9 September 2024: Aides: Cuomo 'Edited' Report Undercounting Nursing Home Deaths, 'Absolutely' Signed Off Deadly Directive

Cuomo aides knew his nursing home mandate would be ‘great debacle,’ helped gov ‘edit’ report that deflated deaths, House COVID panel finds

This report covers a number of allegations raised by several of former New York State Governor Andrew M. Cuomo's former staff members regarding actions Cuomo and other members of his staff took to conceal the disastrous results of Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive in official state reports. Here's a summary of the two biggest blockbusters from the introduction to this article:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo allegedly himself “edited” a state report that deflated New York’s COVID-19 death toll in nursing homes — which his top aides pressured health officials into releasing, despite knowing the issue would turn into a “great debacle,” according to the stunning results of an investigation by a US House committee.

Cuomo’s office “absolutely” signed off on the disastrous directive early in the pandemic forcing coronavirus patients back into nursing homes — leading to as many as 9,000 excess COVID deaths — the final congressional report and witness testimonies exclusively obtained by The Post show.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic conducted the probe and majority staff released the findings ahead of a public hearing with the 66-year-old ex-governor on Tuesday.

Cuomo had disputed the allegation he had signed off on the deadly 25 March 2020 directive while testifying under oath behind closed doors to the U.S. House subcommittee probing the matter in June 2024. That testimony was contradicted by another state official's testimony:

Cuomo and DeRosa told the House COVID subcommittee the order had been drafted by a “midlevel” New York Department of Health staff member based on guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

The order apparently “surprised” Cuomo and DeRosa when both were asked about it at an April 20, 2020, press conference. It was taken down from the state health department website nine days later but remained operable for another month.

“I do not recall reviewing,” Cuomo testified. “I don’t recall seeing it.”

But Bradley Hutton, former deputy health commissioner, told the House committee that the governor’s office had “absolutely” signed off on the order.

Another state official, Cuomo's Director of Operations Jim Malatras, testified to the House subcommittee about the coverup of the full extent of nursing home deaths that resulted from the implementation of Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive.

According to Cuomo’s then-director of operations, Dr. Jim Malatras, who served as a member of the governor’s COVID task force, top aide Melissa DeRosa “laid out the points that she wanted to have touched upon in the report.”

“The report that I was editing had the total number of fatalities in all the charts until Ms. DeRosa intervened,” Malatras testified to the subcommittee.

“She was constantly editing it, Mr. Cuomo was editing it,” Malatras said in his testimony.

“It was largely around language,” he added, saying the governor’s aides would push to “refashion those sentences to be more less causal, less definitive, and work back in some of the language that DOH had originally.”

This entry was added to the timeline on 10 September 2024.