30 May 2022: Cuomo Lawyers Try to Run Out Clock on JCOPE

Cuomo ethics inquiry could die with outgoing commission

New York's Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) has been a toothless watchdog over nearly its entire history. That was by the design of resigned-in-disgrace governor Andrew M. Cuomo and his political cronies. He was very happy with that arrangement. At least, while he was in power and could influence the state's official ethics watchdog's investigations.

That changed after Cuomo chose to quit rather than face being impeached and constitutionally removed from power over the sexual harassment incidents alleged by multiple women. Once he was out of power and his appointed cronies on the commission were replaced by non-loyalists, JCOPE started taking Cuomo's most serious ethical breaches seriously.

But that change didn't suddenly make JCOPE effective. The commission is still hampered by how Cuomo and his corrupt cronies originally structured it, which is a major weakness New York state legislators recognized. Their first step toward creating a more effective means to hold public officials accountable for their misdeeds in office was to replace the commission with a new one, which would be set up with a different structure. One that should make it more difficult for powerful public officials to control by filling its ranks with their loyal supporters through their patronage.

All this is relevant background because that new commission will be seated on 1 July 2022 as JCOPE is decommissioned. That changeover raises questions of what will happen with the lawsuits JCOPE's only recently freed-from-Cuomo's corrupt influence have pursued against Cuomo with respect to his pandemic book deal profits, which he pocketed despite having produced his book utilizing state government resources.

This report considers that JCOPE's lawsuit may go away after the old commission is disbanded, which is a situation Cuomo's lawyers are seeking to exploit to Cuomo's personal advantage. Here's an extended excerpt describing these recent legal developments:

Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo was supposed to face an ethics hearing last month concerning whether he'd violated the law by using state employees to assist in the production of a book that netted him millions of dollars.

But a presiding officer overseeing the hearing has postponed the date until Sept. 15, according a filing by Cuomo's legal team on Thursday — and by that time, the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics will no longer be in existence, throwing the yearlong investigation's future into question.

In July, the new Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government will replace JCOPE as the result of a deal tucked into this year's budget legislation. It's unclear whether the new body will pick up management of JCOPE's legal actions against Cuomo and attempt to keep the September hearing date in place.

Cuomo attorney Rita Glavin stated in a legal filing Thursday that, because JCOPE is going out of existence, she had made an offer to discontinue Cuomo's own lawsuit — filed in April in state Supreme Court — that alleges the panel's ethics investigation was tainted by prejudicial actions. Because JCOPE is going out of business July 8, Glavin argued, there will be no legal controversy for a court to decide.

But JCOPE would only agree to ending the case if Glavin agreed to drop Cuomo's suit "with prejudice," which would prevent the former governor from refiling the same type of lawsuit against the new ethics body.

"JCOPE’s counsel conveyed to us that JCOPE commissioners were concerned that the governor could sue again if any of the current JCOPE commissioners were to be appointed to" the new ethics body, Glavin wrote on Thursday. Gov. Kathy Hochul's office, however, says the law creating the new panel bars any current JCOPE commissioners from serving on the new body.

The oversight of the ethical conduct of public officials in New York has long been a non-priority for New York's public officials. We'll see what comes of the legal maneuvers, but it's interesting that Andrew M. Cuomo's own lawyers see their best legal path for contesting the ethics charges against Cuomo involves exploiting the dysfunction Cuomo created in the state government.

24 May 2022: Hochul Pledges New Investigation of COVID-19 Nursing Home Deaths

Hochul pledges new investigation of COVID-19 nursing home deaths

Since assuming power on 24 August 2021, replacement NY Governor Kathy Hochul has done very little to address Andrew M. Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals. This report, dated exactly nine months later, indicates Hochul is finally taking her first serious steps toward investigating the systemic and leadership failures that led to the excess COVID deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of New York nursing home residents during the period Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect.

Gov. Kathy Hochul expects to soon launch an independent analysis to examine the state's decisions made during the COVID-19 pandemic, which could include what contributed to the thousands of coronavirus deaths attributed to the spread of the disease in nursing homes, she said Tuesday at the Capitol.

Although the governor has previously spoken broadly about a plan to have a state-backed review of the response to the pandemic, particularly from the early days two years ago, Hochul for the first time made it clear her office is compiling a team with that sole purpose.

"It's going to take some time, but I believe that history deserves to have a true record of what happened here," Hochul said from the Red Room in the Capitol following an unrelated bill signing.

Hochul's newly announced policy comes one day after USA Today published its report finding New York's Department of Health failed to substantiate 96% of COVID-era nursing home complaints filed from 1 January 2020 through 14 January 2022. The report confirmed massive, systemic failures within New York's Department of Health related to its oversight of nursing homes that arguably reached all the way to the top of New York's state government while Cuomo was in power.

Those oversight failures are now extending into Hochul's administration, which we think almost certainly forced her hand to finally address the problem. Had she not, she would have risked becoming accountable for the deadly outcome of Cuomo's nursing home deaths scandals.

While continuing to do nothing would serve the political interests of powerful members of her political party, many of whom were complicit in Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals, we think Hochul may now be putting her political interests ahead of theirs. That's because the issue will not go away and because she cannot afford the political cost of being seen as complicit in Cuomo's biggest scandals herself.

Others share skepticism for whether Hochul's announced pledge to investate Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals will go far enough.

Assemblyman Ron T. Kim, D-Queens, has been extremely vocal in calling for a full accounting of what happened in nursing homes and the sources of scores of coronavirus-related deaths. He is pushing for legislation with state Sen. James Tedisco, R-Glenville, that would call for the state to pursue an investigation with subpoena power into the 15,000 nursing home deaths.

Following Hochul's announcement, Kim said that he was both unaware of the plan's details or the timing.

"If this is truly an independent, bipartisan effort to get to the truth, I welcome it," Kim said.

Kim said he is willing to give the administration the benefit of the doubt and is open to conversations and the pending analysis.

The bottom line is the action is long overdue. We'll see how it goes.

More Background from the Timeline

• Major Milestones in Governor Cuomo's Nursing Home Deaths Scandals
• Two Year Anniversary of Deadly Directive
• 3 May 2022: Democrats Stalling Probe of Cuomo Nursing Home COVID Deaths
• 7 May 2022: Editorial - Top NY State Lawmakers Blocking Independent Probe of Cuomo COVID Nursing Home Deaths
• 23 May 2022: Cuomo Health Department Passed on Addressing 96% of COVID-Era Nursing Home Complaints

23 May 2022: Cuomo Health Department Passed on Addressing 96% of COVID-Era Nursing Home Complaints

35,600 nursing home complaints flooded NY amid COVID. Here's what happened to each one

This report introduces a new number to describe how badly Andrew M. Cuomo's health department addressed the needs of nursing home patients during the coronavirus pandemic. Here's an excerpt from the article:

More than 35,600 nursing home complaints flooded into New York during the COVID-19 pandemic’s first two years, as people raised concerns of neglect and other safety violations inside the facilities.

But a strikingly high number of the complaint cases, about 96%, had been deemed unsubstantiated or remained unresolved earlier this year, a USA TODAY Network New York investigation found.

State Health Department inspectors determined only about 4% of complaint cases were "substantiated," or violated health and safety standards, according to an analysis of state data obtained via public-records request. The review looked at cases between Jan. 1, 2020 and Jan. 14, 2022.

The findings — which include newly reported details of each complaint filed against hundreds of nursing homes across New York — uncovered a backlog of complaints as COVID-19 ravaged nursing homes, killing more than 15,000 residents.

"About 96%" works out to be approximately 34,176 complaints that the New York Department of Health has failed to substantiate. If equally spread out over 24 months, the 35,700 complaints that were filed would have been paced at about 1,488 complaints per month, or a little under 49 per day.

Andrew M. Cuomo resigned in disgrace rather than face being impeached by New York's state legislature on 24 August 2021. His appointed health commissioner, Howard Zucker, was allowed to continue in his job for more than a month afterward. His replacement, Mary Bassett, who was appointed by replacement governor Kathy Hochul on 30 September 2021, wasn't sworn into the job until a week after USA Today's period for investigating complaints ended.

New York's Department of Health was relatively unscathed by replacement governor Hochul's terminations of Cuomo loyalists named in the state attorney general's report on that office's investigation of Cuomo's alleged sexual harassment. With that being the case, it's reasonable to attribute the failure to substantiate 96% of the complaints filed about inadequate care in New York's nursing homes during the coronavirus pandemic to Andrew M. Cuomo's failed administration and health department.

19 May 2022: NJ Murphy Administration Faces New Claims Over COVID Deaths in State-Run Veterans Nursing Homes

Taxpayers on hook for more vets home COVID deaths? New claims filed against Murphy admin

New Jersey taxpayers may have to pay out several more millions of dollars in damages over how Governor Phil Murphy and his administration operated nursing homes for veterans in the state during the period Murphy's copycat version of Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect. Here's a excerpt from this report:

Lawyers for families of those who died at New Jersey's three veterans homes during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic have filed almost 70 more claims against the Murphy administration claiming that negligence led to their loved ones' demise.

The claims, which need to be approved by a judge to move forward, come six months after the Murphy administration agreed to settle 119 similar claims for $53 million.

The Murphy administration has repeatedly said it does not comment on pending litigation.

The new batch of claims are from families of victims who died in the first months of the pandemic at the Paramus, Menlo Park and Vineland veterans facilities, which were among the hardest-hit nursing homes in the U.S.

More than 200 residents and two staff members died from COVID-19, the vast majority of them at the Paramus and Menlo Park homes. There are three separate investigations ongoing into the deaths after reports by NorthJersey.com and other publications about poor planning, questionable decisions and lax infection control at the facilities during the height of the pandemic.

We came across this story while searching out the latest news for those three investigations, one by the federal government, one by the state attorney general, and the third by New Jersey's State Commission of Investigation that was launched just a few weeks ago. We found no updates for the U.S. DOJ and state attorney general's investigations, which is a cause for concern because the lawyers conducting these probes have gone months without demonstrating any signs of progress.

15 May 2022: Editorial Reveals Andrew M. Cuomo's Legacy

Editorial: The deadly shame of the LaSalle Veterans’ Home

The editors of the Chicago Tribune didn't set out to describe Andrew M. Cuomo's sad legacy in this 9 May 2022 editorial. But they revealed it all the same as they lamented a preventable tragedy at a southern Illinois nursing home in November 2020. The following excerpt illustrates how:

The home knew that at least two members of staff and two residents had tested positive by Sunday, Nov. 1. The IDVA knew about it but did not have adequate protocols in place. The IDPH knew about it. So, according to the audit, did the state’s first assistant deputy governor for health and human services. But knowing about it and doing something about it clearly was not the same thing.

The home didn’t test the rest of the staff until Nov. 3, 4, and 5, an unconscionable delay. And that was just the process of collection. The tests then had to go to the lab and the results didn’t come back to the home until Nov. 6 and 7, close to a full week after the home knew it had a crisis.

As context, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first antigen test for emergency use on May 9. Abbott Diagnostics Scarborough, Inc’s BinaxNOW COVID-19 Ag Card was authorized for use at the point-of-care under an emergency use authorization that was issued in August 2020. There also is a mention in the report of staff attending a Halloween party, although as with most COVID-19 issues, there is no certainty as to its role in the infection of those residents.

It is, of course, important to see what transpired at the LaSalle Veterans’ Home in the context of the overall situation that fall in downstate Illinois, when cases were increasing rapidly in that part of the state. This was before the vaccine had become widely available, of course. And all of the agencies mentioned in the audit were strapped, stressed and struggling to see the full picture of what was happening around them. It is one thing to look back now with a critical eye and another to live through those circumstances.

Illinois was hardly alone in failing to take care of the vulnerable residents of its nursing homes. Although initially heralded as a pandemic hero on CNN, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo later was accused both of forcing nursing homes to accept COVID-19-positive patients coming out of New York’s hospitals and then obfuscating the data surrounding the deaths of nursing home residents in the state.

That last paragraph says it all. The outcome of Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive and his subsequent cover-up of the full extent of COVID nursing home deaths that resulted from it has become a cautionary tale. One used as a point of comparison with similar tragedies to say "this was bad, but it could have been much, much worse".

This editorial shorthand demonstrates what Cuomo's legacy is becoming. For editors, his name is now on par with that of the bogeyman as the representative example for describing the kind of failed government leadership that gets innocent people killed through deliberate negligence.

11 May 2022: Lawmakers Seeking to Cut Off Cuomo's Access to Campaign Fund Millions

Push continues to restrict Cuomo from spending prior campaign money

This report covers an effort by NY state lawmakers to block politicians from being able to spend money they collected for their campaigns for previous elections if they are found guilty of a crime or, more questionably, whether they were investigated by the state attorney general or state legislature committees for breaking laws. Here's an excerpt describing the rationale behind the proposed legislation:

Common Cause NY and ethics-minded lawmakers remain committed to preventing former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other misbehaving elected officials from spending the campaign war chest they amassed while in office.

"This is one instance, unfortunately among many, and it's time to deal with this gap of law," Common Cause NY Executive Director Susan Lerner said Tuesday at the Capitol.

The legislation was first drafted by Assemblyman Phil Steck, D-Colonie, after Cuomo resigned in August amid the threat of impeachment following investigations from the attorney general's office and the Assembly Judiciary Committee. It would cut off access to campaign funds for any elected official who was convicted of a crime or resigned following an investigation conducted by the attorney general or a committee of the Legislature that concluded the official had violated the law.

Steck said he was concerned Cuomo may use the $18 million that remained in his campaign's coffers for "political retribution."

"We hold those funds in trust for a public purpose, which is to communicate ideas to the public when we're running for office," Steck said Tuesday. "So it's not something that we should be able to use for whatever purpose we see fit."

While it would be viable to block politicians convicted of crimes from being able to access or spend money collected for their political campaigns, we're afraid doing that for politicians who were only investigated by state officials or lawmakers would not pass constitutional muster.

If NY lawmakers were serious about this kind of reform, all politicians should be subject to repaying all campaign funds to their donors if not spent within a three-month period on election-related expenses after the election for which it was collected. The only debate should be over which donors would be repaid and how much they would be repaid, where we would suggest "All" and "in proportion to what they donated" as the answers to those questions.

9 May 2022: Ethics Commission Hits Back at Cuomo

Ethics commission hits back at Cuomo, seeking $5M book repayment

This report indicates New York's Joint Commission on Public Ethics is putting the lawyers it hired on 27 April 2022 to work. In addition to defending the commission from the resigned-in-disgrace Andrew M. Cuomo's 1 April 2022 lawsuit, JCOPE's legal team will be taking on the task of compelling Cuomo to give up the $5.2 million he will personally pocket from the publisher of his pandemic "leadership" book because of his use of state government resources to produce it. According to the following excerpt, JCOPE's legal team went on the offense in filing a countersuit against Cuomo on Friday, 6 May 2022:

New York’s ethics oversight commission countersued ex-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo late Friday, filing a court action seeking to force the repayment of $5.1 million in book proceeds paid to the former governor.

In March, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics had passed a resolution ordering Cuomo to repay the millions from writing “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.” But Cuomo has taken no steps to comply with the JCOPE order to repay the funds to the book's publisher, Penguin Random House.

In the counterclaims on Friday, attorneys representing the commission asked that Cuomo be forced to repay the funds, and for an injunction barring Cuomo from disbursing the millions in the meantime.

JCOPE's aggressive response has also included notifying Cuomo's attorneys of a plan to depose Cuomo on June 22.

The counterclaims come in response to a lawsuit Cuomo filed in early April. In state Supreme Court, his attorneys had argued that JCOPE had violated his constitutional due process rights. They sought to block JCOPE from going forward with an ongoing ethics investigation into whether Cuomo misused government resources to produce the 2020 book.

Since JCOPE will be replaced by a new ethics commission in July, we anticipate Cuomo's personal legal team will attempt to stall any effort to depose the otherwise unemployed Andrew M. Cuomo before that occurs.

7 May 2022: Editorial - Top NY State Lawmakers Blocking Independent Probe of Cuomo COVID Nursing Home Deaths

Dirty rotten Albany scoundrels block nursing-home probe

The New York Post's editors speak real truth to power in pointing to the complicity of top state legislature officials in Andrew M. Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals.

Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens) and Sen. Jim Tedisco (R-Schenectady) accuse the Democrats who control both chambers of the Legislature of stalling their bill to create a five-member commission with subpoena power and a mandate to probe whatever policies contributed to “any increase in death rates of nursing home residents attributable to COVID-19.”

Tedisco believes the Dems are covering up Cuomo and for their roles in granting him broad emergency pandemic powers. Kim, who lost an uncle in a nursing home to COVID, says he keeps hearing excuses and that “we’re trying to move forward.”

He counters by citing the “need for accountability.” That’s what the survivors of every New Yorker lost in a nursing home during the pandemic want. Many finger the Cuomo order forcing homes to accept COVID-positive patients that hospitals wanted to discharge.

What might top legislative Democrats fear from a fair probe? Well, they granted Cuomo vast emergency authority as COVID hit, then took to shelter. Plus, they agreed to stealth passage of a measure giving nursing-home operators and health-care workers qualified immunity from civil and criminal culpability. Nina A. Kohn, an expert in elder law at Yale, told PolitiFact that law gave “a green light for facilities to understaff and underresource.”

New York needs the whole truth. If Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins keep blocking the bill, any legislator who doesn’t revolt is a part of the coverup.

The second-to-last paragraph we've excerpted above drives home a point we've argued for some time. It took the work of a lot of state government officials, both elected and appointed, to implement and enforce Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive that forced nursing homes to blindly admit COVID patients being dumped out of NY hospitals into nursing homes without confirmation their coronavirus infections were no longer contagious. The New York Post's editorial is the first we've seen connecting the dots to the top elected lawmakers in New York's Senate and Assembly.

6 May 2022: New Lawsuits Over NJ Nursing Home COVID Deaths Claim 'State-Created Danger'

New lawsuits over nursing home COVID deaths claim ‘state-created danger’

New Jersey is starting to accumulate its share of lawsuits filed against nursing homes for COVID deaths during the period Governor Phil Murphy's copycat version of New York's Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect. Here's an excerpt from the report:

The families of two women who died after catching COVID in the private nursing homes where they lived have sued state officials, saying the state ignored repeated warnings in the pandemic’s first weeks that its controversial approach to containing COVID in long-term care facilities would be deadly.

The lawsuits come nearly five months after the state agreed to pay almost $53 million to settle claims it botched its response to the COVID outbreak in state-run veterans’ homes.

The new lawsuits — filed late last month in federal court — accuse Gov. Phil Murphy and Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli of violating nursing home residents’ civil rights and creating dangerous conditions in homes through policies they implemented under Murphy’s executive order 103.

“Through the directive, the nursing homes were thrown under the bus,” attorney Michael S. Kasanoff wrote in one complaint.

That complaint criticizes state officials for requiring facilities to admit people who tested positive, refusing to require hospitals to test “medically stable” patients they transferred to nursing homes, and failing to adequately distribute face masks, gloves, and other personal protective equipment in long-term care facilities in the pandemic’s early days.

Those policies fueled the virus’ spread, the complaints charge.

Officials also ignored providers’ pleas that they didn’t have enough resources to isolate sick residents or otherwise protect residents and staff as directed, the complaints say.

Murphy and Persichilli are liable under the “state-created danger doctrine,” Kasanoff wrote. That legal doctrine enables citizens to pursue remedies when the government — responsible for protecting the public — instead takes actions that endanger it.

For us, the most surprising part of this story is that New Jersey has a specific legal doctrine that comes into play whenever state officials endangers the public through their actions or negligence. That's not something that comes into existence in either a vacuum or after a single episode, which means state government officials must have established quite a track record to require it.

5 May 2022: Nursing Homes Sued for COVID Deaths in Every County of New York State

Down to Business: Lawsuits against nursing homes alleging wrongful deaths due to COVID pile up

The legal aftermath of Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive is building according to this report, which focuses on Albany County, New York. Here's the introduction and conclusion to the report:

Add another handful of lawsuits to the tally of cases brought against nursing homes in New York alleging the wrongful death of a resident from COVID-19.

By one estimate, every county in the state has seen such a filing; in state Supreme Court in Albany County, five came in over the past two weeks. All allege violations of infection-control protocols in the early days of the pandemic and claim negligence by the nursing homes in not meeting their statutory duty of ensuring residents’ overall wellbeing.

As of this week, the state Department of Health reported more than 15,400 COVID-19 nursing home deaths in New York since March 2020, either confirmed or presumed at a home, or confirmed at another facility, such as a hospital....

The latest lawsuits in Albany County paint a chaotic picture at two nursing homes where infected staff and residents comingled with the healthy, and families were not immediately notified of residents’ symptoms after exposure.

Three of the five lawsuits seek $2 million each in punitive damages.

In between, the report captures the response of the nursing home industry from having the immunity to legal liability for COVID deaths gifted to them by Andrew M. Cuomo on 2 April 2020 stripped away by New York's legislature.

Stephen Hanse, president and chief executive of two Albany-based state groups serving the industry, doesn’t mince words about the lawsuits, calling them “unconscionable.”

While it’s human nature to want to place blame, he says, the lawsuits are being filed by “opportunistic attorneys seeking to take advantage,” of an “unprecedented health care crisis.” Hanse himself is a lawyer.

He recalls that at the outset of the pandemic, everyone was dealing with an unknown virus. There was little information on transmission; no testing or vaccines; and gloves, gowns and masks were in short supply.

New York adopted a “hospital-centric approach” to grappling with the virus under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Hanse says. That put nursing homes toward the end of the line for equipment and supplies when, “the real focus of government should have been on nursing homes,” he said in an interview this week. “We care for the most vulnerable,” he added.

While health care providers and institutions received a measure of immunity in emergency legislation at the start of the pandemic for mistakes in caring for COVID-19 patients, that protection was repealed a year ago – which is one of the reasons the wrongful death lawsuits are now appearing on court dockets.

Hanse characterizes the repeal as “purely political,” a response by lawmakers emboldened by a “perceived weakness” in Cuomo from fallout from previously underreported deaths.

TLDR: The lawyer heading the political lobby for the nursing home industry in New York says the state government acting under Andrew M. Cuomo's policies contributed to excess COVID deaths in nursing homes, which the nursing home industry shouldn't be held legally liable for.

We'll see how well that argument holds up in all the courts where it will be made.

3 May 2022: Democrats Stalling Probe of Cuomo Nursing Home COVID Deaths

Democrats stalling probe of Cuomo nursing home COVID deaths, sponsors say

This report covers the claims of the bipartisan sponsors of a bill in New York's state legislature that would establish an independent commission to investigate excess COVID deaths in nursing homes throughout the state during the period Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect. Here's an excerpt describing the central claim:

Bipartisan legislation to investigate the impact of ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s pandemic policies on the nursing-home death toll from COVID-19 is being bottled up in committee so leading lawmakers won’t be implicated in the scandal, sponsors of the measures told The Post on Monday.

“There’s no question in my mind that they want to hold this up,” said state Sen. Jim Tedisco (R-Schenectady).

“I think it touches on them. And it touches on what they’ve done so far.”...

Tedisco also suggested that delaying his bill was a bid to cover up for Cuomo, who resigned under threat of impeachment last year over allegations of sexual harassment.

“They wanted to get rid of him because he was a liability but I’m not sure they also want to let everybody know the extent of the things that he was involved with that caused this loss of life — the lies, the distortions,” he said.

Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens), who’s sponsoring a companion bill, said high-ranking Democrats were “just coming up with excuse after excuse.”

“At different times, they are giving me excuses about ‘Oh, there’s federal investigations, we can’t open this up until the federal investigation is complete.'”

But Kim, whose uncle died in a nursing home of suspected COVID-19, said he remained hopeful the measures would win approval before the scheduled June 2 end of the legislative session.

“This is not a big ask. We are just asking to go back and investigate,” he said.

The Democratic Party majority that holds power across all of New York's state government has done very little to investigate the roles that any of its members, including resigned-in-disgrace former governor Andrew M. Cuomo, had in contributing to excess COVID deaths in the state's nursing homes.

We anticipate that role is considerable, because the implementation of deadly 25 March 2020 directive required the knowing consent of dozens, if not hundreds, of officials within the state government and legislature, most of whom are members of the state Democratic party. It's reasonable to conclude they believe such an independent probe would not serve their political interests of retaining their hold on political power in the state.

1 May 2022: New Criminal Probe Launched Into COVID Deaths in NJ Veterans Homes

Another investigation launched into the over 200 COVID deaths in NJ veterans homes

This report was originally posted on 28 April 2022. A new probe has been opened into what happened in New Jersey's state government-run veterans homes (a.k.a nursing homes for U.S. military veterans), making it the third such active criminal investigation. Here's the introduction to the report:

A third investigation into the deaths of more than 200 residents of New Jersey's veterans homes during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic has been opened by an independent state agency that reports on government malfeasance, a state commissioner revealed this week.

The State Commission of Investigation is looking into how the outbreak at the Paramus, Menlo Park and Vineland homes became one of the nation's worst COVID-related nursing home disasters, Military and Veterans Affairs Commissioner Lisa Hou told a legislative panel on Tuesday.

The commission joins probes by the state Attorney General's Office and the U.S. Department of Justice.

“None of them have been completed as of yet," Hou, a brigadier general, said under questioning from the Senate budget committee. "We’ve provided and complied with everything they asked for. I am also looking forward to the results of those.”

That's now one federal investigation and two state investigations. There have been no updates on either the U.S. DOJ's probe since October 2021 and longer for the NJ state attorney general's investigation.