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.