure sets up a toll-free hotline, where professionals can respond to complaints of sexual harassment in any workplace in the state, and connect victims with experienced attorneys to assist them in pursuing their cases.

Hochul’s predecessor, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, was never mentioned by name during the ceremony. But Cuomo’s resignation last August, after the state attorney general found he sexually harassed 11 women, paved the way for Hochul, then lieutenant governor, to become the first woman to serve as New York's governor. The new laws will apply to governors and everyone else in state government.

Cuomo still denies he did anything wrong.

It's safe to say that without Cuomo's alleged misconduct, which compelled his resignation in disgrace before he could be impeached, these new state laws would not exist.

15 March 2022: NY State Comptroller Confirms Cuomo's Cover-Up of COVID Nursing Home Deaths

Health Agency Under Cuomo ‘Misled the Public’ on Nursing Home Deaths

This report may be one of the first times the New York Times has broken a story related to Andrew M. Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals. In this case, the NYT reports on the New York's State Comptroller's audit of New York's COVID nursing home deaths records, which confirms Cuomo's administration exerted influence to conceal the full extent of COVID deaths that occurred during the period Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect. Here's the meat of the story:

The administration of former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo failed to publicly account for the deaths of about 4,100 nursing home residents in New York during the pandemic, according to an audit released on Tuesday by the state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli.

The audit found that Health Department officials at times underreported the full death toll by as much as 50 percent from April 2020 to February 2021, as Mr. Cuomo faced increasing scrutiny over whether his administration had intentionally concealed the actual number of deaths.

The 41-page report concluded that the Health Department often acquiesced to the narrative Mr. Cuomo and his top officials wanted to promote during the pandemic, sometimes failing to meet its “ethical” and “moral” imperatives to act transparently.

“Our audit findings are extremely troubling,” Mr. DiNapoli said in a statement. “The public was misled by those at the highest level of state government through distortion and suppression of the facts when New Yorkers deserved the truth.”

But there are still problems:

Health officials did not provide auditors with a breakdown by name of the nursing home residents who died from Covid, according to Mr. DiNapoli’s office, and the actual number of nursing home residents who died is still uncertain.

The audit marks the third state inquiry to corroborate how Mr. Cuomo’s administration significantly downplayed the number of nursing home deaths during the pandemic. Those efforts coincided with Mr. Cuomo’s attempts to elevate his public image at the height of his national popularity in 2020, including through daily televised briefings and the publication of a book that burnished his response to the pandemic.

For their part, officials at New York's Department of Health are attempting to lay the full blame for the cover-up of the full extent of COVID deaths at New York's nursing homes on Andrew M. Cuomo and top officials in his administration:

In a 12-page rebuttal to the report’s findings, the Health Department forcefully pushed back against conflating the Cuomo administration’s issues with transparency with the work of the department’s staff and the manner in which they use public health data.

“Whatever criticisms may now be directed at the prior administration relating to issues of transparency, or the particular categories of information that were publicly disclosed, those ultimately were matters for the executive chamber of the prior administration and not department personnel,” wrote Kristin M. Proud, the department’s acting executive deputy commissioner.

Unlike the immersive coverage it provided for covered Andrew M. Cuomo's sexual harassment scandals, this report was written by just one employee of the NYT's reporting staff. Serious reporting on Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals remains a low priority affair at the newspaper.

15 March 2022: JCOPE Tries Again to Force Cuomo to Give Up Proceeds from Corrupt Pandemic "Leadership" Book Deal Profits

To force Cuomo to repay millions, ethics commission mulls new tact

This report covers another front in Andrew M. Cuomo's ongoing legal battles, updating the status of the Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) ongoing efforts to force Cuomo to give up the millions in income he gained through his COVID pandemic book deal. Here's a summary of what JCOPE's commissioners are now considering for their next steps forward, which relates to a meeting they held on Friday, 11 March 2022:

At a special meeting on Friday, commissioners of the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics may adopt a new strategy in their attempt to force ex-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to repay $5.1 million in book royalties, according to people with knowledge of the deliberations.

Some of the ethics panel's commissioners are mulling a plan that would cut state Attorney General Letitia James out of the process of seeking the $5.1 million repayment. In December, James' office expressed concern that the commissioners could not seek Cuomo's "disgorgement" of the royalties he earned in 2020 without a full investigation into whether he misused state resources to produce the book — an inquiry that could last months or years.

Under the new plan being considered, the ethics commissioners would revoke their staff's July 2020 approval of Cuomo request to write "American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic." JCOPE would issue an order demanding that the former governor quickly repay the money to the book publisher, Penguin Random House. And instead of James' office enforcing the order and deciding how to handle the sum — as JCOPE prescribed in an original Dec. 14 motion — the commission would potentially hire its own counsel to enforce the repayment.

While a number of JCOPE commissioners are weighing the idea, sources said the plan could change before Friday or be tabled for a future meeting.

Established by Andrew M. Cuomo, JCOPE has a long history of looking the other way at Cuomo's malfeasance in office. Or at least it did, up until Cuomo resigned in disgrace to avoid impeachment over sexual harassment allegations, when the commissioners he had appointed to the body were forced to resign themselves and were replaced. Consequently, JCOPE is trying to establish itself as a credible enforcer of ethics requirements for public officials for the first time after 10+ years of feckless dithering under Cuomo's corrupt influence.

That's to say they new to this whole ethics oversight thing in New York. We'll see how the proposed change in tactics works out.

15 March 2022: After First Ad Fails, Cuomo Tries Again with Another

Former governor Cuomo releases new ad, tries to rehab image

Andrew M. Cuomo's first ad aimed at swaying the pool of potential jurors his legal team expects to face in multiple civil lawsuits brought by the female victims of his alleged sexual harassment of them was something of a bust. Cuomo's PR team has therefore followed up with a new ad, as this report describes. Here's an excerpt:

Cuomo resigned in August of last year, after 11 women came forward to accuse him of sexual harassment, and Attorney General Letitia James issued a scathing report backing up their claims.

Cuomo has denied ever touching anyone inappropriately.

In the new ad, Cuomo speaks directly to voters: “I haven’t been perfect. I’ve made mistakes,” he says.

“But I also made a difference.”

Since he left office, five district attorneys across the state have declined to prosecute Cuomo on the sexual harassment claims. His first ad, which ran for several weeks, argued he was the victim of a politically motivated attack.

Each of the five district attorney stated the sexual harassment charges against Andrew M. Cuomo were credible, with one specifically stating their decision to not prosecute Cuomo on criminal charges was not an exoneration.

Cuomo, as always, desperately needs better PR people and more legal help.

13 March 2022: Editorial - "Cuomo Is Going Nowhere"

Cuomo Is Going Nowhere

This editorial from the Albany Times-Union reveals they realize Andrew M. Cuomo's recent media strategy isn't one that's capable of putting him back into elective office in New York.

So what is the mysterious dark prince up to? Speculation of course, but Cuomo’s not all that complicated when you realize he’s a hard-core addict. He is and always has been addicted to politics and being the man in charge and while he has “many options” as he mentioned a few days ago, the only one that really counts for him is to get back in the game at the same level he left it and with all the speculation about his future he enjoyed before his staggering fall. He wants to be governor again, with people talking about him as presidential material. How realistic is that? Not the point.

So his recent “mergence” into the public eye is not to rehabilitate his image. That just doesn’t make sense. If he were serious about rehabilitation he would have taken an entirely different path forward, following the well traveled mea culpa route, begging for forgiveness. All the stuff his fans wanted him to do, which he conspicuously and rather arrogantly avoided.

The problem with that plan is it takes time and lots of baby steps or it won’t work, and even then doesn’t necessarily get him what he wants. Time is an issue for Cuomo. He’s 64. Realistically, he has a decade and maybe a little more. From the cesspool he’s in now, any meaningful ascendancy has to happen reasonably quickly and that’s not going to happen by a passive strategy. Besides, baby steps and admitting error doesn’t suit his narcissistic ego. He would always be one vicious, cutting remark to a critic from being back in the cesspool. Rehabilitation only works when you can walk the walk.

So instead he’s spending his campaign funds on an ad, and more to come, that looks like it belongs to some nut-job right winger from Trumpland, with half-truths, conspiracies and distortions. Easily refuted stuff. Cuomo’s aim can’t possibly be to turn the minds of the majority of New York voters, since he has already lost big time in the court of public opinion over what he’s peddling in the ad. What his object might be is far more modest, to push his own narrative while discrediting Attorney General Letitia James. Get himself talked about, written about. Build up his base by hammering untruths over and over. Declare his own relevancy. It worked for Trump. Recent polling suggests he is making modest inroads.

Our working theory is Andrew M. Cuomo's recent PR media strategy isn't aimed at getting elected, but is rather an attempt to pre-bias the jury pools who will be deciding the civil litigation cases Cuomo will be facing from the multiple victims of his alleged sexual harassment. Cases that would cost Cuomo multiple millions of dollars in settlements from adverse judgments.

As the Times-Union editors note, the PR effort is chock full of "half-truths, conspiracies and distortions". Andrew M. Cuomo desperately needs better PR people and more legal help.

11 March 2022: Inside CNN's Journalism Ethics Breakdown with Andrew M. Cuomo

'Cuomo-W. Trump-L.': How CNN's Jeff Zucker and His Cronies Manipulated the News

This report describes how Andrew M. Cuomo's influence network member Allison Gollust, Chief Marketing Officer at CNN, exercised her influence at the news network to promote Cuomo's political interests. Let's get to what is perhaps the most notable excerpt of a story that contains multiple examples of how journalism ethics broke down at the news network:

According to one source familiar with the CNN investigation and another who is a Democratic operative, Gollust’s ongoing connections to Gov. Cuomo also raised eyebrows. Two sources familiar with the matter say Gollust and the governor exchanged texts in which they agreed to meet up for drinks on multiple occasions in 2019 and 2020. In early 2020, several months after his split from partner Sandra Lee, Cuomo asked Gollust, “You don’t want to see me now that I’m single?” She replied, “A drink with you would be the best date I’ve had in a while.” Four months later, he fired off a text to Gollust suggesting he be her “pool boy.” She responded that she’d welcome that scenario, and they set up a call. When their texting resumed, Gollust wrote, “That was fun. Sleep well.”

(“It’s no secret that Allison and Governor Cuomo had a friendly relationship after Allison briefly worked for him in 2012,” says Heller. “For Rolling Stone to suggest through innuendo and creative syntax — and no evidence — that there was a sexual relationship between the two in 2020 is disgusting, sexist, and patently false. In fact, Allison was never in the same room as the governor during 2020.” A representative for Cuomo adds, “Allison and the governor were former colleagues and friends, never had a romantic relationship, and it is impossible to have two sources saying otherwise because it is a total fabrication.”)

Gollust’s texts went beyond friends’ banter. When a rumor circulated that Trump was about to shut down New York City, Gollust invited the governor to come on CNN’s New Day the next morning and “squash it.” She quipped to her former boss, “I’m pretty sure I stopped being your publicist 8 years ago, but apparently I still am.” On another occasion, he asked her to critique his press conference.

Heller says, “These are innocuous, mundane conversations that are being spun into a nefarious tale.” But she acknowledges that Gollust asked the governor to help her friend cut through bureaucratic red tape to open a birthing center in Manhattan. Months later, Heller also confirms, Gollust hit up Cuomo with a request involving Billy Joel, who’d once hosted a Cuomo-campaign fundraiser. She prefaced it with “I never ask you for favors, but . . .,” to which Cuomo replied, “Yes, u do ask me for favors, and that’s okay. It’s mutual.”

“It was clear that she leveraged the relationship [with Andrew Cuomo],” says the Democratic operative. “There was a consistent exchange of favors between them.”

This report appeared in Rolling Stone, which has its own sorted history of journalism ethics scandals. This entry was added to the timeline on 13 March 2022.

10 March 2022: New Evidence of Andrew M. Cuomo's COVID "Friends and Family" Scandal Emerges

Chris Cuomo was offered hard-to-get COVID plasma while brother Andrew was governor, emails reveal

This report documents part of Andrew M. Cuomo's "Friends and Family" COVID scandal, in which members of Cuomo's family and close political associates benefitted from the diversion of public health resources during the early phase of the coronavirus pandemic in New York. It also features the journalism ethics-challenged Chris Cuomo, the governor's hapless brother, who hosted CNN's Primetime news broadcast and exercised considerable influence over the news network's coverage of Andrew M. Cuomo's gubernatorial administration during that period. Here are some selected excerpts from the report:

At the height of the pandemic, the CEO of New York’s blood bank personally offered a coronavirus-stricken Chris Cuomo special access to an experimental therapy — virtually unobtainable by anyone unrelated to then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, emails reveal.

The half-billion-dollar New York Blood Center’s boss, Chris Hillyer, offered “convalescent plasma” to the then-governor’s CNN host brother Chris Cuomo, on April 17, 2020.

“Should the Cuomo family elect to take Dr. Hillyer up on his offer, his cell number is [redacted],” Mary Ann Tighe — a real-estate mogul who acted as a go-between — wrote, according to emails obtained by The Post through a Freedom of Information Law request.

During the pandemic’s early days, when no therapeutics or mRNA vaccines were available, scarce convalescent plasma — drawn from people recovered from COVID-19 and laden with potentially life-saving antibodies — was in high demand.

For his part, Chris Cuomo declined the offer of special treatment:

Chris Cuomo, 51 — who wasn’t above taking priority COVID-test house calls from a top state doctor in March 2020, when regular New Yorkers couldn’t get tested for love or money — rejected the blood delivery.

“I dont want to try something that extreme when I Am not dying,” he wrote. “But thanks.

Chris Cuomo, CNN "journalist", never publicly disclosed having received the offer for the special medical treatment. The report also describes how Chris Cuomo influenced Andrew M. Cuomo's media strategy for addressing its COVID nursing home strategies after it blew up nearly a year later in early 2021:

In March 2021, Chris Cuomo advised Executive Chamber staff as they planned a response to an article on the unfolding nursing-home COVID-19 death scandal.

“For this to be effective the … caption must may say something abt times being wrong or being misleading … Then say why … Say you werent given time to respond,” he wrote.

The broadcast journalist was copied on hundreds of emails between government workers and outside advisors — even ones as mundane as making grammatical changes to draft statements.

Episodes like this example are why Chris Cuomo is frequently described as "journalism ethics-challenged" in the timeline.

This story re-emphasizes the extent to which Andrew M. Cuomo's family members and other close political associates benefited from the older Cuomo's political influence in New York.

This entry was added to the timeline on 13 March 2022.

9 February 2022: NY Board of Elections Thinks Cuomo's Running for Office

Cuomo doesn't say whether he's running for office. The Board of Elections implies he is.

This report confirms that Andrew M. Cuomo's recent PR effort involving running television ads and speaking to some 150 congregants of a church in Brooklyn meet New York's Board of Elections' definition of campaign activities.

For the purposes of state Election Law, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is considering a run for office.

"Although former Gov. Cuomo has not announced any explicit plan to run for a specific public office, his conduct fits the definition of candidate set forth in Election Law," New York's Board of Elections Chief Enforcement Counsel Michael L. Johnson wrote in a finding this week regarding a complaint filed by good governments over Cuomo's use of campaign funds following his resignation in August.

Cuomo has not formally declared he is running for office, but he has been mounting a public-relations campaign akin to a political one in recent months. This past week he spoke to a Black congregation in Brooklyn on the first Sunday of Lent. He also has begun running TV ads intended to repair his reputation after his resignation amid mounting scandals and an ongoing impeachment investigation.

"I'm not going anywhere," Cuomo said as he revved up his vehicle and spoke to reporters following the church services. "I said what I said today and that's all I'm going to say today."

Johnson, an appointee of Cuomo, detailed that state Election Law "does not prohibit a former office holder, or anyone else from using campaign funds to test the waters for a future political candidacy."

Give public polling, Cuomo has little prospect of winning any statewide election in New York. We think Cuomo's recent campaign-like activities are really aimed at two objectives:

1. Accessing $16+ million in funds that would otherwise have to sit dormant in his political campaign organization's bank accounts.
2. Executing a PR campaign to influence potential jurors who will decide the civil lawsuits he faces for his alleged sexual harassment of multiple women with the goal of minimizing the cost of settling those cases.

On the first point, it would be interesting to learn how many of Andrew M. Cuomo's family members are employed in any capacity by his campaign organization, as well as whether Cuomo himself is being compensated by the organization, which would indicate the extent to which Cuomo might be using the campaign activities to "launder" the political donations amassed in his campaign organization's bank accounts so he and members of his family can pocket the cash. We already know Cuomo is receiving a personal benefit in the form of the campaign organization's payments to his personal lawyers, which allows him having to pay them to defend himself against the criminal and civil charges he faces related to his personal conduct while governor of New York.

On the second point, it will be interesting to see the extent to which Cuomo's campaign-like activities are directed toward the local jurisdictions where the civil lawsuits he faces will be litigated in court. Such efforts would provide additional confirmation of the second purpose we described above.

8 March 2022: Attorney Claims He Was Fired by Cuomo for Cooperating with State Investigators

Attorney says Cuomo adviser fired him for cooperating in probe

This report is a bit off-tangent for our main areas of interest in covering Andrew M. Cuomo's scandals, but is one we recommend clicking through to read the whole thing. Here's the introduction:

An attorney who worked for Andrew M. Cuomo's administration claims he was fired last year for his cooperation in a state attorney general's investigation that sustained multiple sexual harassment allegations against the former governor.

The 40-year-old attorney, Craig Herskowitz, worked at the U.S. Department of Justice before joining Cuomo's office in December 2019 as an assistant counsel.

In a notice of claim filed against the Executive Chamber in September, Herskowitz said that Beth Garvey, who had been Cuomo's top counsel and senior adviser, notified him on Aug. 12 that he was being terminated from his job after it was determined that remarks he had made nine days earlier to a 25-year-old female colleague constituted sexual harassment.

But in his claim, Herskowitz alleges his firing was payback for testimony he gave last April, when he met with investigators from the attorney general’s office and described a "toxic environment" in the Executive Chamber; he also corroborated statements by Charlotte Bennett, one of several female aides who had accused Cuomo of sexual harassment.

Garvey had assigned Paul Fishman, an executive counsel, to accompany Herskowitz during the interview. Herskowitz's claim alleges Fishman later informed Garvey of the substance of his testimony, and he was fired as part of a "disproportionate response ... in retaliation for his disloyalty."

It builds from there. The report goes on to make a point of juxtaposing the sexual harassment-related conduct over which Herskowitz' employment was terminated with the multiple incidents if sexual harassment involving Andrew M. Cuomo by his multiple alleged victims, which "did not reach the level of inappropriate behavior that Cuomo has acknowledged". We'd have to say that the phrase "toxic environment" only starts to cover the words needed to describe the climate of nastiness Andrew M. Cuomo cultivated within New York's executive chamber under his administration.

7 March 2022: Cuomo Attempts to Sway Future Civil Lawsuit Jurors with "Cancel Culture" Speech

Cuomo complains ‘cancel culture’ and dirty politics ruined his career in speech at NYC church

The latest phase of Andrew M. Cuomo's attempts to sway New Yorkers who will sit on the juries that decide the multiple civil lawsuits he will face over the allegations of sexual harassment took place as Cuomo spoke to a group at a Brooklyn Church on Sunday, 6 March 2022. Here's the story:

Defiant ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo turned a Brooklyn church appearance into a 25-minute gripe session Sunday in which he again blamed “cancel culture,” the media and “political sharks” driving him out of office.

In his first public appearance since resigning last year, the accused serial sexual harasser whined about his explosive scandal to about 150 congregants at God’s Battalion of Prayer in East Flatbush, calling it “probably the toughest time of my life.”

But that's not what stood out in the speech:

During his speech, which prompted verbal affirmations from those gathered at the church, Cuomo groused incessantly about “cancel culture,” using the word “cancel” no fewer than 25 times....

Doing the math, in his 25 minute speech, Cuomo used the word "cancel" 25 times, which averages to one "cancel" per minute.

That's not something that happens by accident in a written speech. That's something written with the intent to influence public opinion when reported upon and repeated in the media. Since Cuomo is both unpopular with the voting public and lacks support from labor unions, it's not aimed at winning a public office. Instead, we think the portion of the public he's seeking to sway is the pool of potential jurors who will decide the outcome of the civil lawsuits being filed against him for sexual harassment by his alleged victims.

Getting back to the story, Cuomo's remarks have drawn a response from New York's state attorney general Letitia James' political campaign office, which issued its own written statement:

“Serial sexual harasser Andrew Cuomo won’t even spare a house of worship from his lies,” it said. “Even though multiple independent investigations found his victims to be credible, Cuomo continues to blame everyone but himself. Cuomo wasn’t railroaded; he quit so he wouldn’t be impeached. New Yorkers are ready to move forward from this sick, pathetic man.”

Perhaps resources of the New York's state attorney general's office should be focused on developing criminal cases against Andrew M. Cuomo related to the disastrous outcome of his deadly 25 March 2020 directive and its acknowledged cover-up. Cuomo has yet to face any real accountability for his actions that contributed to the excess deaths of hundreds, if not thousands of New York nursing home residents during the coronavirus pandemic.

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Update (9:00 PM EST): We added the words in boldface font above to better clarify the origin of the statement from Letitia James' campaign office, which we had incorrectly identified as having come from the state attorney general's office.

5 March 2022: Andrew Cuomo's Deceptive Boosters Reveal Cuomo's Loss of Union Support

Andrew Cuomo boosters falsely claim unions back disgraced ex-gov in mailer

This report indicates Andrew M. Cuomo's dead ender supporters' public relations strategy relies heavily upon deception.

A group of self-described Andrew Cuomo boosters has angered several prominent New York unions by claiming they back the disgraced politician’s efforts to rehabilitate himself in a new campaign-style flyer that’s been mailed across the state.

The double-sided mailer, which was obtained by The Post, urges union members to “support” the ex-governor, who resigned after his political base collapsed amid allegations of sexual misconduct, profiting from use of state resources to write his pandemic memoir and misleading the public and federal regulators over COVID-linked nursing home deaths.

The mailer lacks the type of legal disclosures typically found on campaign paraphernalia and is simply signed by a group identifying itself as New Yorkers for Justice. There is no such group registered with the State Board of Elections, online records show.

The mailer includes the logos of several influenial unions, who are not happy about the situation:

Several of the unions included in the mailer were outraged and said they had no knowledge of the effort.

“The NYC Carpenters union was not asked, nor would we ever give our permission to use our logo to falsely slander Attorney General James who fearlessly took on Andrew Cuomo to ensure justice for his victims,” said Joseph Geiger, a top official there. “Andrew Cuomo has no one to blame for his resignation except himself. Period.”

The state AFL-CIO sent the group a letter demanding they remove all mentions of Cilento and the organization from the mailer — a demand the group accepted, the union told the Post.

“The New York State AFL-CIO has no connection to New Yorkers for Justice. We are disappointed with the unauthorized use of our logo,” Cilento said.

As a general rule, Democratic party politicians like Cuomo don't get elected to statewide offices in New York without the committed support of major labor unions in the state. Cuomo's dead ender "boosters" have revealed Cuomo's lack of union support through their deceptive mailer.

Does this count as another example of Andrew M. Cuomo's desperate need for better PR people and more legal help?