Monday, April 19, 2021

19 April 2021: Who Is Paying for Governor Cuomo's Legal Help?

Who's paying Cuomo's lawyers? Some details are scarce

Have we mentioned that Governor Cuomo is looking for better PR people and more legal help?

That running gag aside, Governor Cuomo has indeed been hiring a lot of law firms to defend him from the multiple scandals. This report reveals just how many:

As Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo faces investigations on several fronts, four law firms have confirmed they’re doing legal work for Cuomo or his office.

The attorneys were retained in the wake of an investigation by the state attorney general's office, which is probing multiple sexual harassment and misconduct allegations against Cuomo, and a separate investigation by the FBI and U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn. The federal investigation is examining whether Cuomo's administration deliberately manipulated data on nursing home deaths during the coronavirus pandemic.

But as the work by the private attorneys has proceeded for nearly two months, details about the legal arrangements remain murky.

None of the contracts for legal services have been submitted for approval to Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office, potentially running afoul of state finance law.

Cuomo’s office also isn’t saying whether the governor will front the money for any attorneys representing him personally. In addition, it's unclear whether taxpayers will be on the hook for other state officials’ legal costs, including members of the governor's coronavirus task force.

New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli is best known to Cuomo scandal watchers as the man who dragged his heels before ultimately choosing to pass the buck in making an official referral for New York's State Attorney General to launch a full criminal investigation of Governor Cuomo and his administration's officials.

As for evidence that Governor Cuomo is still looking for better PR people, the report contains this gem:

In a statement, Cuomo senior advisor Richard Azzopardi said none of the four law firms have been paid money.

“We are in the process of finalizing these contracts and related documents for review and approval by the comptroller’s office,” Azzopardi said. “We are abiding by all applicable rules and standards and in matters like this it is not uncommon for legal representation to begin while the contracts are simultaneously being drafted for submission. Doing it the other way could potentially leave the Chamber and its employees without representation.”

The article lists several of the attorneys willing to work for free while their contracts are being "negotiated", including Paul Fishman (Arnold & Porter), Mitra Hormozi (Walden Macht & Haran), and Rita Glavin (former U.S. attorney). It's a fair bet that none of the services by those listed above are inexpensive.

Exit question: If Governor Cuomo is successfully impeached and removed from office as a consequence of any misdeeds, are New York's taxpayers on the hook for his legal bills, or is he?

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Sunday, April 18, 2021

18 April 2021: Questions from Team Cuomo's Hand-Picked Reporters

Andrew Cuomo still issuing orders while refusing to answer questions

The New York Post's editors have capped the weekend with an editorial blasting the Cuomo administration's cowardly tactics to keep Governor Cuomo from facing serious questions about any of the many scandals swirling around his administration from reporters. In the editorial, they make this observation:

On Friday, during a virtual news conference in Buffalo, Cuomo called on only five, hand-picked reporters … who then lobbed softball questions rather than asking any of the obvious and damning ones.

In fact, the gov hasn’t answered a single in-person question since December, the Albany Times-Union reported, noting that “reporters have been frustrated by this, with many choosing to highlight each day that journalists are barred from Cuomo’s public events, which often take on the tone of political rallies.”

Instead, he’s relying on his Emmy-winning credentials of “effective use of television during the pandemic” by only answering questions via Zoom or conference calls, so his staff can run interference for him.

Before we continue, we should note the Post's editors erred in their count of "hand-picked reporters. Instead of five, there were six.

At the same time, the "softball questions" referenced in the editorial is a common theme we've seen across multiple news outlets during the last several days. However, we haven't yet seen any of the questions that were presented to Governor Cuomo, so we tracked down a transcript of Governor Cuomo's 16 April 2021 news conference to find out what questions Team Cuomo is confident Governor Cuomo can answer with their help and extensive preparation these days....

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo COVID-19 Press Conference Transcript April 16

Here's the first question, from the Buffalo News' Jonathan Epstein, who asked about a broadband initiative Governor Cuomo discussed in his presentation:

I wanted to ask about from earlier a little more about the fund for the students. How big is that fund going to be? And what exactly is it going to provide for those students or those people who fit the low income category? And do you expect pushback from companies on all the broadband issue?

Here's the second question, from Karina Gerry of WUTR in Utica, NY:

So here in the Mohawk Valley in Marcy, [inaudible 00:54:32] is near completion. And right now, Danfoss is the only occupant at Quad-C. We hear of expansion from chip manufacturers in the Albany area, like GlobalFoundries. Do you expect that there will be more processing plants coming into the Marcy site? I know we haven’t heard anything from Empire State Development in awhile.

The third question was from Jayne Chacko of WHAM in Rochester, NY:

I wanted to ask you about the curfew for restaurants. I know it’s extended to midnight, but many still having issue with that, especially with summer and more events happening. Can they expect it to be extended anytime soon?

The fourth question is from Dave Evans of WABC:

Good to see you, governor. Hey, I wanted to ask you, just a followup to the question that you just got about the bars and restaurants. I know it’s going to be a little bit better here, starting on Monday, but we still have the rules where you have to sit down, you can’t walk around in a bar, they’ll be closing at midnight. But then we see, for example, the casino in Queens open till five o’clock in the morning. Folks here need a break, what can they hope for?

The fifth reporter hand-picked by Team Cuomo to provide a question for Governor Cuomo to answer was provided by WKBW's Ed Drantch:

Governor, good afternoon to you or good morning, rather. We heard you a couple of days ago addressed the vaccine issue at Highmark Stadium with the Buffalo Bills. After you said that you think that the county executive may have overstepped his bounds, a spokesperson for the county said essentially that they can do what they want because it’s on county property. So where do you stand at this point about getting Buffalo Bills fans back into Highmark Stadium?

Drantch was the only reporter rewarded with a follow up question:

Can I just follow up, if I may? We have been used essentially as Buffalo as an example for the rest of the state in getting back to bigger events in terms of the testing before the Bills’ playoffs games at home. So could that be a possibility that we see before the start of next season, these mass testing clinics so that we can prove that we’re COVID negative, if not for a vaccine?

You can almost sense the last two reporters' willingness to roll over onto their backs in hope of receiving a belly rub from Governor Cuomo.

The final questions asked came from Marcia Kramer of WCBS after an odd exchange between her and the Governor on the topic of "New York State Clean" hand sanitizer. We'll skip over that exchange to get to her more hard-hitting questions:

The first one is pretty simple. I just wondered how many people will be able to get this $15 internet. And my second question has to do with gun violence. In New York City, it seems to continue unabated. And I know you’ve asked for police reform plans from New York City, which I don’t think includes a plan for dealing with gun violence. I wonder if you would accept their reform plan, even though it doesn’t have a plan for dealing with gun violence and what should you do to stop the killing?

Those questions are about as far away as you can get from any of Governor Cuomo's ongoing scandals that he and his administration seek to avoid being asked about. Topics not covered by the six reporters hand-picked for their willingness to play ball with Team Cuomo include:

There's more, but you get the idea. And now you know how these members of the news media play softball!

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Saturday, April 17, 2021

17 April 2021: Now We Have Their Attention....

As evidenced by our site traffic logs....

A Timeline of New York Governor Cuomo's Nursing Home Scandals: Site Traffic 17 April 2020 12:26 - 12:28 PM

Here are the relevant links:

Here is related content involving New York DOH officials from the timeline:

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17 April 2021: News Media Slowing Catching On to Cuomo's Phony Press Events

We've paired a couple of reports in this entry on the topic of Governor Cuomo's cowardly "Meet the Friendly Press" performances.

Cuomo retreats from open news briefings that made him a star

This article from the Associated Press quantifies how Team Cuomo's media strategy has changed since the beginning of the year:

... his conference calls with reporters have grown less frequent this spring, with six held in March, down from 10 in February and 17 in January.

And with reporters forced to dial in remotely, his office can control which reporters get to ask questions. The few who are picked often don’t get follow-up questions.

That’s a huge change from last spring, when Cuomo met daily with reporters who shouted questions from seats in the State Capitol’s Red Room.

Since February, when women began coming forward with stories about inappropriate comments or touching by Cuomo, the governor has attended numerous events featuring him speaking in front of small groups — but with no journalists allowed.

Asked on a recent conference call why he couldn’t have journalists in the room, Cuomo said that it was safer to speak to reporters remotely, and that doing it by conference call didn’t stop reporters from asking tough questions.

“We try to keep the number of people down, and we try to keep social distancing mandates,” Cuomo said of his in-person events. “Answering questions with the press, I can do through other means, like this.”

It’s in part a return to practice for Cuomo, who, before the coronavirus pandemic, rarely held regular news conferences.

But after months of easy access, the governor’s sudden refusal to allow reporters to freely question him has rankled media outlets.

With our primary focus on Governor Cuomo's multiple COVID nursing home deaths scandals, our coverage of the sexual harassment allegations has been limited, so we had to turn to one of the other timelines we've featured in our timeline to put the AP's story into historical context.

The first sexual harassment allegation against Governor Cuomo was advanced by Lindsey Boylan on 14 December 2020. Her allegations then fell back into semi-obscurity until she detailed her allegations on 24 February 2021, which marks our first entry dedicated to the story. Three days later, on 27 February 2021, former Cuomo aide Charlotte Bennett became the second woman to come forward to allege she was a victim of Governor Cuomo's sexual harassment. The number of accusers rose to nine by the end of March 2021.

But Cuomo's change in media strategy to reduce his number of appearances and thus his exposure to questions from serious journalists began after January 2021, as the AP's account indicates. That timing indicates the change in media strategy came as a reaction to other events.

Those events are well documented in our timeline! Here are the big ones:

These are the events that blew the lid off Governor Cuomo's attempted cover-up of the full extent of COVID deaths among New York nursing home residents during the period the Cuomo administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect.

The addition of the sexual harassment allegations at the end of February 2021 then contributed toward furthering Team Cuomo's by-then-established bunker-mentality-driven media strategy.

Under siege, Cuomo adopts a new strategy: 'closed press'

This report in the Buffalo News reveals how Governor Cuomo is excluding news organizations from attending his public appearances:

Since scandal after scandal began engulfing Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo this year, he’s taken a new approach in an attempt to keep his face and words flowing directly to New Yorkers on terms and subject matters that he dictates.

It's like a Rose Garden strategy, but with a twist.

Unlike presidents over the years who use the White House as a shield during political troubles, the governor, facing calls to resign from more than half the state Legislature, is still getting out of the Executive Mansion in Albany, as he did Friday in Buffalo.

But now, Cuomo regularly holds events throughout the state that do something remarkable in the modern history of New York governors: he bans news reporters from attending.

His stop at the Northland Workforce Training Center in Buffalo on Friday to tout new legislation that will broaden low-cost internet access across the state was the latest example. While supporters of the governor attended in person, reporters were asked to view it online and call in for a limited question-and-answer session. It followed an earlier stop this week at a Hudson Valley hard cider farm. And he has barred reporters from attending other recent stops at vaccination centers at Belmont Racetrack, the Javits Center convention hall in Manhattan and a Baptist church in Westchester County.

Whatever else it may be, it is not a strategy of confidence. Governor Cuomo has been seeking better PR people and more legal help since the end of March 2021.

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Friday, April 16, 2021

16 April 2021: Team Cuomo Using Probes Into Its Scandals To Stonewall Requests for Public Information

Cuomo's office refuses to disclose its exchanges with Justice Department

This report indicates the Cuomo administration is using the investigations into Governor Cuomo and other officials as a shield to prevent their having to comply with New York's Freedom Of Information Law (FOIL) requests from the public and from news organizations:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's office is refusing to make public its correspondence with the U.S. Justice Department related to the administration's handling of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities during the coronavirus pandemic.

The correspondence sought by the Times Union was triggered, in part, by an Aug. 26 letter to Cuomo from the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division that sought a trove of records from the administration regarding the relatively small number of public nursing homes in New York, including "all state-issued guidance, directives, advisories, or executive orders regarding admission of persons to public nursing homes ... as well as the dates each such document was in effect."...

In a letter this week, the governor's office denied the newspaper's request for copies of its correspondence with the Justice Department — which Cuomo had earlier suggested might be released — by asserting those records are exempt from disclosure because they were "compiled for law enforcement purposes" and the disclosure "would ... interfere with law enforcement investigations."

And if that doesn't take the cake for cynical hypocrisy from Governor Cuomo, whose pandemic "leadership" book proclaims the importance of transparency, there's this bit of analysis in the article:

It's unclear how the Cuomo administration's correspondence with the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division constitutes records "compiled for law enforcement purposes."

In its denial letter, the governor's office also argued that portions of the records are exempt from disclosure because their release "would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."

If that stonewalling tactic sounds familiar, it is because New York Department of Health Commissioner Howard Zucker made a nearly identical claim to block FOIL requests for numerical nursing home death data by news organizations on 8 April 2020. We've inserted an entry for that date on this topic into the timeline.

That episode of Cuomo administration stonewalling only stopped after 3 February 2021, when a state judge ruled against Cuomo administration in a lawsuit against it that was filed under the state's Freedom Of Information Law and ordered the administration to end its stonewalling of releasing data on nursing home resident deaths.

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16 April 2021: NY Assembly Impeachment Commission to Put on Show

Cuomo Impeachment Commission meeting on Wednesday

It's been called a 'sham' for very good reasons and this week the New York Assembly's commission investigating whether to impeach Governor Cuomo will be putting on a show:

Officials are convening on Wednesday, April 21, to work on the impeachment inquiry into Gov. Andrew Cuomo. That’s according to New York State Assembly Judiciary Committee Chair Charles Lavine.

Keep in mind, the Assembly already has ample evidence of criminal and ethical wrongdoing by Governor Cuomo and members of his administration. If they were serious, an impeachment vote would already have happened and due process in the form of an impeachment trial would be taking place in New York's Senate.

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16 April 2021: Cuomo Giving Questions to Reporters Who Only Play Softball

Gov. Cuomo avoids questions about scandals at latest ‘press conference’

Another day, another demonstration of cowardice:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo avoided getting asked questions about his sexual harassment and nursing home death toll cover-up scandals — by only calling on hand-picked reporters during a virtual news conference Friday in Buffalo.

Cuomo, who was the subject of a damning profile this week by the New York Times Magazine, took questions from five journalists from around the state who mostly lobbed softball questions on other topics.

The governor didn’t call on any members of Albany’s Legislative Correspondents Association, which is comprised of reporters who cover the state Capitol every day.

LCA members are responsible for many of the stories that have sparked a series of investigations of Cuomo over matters that include his handling of nursing homes amid the coronavirus pandemic and his alleged sexual harassment of multiple female aides.

Cuomo hasn’t taken a question from The Post since before it exclusively revealed in February that his top aide, Melissa DeRosa, privately admitted to state Democrats that his administration withheld the total nursing home death toll from COVID-19 from them due to a pending federal probe.

You've got to wonder what Team Cuomo's PR experts are thinking, because the longer this cowardly conduct goes on, the greater the implicit admission of guilt becomes. Then again, Governor Cuomo cannot afford to say anything that either demonstrates a level of hypocrisy that would wreck his remaining political support or that would further expose him to criminal legal liability. They know what they're doing is bad, but they are so bought in they view the risks that would come with honesty as worse.

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16 April 2021: An Ongoing Exodus of NY DOH Officials

Top NY Health Department officials continue exodus amid COVID pandemic

This is a pretty significant report, describing the departure of senior officials at New York's Department of Health. It doesn't take long for the article to arrive at a Cuomo administration scandal:

The director of New York's nationally recognized Wadsworth Laboratory retired last September amid the COVID pandemic. Now the deputy director is also set to leave after 28 years at the lab, another major loss to the beleaguered state Department of Health.

The loss of Jill Taylor and the pending departure of Victoria Derbyshire, who recently signaled her intent to retire from the Albany-based lab, are among at least a dozen top health officials in New York who have either quit, retired or were reassigned in recent months, according to sources and public records....

Some have attributed their departure to general fatigue, family-related issues or reaching retirement age. Others have expressed frustration with being sidelined by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his inner circle at key points of the COVID-19 crisis. And for some, it's been a combination of the two....

The departures represent much of the leadership team under Health Commissioner Howard Zucker, who was been a loyal ally of Gov. Andrew Cuomo and has drawn calls from lawmakers for his ouster over the handling of COVID deaths in nursing homes and the extraordinary death toll in New York, which ranks second only to California.

His top deputy Sally Dreslin left last fall, and in recent months so too has the director and second-in-command at the Office of Public Health, as well as the head of the Center for Community Health.

The article also cites the Empire Center's Bill Hammond, one of the leading independent analysts into the deadly interventions of Cuomo administration officials in New York's health care system during the coronavirus pandemic:

"Even if you had a governor who respected what they did and treated them well, I think the intensity level of the past year was such that you may have had burnout," said Bill Hammond, a senior fellow for health policy at the Empire Center, a fiscally conservative think tank.

"And then on top of that, you have pretty well documented cases where they were not being listened to by the governor’s office and then were being misused, to the extent that they were being asked to do tests, giving special treatment, to the governor’s friends and family."

For his part, Hammond has analyzed the schedules of top Cuomo administration officials, which turned up a regular pattern:

A review of Cuomo's public schedules last month by Hammond showed that Cuomo met largely with his small inner circle during the pandemic, including Zucker....

The control over the process by Cuomo and his aides were viewed as part of a pattern during the pandemic.

“When I say ‘experts’ in air quotes, it sounds like I’m saying I don’t really trust the experts,” Cuomo said Jan. 29. “Because I don’t.”

The New York Times, which first reported in February about some of the Health Department departures, said tensions worsened because Cuomo would often announce major changes in COVID policy during his public briefings and then, after the fact, have the health department come up with the specifics

The departing NY DOH officials are not free and clear of involvement in Governor Cuomo's nursing home deaths scandals. Many have so far remained silent rather than come forward with details of the interventions of Team Cuomo, including its cover up of the full extent of COVID deaths among New York's nursing home residents.

They would however be key witnesses in a serious criminal investigation of the Cuomo administration's COVID nursing home deaths scandals. That they are not free and clear of involvement may provide prosecutors with a point of leverage in getting them to turn state's evidence.

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Thursday, April 15, 2021

15 April 2021: NY DOH Surveyor Exposed Nursing Home to COVID

NY Health Department surveyor potentially exposes NYC nursing home to COVID-19, source reveals

This report specifically covers an incident from 5 April 2021, but could just as easily have taken place at any time during the preceding year. The situation is describes relates the practices of New York Department of Health officials who have had direct interaction with nursing homes throughout the coronavirus pandemic:

A New York Department of Health surveyor auditing a Bronx nursing home last week exposed residents and staff to COVID-19, a source told Fox News.

According to an employee at Pelham Parkway Nursing Home, a team of health department surveyors began auditing the facility on April 5. While department guidance "strongly encourages" all visitors be tested before entering a nursing home facility in New York, the source said surveyors declined testing on-site. Four days later, nursing home staff were told one surveyor had tested positive with COVID and was quarantined.

While the surveyors were working together in the building, the other staff members did not quarantine and continued working within the building, the source said.

State health department officials said its staff surveyors are tested twice weekly and were rapid tested offsite – and negative – on April 7, their last day visiting the facility. Also, all the surveyors were cleared after the facility performed a temparature screening when they arrived and they worse surgical masks and face shields while on site, officials said.

Despite the precautions, one surveyor began experiencing symptoms on April 7 and went to get a PCR test that came back positive, state health officials said. The health department alerted the facility the next day and contact tracing was conducted immediately....

The source expressed frustration that the health department appears to be playing by a different set of rules, alleging that surveyors do not need to show proof of a negative COVID test before entering the facilities. Also, staff would have liked the department to have immediately deployed a new team to replace the one that had been exposed.

At the time of this incident, the NY DOH's COVID practices for its surveyors are well established. As are the more rigorous practices nursing homes have adopted to prevent the introduction and spread of COVID within their facilities. One year ago, that was far from the case. One year ago, Cuomo administration DOH officials purposefully introduced patients infected with COVID into New York's nursing homes, without any of these practices in place. What do you suppose happened next?

The Cuomo administration's DOH employees still haven't learned what they need to from that highly fatal mistake. But then, many of these officials collaborated in covering up the full extent of that fatal error. Remember, there were people at the NY DOH who knew what data senior Cuomo officials doctored in its 6 July 2020 report, but kept silent rather that step forward with their accounts of how the Cuomo administration corrupted the DOH's report of NY nursing home deaths.

This is a very good illustration of what we mean when we say it took a lot of teamwork for the Cuomo administration to implement, enforce, and ultimately, to cover up the consequences of its deadly 25 March 2020 directive.

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15 April 2021: Cuomo Impeachment Hotline Gets Over 100 Tips

Report: Cuomo impeachment investigation hotline receives 100+ messages

Outside of the New York Assembly's impeachment probe itself, the Assembly's impeachment tip hotline for collecting evidence of Governor Cuomo's scandals is perhaps the least serious aspect of any of the investigations into the scandals into Governor Cuomo and his administration.

Attorneys are now going through more than 100 tips submitted to a hotline set up as part of the impeachment investigation into Gov.Andrew Cuomo, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Details about the specific messages haven't been released, but the impeachment case is looking at a number of issues against the governor ranging from sexual harassment claims to COVID nursing home deaths and extends to controversies surrounding his book about the pandemic, and his family gaining special access to COVID testing.

Pick a number anywhere in the range from 1 through 100. Is that number over or under the number of impeachment hotline tips that will directly result in Governor Cuomo being ousted from office?

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15 April 2021: Ron Kim on Holding Nursing Homes Accountable and the Origins of Governor Cuomo's Cover-up

Ron Kim on nursing home immunity repeal: It was critical 'to hold these facilities accountable'

This interview with NY Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens) discusses some of the background behind what motivated his legislation to repeal the COVID legal immunity gifted to a powerful hospital and nursing home lobby on 2 April 2020 by Governor Cuomo.

"Exactly a year ago the governor relied on his top lobbyists that represented the special interests of hospitals and nursing homes to sneak into the budget of a 5,000 page document of a near blanket corporate immunity for the top executives," Kim explained on Hill.TV's "Rising."

"Now as you can imagine, when you're giving out this type of corporate immunity to some of the worst nursing homes it serves as a disincentive for these businesses from investing further into PPE or hiring more staff," Kim continued. "So it was critical for us to repeal it, to go the other direction to hold these facilities accountable, to direct them to invest more."

Kim said that while other lawmakers and the media in other parts of the country shone a light on the flaws of the bill and prevented it from passing, a lack of transparency allowed it to pass in New York.

"In places like Albany and other capitals there wasn't that much transparency and accountability. So they were able to put it through with the powerful executive like Andrew Cuomo who was on CNN and all these other mainstream media every night pretending that he was serving the public but when you look at the policies that he was putting together he was protecting the corporate interest over people's lives," Kim said.

That's only part of the story. In truth, the member organizations of the lobby that sought and received the commitment to provide legal immunity from Governor Cuomo had to know the Cuomo administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive would unleash a torrent of deaths within New York's nursing homes. They leveraged that knowledge over Governor Cuomo, who knew that would be a consequence of the policy well before he committed to push through legal immunity for nursing home operators.

In this sense, that arrangement marks the beginning of Governor Cuomo's attempted cover-up of the full extent of COVID-related deaths of New York nursing home residents. Without the compensation of legal immunity for COVID deaths of patients in their care, there's little question nursing home operators would have been very vocal about the Cuomo administration's 25 March 2020 directive. Governor Cuomo would benefit from avoiding the public discovery of the consequences of the policies he and senior officials in his administration greenlighted.

Here is related coverage from the timeline outlining these aspects of Governor Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals:

The next step will be to hold Governor Cuomo and the members of his administration who implemented and enforced the 25 March 2020 directive accountable for the consequences of the 25 March 2020 directive that they clearly anticipated.

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Wednesday, April 14, 2021

14 April 2021: "An Overlooked Wrinkle"

Despite Pandemic Carnage, Predatory Nursing Home Financiers Keep Thriving

This article is generally critical of the nursing home industry, but does point at a unique relationship that may have influenced Governor Cuomo's 2 April 2020 decision to gift legal immunity for COVID deaths to a powerful hospital and nursing home operator lobby.

As Politico pointed out last May as statehouses rushed to pass copycat versions of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s liability shield into law, nursing homes are “one of the lobbying world’s quiet powerhouses.” Indeed, one overlooked wrinkle in the saga of the New York governor’s baffling decision to pour gasoline on the nursing home holocaust by forcing homes to accept COVID patients in exchange for a wrongful-death lawsuit moratorium is the role that might have been played by a longtime nursing home lobbyist named Jeffrey A. Sachs, who ran Cuomo’s Medicaid modernization commission in 2011, aggressively promoted Landau’s $72 million nursing home flip in 2015, and happens to be the governor’s lifelong best friend. Like Landau, Sachs has shrewdly kept his name out of the papers since the Rivington House flip, but his consultancy the Sachs Policy Group has been lobbying up a storm, producing more than 100 regular COVID-19 policy newsletters for clients since the pandemic began.

The article also explains why the hospital and nursing home operators' lobby has a reason to be so politically connected:

Part of the problem is that the nursing home industry is fragmented and difficult to understand; the other part is that it is, like any industry that relies almost wholly on government funding, extraordinarily powerful.

Institutions that develop dependence upon government funding are uniquely corrupt. The politicians that deliver funding know that. They also benefit from it. It's just a different version of the book deals politicians get.

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14 April 2021: 60 Acres Not Enough To Contain Both Cuomo and Reporters

Cuomo speaks at 60-acre apple orchard, but no room for reporters

Governor Cuomo's scandals are changing how he does his job. This report describes the thinking inside Governor Cuomo's scandal bunker, but the excerpt below about an event on 13 April 2021 discusses what the public gets to see:

Just as he has dozens of times over the past few months, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo streamed a carefully produced speech on his website Tuesday, this one broadcast from a parking lot at Angry Orchard, the Orange County hard cider producer. He talked about the ongoing vaccination effort and rural New Yorkers.

These events always have strong political undertones, with Cuomo reiterating the importance of vaccinations as he's flanked by an American flag or a New York flag. Several events have been held at Black churches or community centers in heavily Black neighborhoods, a constituent group which polling has shown has broadly supported him despite the numerous scandals and investigations confronting him.

Cuomo is often surrounded by people. But no reporters are allowed to attend. The governor hasn't taken a question in-person from a reporter since December....

Tuesday's event was held outside Angry Orchard, which according to one speaker covers more than 60 acres — more than enough room for the entire press corps, and then some....

When Cuomo does take questions a few times each week, it's in tightly controlled conference calls in which his aides are able to select reporters and cut off any attempts at follow-up questions. (The Times Union hasn't been called on in months, though few members of the Capitol press corps have been selected in recent weeks.)

Perhaps New Yorker's should trust the judgment of Governor Cuomo's aides. These are the people who know him best. If they don't think he's trustworthy enough to face serious reporters like a grown up, he probably isn't very trustworthy at all.

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14 April 2021: Creepy Admiration of Governor Cuomo

Biden reportedly once praised Gov. Cuomo’s ‘enormous balls’

We featured the profile of Governor Cuomo that cited then-Vice President Joe Biden's comments, but purposefully chose to omit this portion of it in our earlier commentary to focus on more serious matters.

President Biden once spoke admiringly about Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s “absolutely enormous balls” — and illustrated his remarks with an indecent gesture, according to a report Tuesday.

The incident, which reportedly took place before an official event in Rochester in 2015, was recounted to the New York Times Magazine by a Cuomo aide who spoke at the time with Biden, then the nation’s vice president.

“Can I tell you my favorite thing about the governor?” Biden reportedly said.

“He’s got tremendous balls. Absolutely enormous balls.”

Biden also reportedly cupped his hands as if he were holding a pair of melons, the magazine said.

Joe Biden's personal impression of Governor Cuomo, ladies and gentlemen. It sadly says more about what Joe Biden values and what the author of that piece finds relevant than anything meaningful at all about Andrew Cuomo or his many, many scandals.

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Tuesday, April 13, 2021

13 April 2021: Staffers Quitting Cuomo World

Cuomo staffers leaving the Executive Chamber

This report lists the names of Cuomo administration staffers who have left their jobs working for Governor Cuomo since the administration acknowledged it covered up the full extent of COVID nursing home deaths on 11 February 2021. The names include: Laura Edidin, Jack Sterne, Christopher O'Brien, Caitlin Girouard, Erin Hammond, Will Burns, Kumiki Gibson, and Gareth Rhodes. The excerpt cites the most significant departure to date:

An April 5 email, provided by a gubernatorial staffer, shows that Laura Edidin, formerly chief special counsel for ethics, risk and compliance, left the administration and was replaced by Victoria Lane, formerly a partner at the law firm Hinckley Allen. Edidin did not respond to a request for comment, and Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi declined to say why she left as the governor fights allegations that he had misused state resources to his own personal benefit. "I don't participate in palace intrigue,” Azzopardi said in an email. “That’s my statement.”

Edidin is part of a growing list of gubernatorial staffers who have left the administration since bombshell revelations of Cuomo’s handling of COVID-19 in nursing homes and alleged sexual misconduct surfacted in February. Some have said it is just a coincidence that they left the governor’s office while he continues fighting for his political life. Others have leaned on time-worn explanations like the need to spend more time with their loved ones. The rest just said nothing at all publicly.

In addition to filling vacant positions from staffers seeking to leave his administration, Governor Cuomo is also seeking better PR people and more legal help.

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13 April 2021: A Profile of Governor Andrew Cuomo

Andrew Cuomo's White-Knuckle Ride

We counted no fewer than 8,334 words in the main body of this article, which appears in the New York Times' Walter Duranty tradition. The words "nursing-home" appear six times. Here's the first reference:

Once liable to be spotted about town, flashing a thumbs-up from a 1968 Pontiac GTO with a “1” license plate, Cuomo has ventured out recently under only the most prescribed of circumstances. Amid his overlapping crises, which include allegations that he was responsible for and then covered up the Covid deaths of nursing-home residents, aggressively groped an aide at the mansion and sexually harassed a half-dozen others, his news briefings proceed via conference call now, with staff members carefully screening the questions. In-person public appearances have been closed to reporters under the implausible pretense of virus protocols, even at cavernous vaccination sites where Cuomo has invited dozens of guests to salute his continued leadership.

Here's the second, third, and fourth references:

Much seems clearer with some distance: Those who called for a lockdown earlier than Cuomo, including de Blasio, were correct. (The governor appeared to spend critical days in March 2020 on a semantic disagreement over the mayor’s use of the phrase “shelter in place.”) Cuomo, celebrated initially as a man of science, has been far more skeptical of expertise than his “get the facts” messaging let on, eventually all but declaring war on members of his own Health Department. (State health officials have said they often found out about major pandemic policy directives from the governor’s news conferences, before being asked to match their health guidance to his words.) And the state’s nursing-home requirements, which forced facilities to readmit those who had been hospitalized with Covid but recovered, would become perhaps the most controversial policy flare-up of Cuomo’s tenure. Last June, as Cuomo was pursuing the book deal, senior Cuomo aides rewrote a report by state health officials to remove the total number of deaths of nursing-home residents, an early indication of what lawmakers now call a monthslong bid to conceal data from the public.

When Letitia James, the state attorney general, published a finding in January that the administration had undercounted those nursing-home deaths, the rebuke caught Cuomo off guard as little has during his time as governor....

And that's as deep into the "most controversial policy flare-up of Cuomo’s tenure" as the Duranty-channeling Matt Flegenheimer goes, never gathering that "most controversial policy" and his attempted cover-up of its deadly consequences tells us more about Andrew Cuomo's true character than any of the episodes he spends thousands of more words upon. Perhaps Flegenheimer is auditioning for a future career at CNN.

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13 April 2021: Thomas DiNapoli Refers Cuomo Pandemic Leadership Book Project to NY AG for Criminal Investigation

CUO BOOK RAP Gov Cuomo faces ANOTHER investigation for ‘using state employees to help with vanity-project Covid memoir’

The linked article appeared on 20 April 2021. We've inserted it here into the timeline because it provides a scanned image of New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli's 13 April 2021 referral letter to New York State Attorney General Letitia James to allow her to open a criminal investigation of Governor Cuomo's pandemic "leadership" book project. Here's a screenshot of the scanned letter (click this link or the following image to open a full-size version of the scanned document):

13 April 2021 Letter from New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli to New York State Attorney General Letitia James Referring Governor Andrew Cuomo's Pandemic Book Project for Criminal Investigation
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Monday, April 12, 2021

12 April 2021: Will NY Attorney General Letitia James Investigate Cuomo Nursing Homes Scandals?

Letitia James urged to probe Cuomo’s COVID nursing home actions

Last week, New York State Comptroller passed the buck in making an official referral to New York State Attorney General Letitia James to launch an investigation of the Cuomo administration's COVID nursing home deaths scandals. DiNapoli's choice is focusing attention now on AG "Tish" James, who has yet to respond or to indicate if her office will engage in a serious investigation of Governor Cuomo's multiple COVID nursing homes scandals.

This report indicates the same group that sought DiNapoli's involvement is now seeking a response from James:

Voices for Seniors — a group that advocates for the families — sent a letter to James calling for investigations into Cuomo for malfeasance, including a since-rescinded policy requiring nursing homes to accept recovering COVID patients discharged from hospitals.

They also claim he used publicly-funded staffers to draft his COVID “leadership” book, tampered with public documents by under-counting COVID nursing home deaths and granted hospitals and nursing homes immunity from medical malpractice suits during the early months of the pandemic.

James has yet to respond to the group’s plea, said Voices For Seniors co-founder Vivian Zayas.

“We have not received a reply to our letter. Why is this issue not a priority compared to the sexual harassment complaints?,” Zayas asked.

James’ office is already investigating sexual harassment allegations leveled against the governor by staffers and former staffers.

“We’re requesting a meeting with the attorney general and urge her to investigate Cuomo’s handling of nursing homes. We’re pleading with AG James on behalf of families who lost loved ones to deliver accountability,” Zayas said.

The article also explains what the state attorney general's office could investigate without DiNapoli's active involvement:

Sources said the AG could investigate the violations of laws including tampering with public documents (Class D felony), obstruction of governmental administration (Class A Misdemeanor and violations of the public officers law.

The timeline recently presented the following entry, which helps tie together how these alleged violations of New York state law are intertwined:

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12 April 2021: More Evidence Emerges of Cuomo's Systematic Misuses of Public Resources

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's government staff did work on 'super PAC's' poll

Another day, another new scandal. This report covers new evidence of Governor Cuomo assigning his staff to do campaign-related work on a poll while on the state government's clock:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s lucrative book deal is not the only instance where the governor’s office mixed private activities and government staff.

The Times Union obtained emails showing that in 2019, Cuomo’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, did work related to campaign polling in the early morning and stretching into the afternoon of a Tuesday. She also instructed lower-level staff to perform a task related to the poll.

On August 13, 2019, DeRosa spent time suggesting edits to a poll being conducted by the firm Global Strategy Group. While Cuomo’s campaign is a client of that polling firm, the poll in this instance was being conducted on behalf of Jobs of New York, a so-called “super PAC” funded by billionaire New York City landlords.

Still, DeRosa – and Cuomo himself – were allowed to review and edit the poll being conducted by Jobs for New York.

State law prohibits the use of government resources for a politician’s personal benefit. A state Ethics Commission opinion from 1992 said that campaigns must be run on an employee's own time and that no state resources of any kind “including telephones, office supplies, postage, photocopying machines or support staff assistance” can be used in the furtherance of the campaign.

In this instance, however Cuomo’s staff work was related to an outside campaign spending group, which was using the Cuomo campaign’s own pollster.

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12 April 2021: John Oliver Spends A Few Seconds to Zing Governor Cuomo

John Oliver Zings Andrew Cuomo in ‘Last Week Tonight’ Episode About Nursing Homes (Video)

Comedian John Oliver spent a few seconds in the opening of a 20 minute segment oriented around nursing homes in general to address Governor Cuomo's nursing home scandals:

John Oliver didn’t waste any time ribbing New York City mayor Andrew Cuomo on Sunday’s “Last Week Tonight” episode about nursing homes, calling the facilities “the absolute last thing you want Andrew Cuomo to be handling, tied comfortably with literally anything else.”

That zinger came from the very first line of the HBO host’s 20-plus-minute segment. Given the topic at hand, things got a bit more somber from there.

Oliver also didn't take any time beyond that zinger to discuss any aspect of Governor Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals. Still, he delivered what may be deeper and more critical coverage than what the Cuomo cheerleader network CNN has provided over the past year since New York's COVID nursing homes scandals first broke.

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12 April 2021: Press Release - Injury Lawyer Seeks Business Related to NY COVID Nursing Home Deaths

Law Offices of Ivan M. Diamond Draw Attention to the Accurate COVID-19 Fatality Data in New York City Nursing Homes

The Associated Press has been one of the few major news outlets to take New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals seriously enough to devote serious analysis to it. That's why we were surprised to find this press release pop up on its site, from an injury lawyer who is seeking clients to represent:

The Law Offices of Ivan M. Diamond represent nursing home residents who suffered harm due to nursing home neglect or abuse. The firm regularly handles cases involving physical abuse, resident-on-resident abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, financial exploitation, and gross neglect. The firm also represents family members who lost a loved one due to nursing home abuse or neglect.

Mr. Diamond has decades of experience handling cases throughout all five boroughs of New York City and the surrounding counties. He achieves successful results for clients dealing with serious injuries or the tragic loss of a close family member.

Some COVID-19 fatalities in nursing homes were unavoidable, but others were not. If anyone would like to discuss nursing home-related injuries or deaths with an experienced New York City nursing home injury attorney, they can contact The Law Offices of Ivan M. Diamond...

Will the Law Offices of Ivan M. Diamond be suing Governor Cuomo or other state officials related to the policies they imposed that put nursing home residents at risk of injury and death from COVID-19? Remember, they contributed to both the introduction of coronavirus infections into nursing home facilties and the shortages of PPE and tests for patients and staff.

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12 April 2021: NY Nursing Home Workers Skipping COVID Vaccines

State figures: New York nursing home staff lagging in getting COVID-19 vaccine

This report decries the failure of nursing home staff members to get vaccinated for COVID-19, despite being at the front of the line for programs to receive the vaccines to help protect the residents of nursing homes, who have proven to be the most vulnerable population to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection.

More than 40% of nursing home employees in the state remain unvaccinated for COVID-19, despite an aggressive effort to offer residents and staff of those facilities a chance to get the vaccine before most other New Yorkers could do so.

The vaccination level among staff at those facilities falls well short of the 75% of health care workers who are fully vaccinated, according to the latest state figures.

We hate it when reporters flub reporting numbers as in this example, because it reveals they neither understand what they're reporting nor how to clearly communicate it.

Let's restate the figures so we can directly compare apples to apples and fix the flawed reporting. The article later reports 58% of nursing home employees in New York have been vaccinated for COVID-19. That compares with 75% of health care workers in the state who have been vaccinated.

Now, let's do some original analysis. According to the New York Department of Health's data for influenza vaccination rates for health care personnel, the state of New York had 2,387,570 health care workers and 404,140 nursing home workers in 2018-2019.

Assuming these employment levels are consistent with today's employment in these fields, that would mean 1,790,678 health care workers and 234,401 nursing home workers have received COVID-19 vaccines. That leaves 596,892 health care workers and 169,739 nursing home workers have not been vaccinated for COVID-19.

The article also fails in explaining why nursing home workers are underrepresented among all health care workers in getting vaccinated:

"We still have a lot of employees who are skeptical for a number of reasons," said Ken Knutsen, administrator at Huntington Hills Center for Health and Rehabilitation in Melville, which has vaccinated about 50% of its staff.

The reasons are not entirely known, but Knutsen said those workers are not immune to the doubts that have fed vaccine hesitancy in the overall population.

"Some have bought into paranoia, yes," Knutsen said. " … But through education, we are slowly turning this around."

Nursing homes were hard hit during the height of the pandemic, with more than 6,000 coronavirus deaths confirmed by the state in those facilities as of April 5 and allegations of underreporting the death toll unleashing controversy for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. More than 4,000 nursing home residents died of COVID-19 outside the facilities, including in hospitals, according to state figures.

The New York Department of Health's 6 July 2020 report, which was "doctored" to conceal the full extent of nursing home resident deaths in New York, blamed nursing home workers for spreading coronavirus infections within the facilities where they worked.

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Sunday, April 11, 2021

11 April 2021: Questions About Governor Cuomo's Book Deal

Literary Notes: Add Andrew Cuomo and his $4 million to the problems list of politicians’ book deals

The Virginia-Pilot's Erica Smith's weekly column on books and literature covers recent criticism of the curiously generous advance awarded to Governor Cuomo for his pandemic "leadership" book deal:

Some politicians’ books sell. Others flop — predictably — yet won a tidy advance from their publisher.

Take the case of New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo. He negotiated a $4 million advance for his second book, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From the Covid-19 Pandemic,” with Crown. The deal was built partly on his public popularity for his daily briefings and nightly newsletters that offered directness, guts, a bit of hope. Yet “his record was questionable and unfinished when the book appeared,” writes Alex Shephard in The New Republic.

Cuomo now faces calls for impeachment. He’s accused of underreporting the COVID-19 death toll in nursing homes while he was working on the book, and having government aides work on this personal project. (He’s also accused by several women of sexual harassment.)

Shephard asks why publishers pay handsomely for such “contrived bits of marketing” when the public shows little interest in them. (He also cites books by Hillary Clinton and Virginia’s Tim Kaine; Jeb Bush; and last year’s Democratic candidates — vs., say, Barack Obama’s.)

Cuomo’s $4 million, he writes, is “astonishingly high” and would have required sales “in the very high six figures” or higher. “American Crisis” has sold fewer than 50,000 copies, a sales “disaster.” His first book — a “hopelessly dull,” 550-page memoir called “All Things Possible” — sold about 3,000 hardcovers and 13 audiobooks. The advance: $700,000, from HarperCollins.

“Given the serious inequities in publishing — low advances paid to many authors, low salaries for many workers, a lack of diversity at every level — the high advances paid to bland books that rarely sell is particularly galling,” Shephard says.

Do you think the mystery behind why such large advances are paid to politicians and not other authors for their book deals might go away if the publishers behind them start being seen as money launderers for those seeking to buy influence from the politicians or to reward them for services rendered?

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11 April 2021: Editorial - Team Cuomo Fears Serious Questions from Media

Editorial — Meet the press: Cuomo is ignoring key journalists during his news briefings

The editors of the Watertown Daily Times have noticed that Governor Cuomo is only calling on journalists who won't press him on his scandals in what passes for his news briefings lately.

He’s ignored many members of the Capitol press corps during his novel coronavirus briefings over the past few months. Those of us in the news industry have a responsibility to ask tough questions, and Cuomo isn’t going to make vigilant reporters disappear simply by pretending they don’t exist.

“Reporters at the state Capitol are calling on Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to consider equity when picking which journalists get to ask questions during the governor’s virtual news conferences, including giving more transparency and accessibility to the press. The Legislative Correspondents Association, made up of dozens of reporters and editors from various news outlets who cover the state Capitol in Albany, sent a letter [Feb. 1] requesting Cuomo allow reporters to ask at least one follow-up question; diversify which reporters are selected for questions by taking into account race, ethnicity, gender and age; and alert news outlets at least two hours in advance of his public appearances,” according to a story published Feb. 4 by the Times Union in Albany. “When the coronavirus pandemic engulfed New York last year, the governor shifted his briefings — typically held in the Red Room at the state Capitol — to conference calls and also to the popular online platform Zoom. But who gets picked to ask a question and their inability to ask follow-up questions for clarity have plagued Albany reporters for months, who have taken to social media channels to highlight the inequities. Some reporters described that despite taking part in dozens of the governor’s briefings and requesting to ask a question, they are passed over for reporters who Cuomo and his executive team appear to favor.”

That's another way of saying the reporters who Governor Cuomo favors can be considered to be part of Team Cuomo. At the very least, they would seem willing to participate in Governor Cuomo's 'pay-for-play' media performances, where they get paid attention in return for a willingness to play along with or to promote the Cuomo administration's desired narratives.

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11 April 2021: Albany Building Lit Up with Anti-Cuomo Sex Scandal Protest

‘NY Touch’: Albany light display targets Gov. Cuomo over sex harassment allegations

The news out of Cuomoland's scandal emporium has been very light through this point of the weekend. Which is perhaps why this protest is gaining attention:

Here was one way to shed a light on the sexual harassment allegations against Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

A light display on an Albany skyscraper was temporarily changed from “NY Tough” to “NY Touch” on Friday night in an apparent jab at Cuomo, whose accusers include a female aide who says he groped her under her blouse.

The phrase was spotted 8 p.m. Friday on the side of the city’s Corning Tower by News 10 anchor and reporter Trishna Begam, who tweeted a photo of it.

Here's the tweet:

Here's some of the timeline's previous coverage of colorful anti-Cuomo protests:

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Saturday, April 10, 2021

10 April 2021: A Direct Line of Connected Dots in Governor Cuomo's Scandals

Cuomo and the bloat

Yesterday, we featured two opinion pieces whose authors don't want to see Governor Cuomo impeached. Today, we featuring just one opinion piece, by the Albany Times-Union's Fred LeBrun, who does want to see Cuomo impeached:

The debacle of the great book deal has jumped to the front of the line, right next to a regiment of women claiming sexual harassment. We’ve learned a number of staffers, state workers all, worked on the book perhaps as volunteers but probably not, at the same time a critical state Department of Health report on nursing home deaths by COVID-19 was being edited and seriously sanitized by some of the same folks working on the book.

A major premise of the bestseller “American Crisis” is that Cuomo did a swell job getting us through the darkest times and, among other things, kept deaths in nursing homes down. Which is not what the original numbers in the Health Department report showed, but implicitly did in the revised version.

There’s a direct line of connected dots between the governor with a motive, a $4 million-plus book deal with Crown Publishing, a number of Cuomo staff working on the book on state time, possibly in violation of state law, and an edited version of an official state document related to thousands of deaths in nursing homes being made to conform to the premise of the book.

If this is not impeachment territory not to mention hubris of the first order, I would be surprised. That the Assembly would move very slowly on this, however, would surprise me less.

It has otherwise been a quiet day in Cuomoland. How long can that last?

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Friday, April 09, 2021

9 April 2021: NY Ethics Watchdog Makes Show of Barking

NY ethics panel looks into Gov. Cuomo memoir, testing scandals

New York's official ethics watchdog, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) acknowledged it was reviewing allegations Governor Cuomo misappropriated state government resources to help write his pandemic leadership book and whether the governor misappropriated state government resources to provide special COVID testing privileges to his favored associates and his family members.

The ultra-secretive New York state ethics panel said Friday it is looking into formal complaints that Gov. Andrew Cuomo used government staffers to help write his COVID memoir and administered preferential swab tests to relatives during the early days of the pandemic.

Following a two-and-hour private session, Joint Commission on Public Ethics counsel Monica Stamm issued the statement saying JCOPE “discussed” and authorized” steps into unnamed “investigative matters.”

Stamm declined to identify the target or targets of the probes, but the unusual emergency JCOPE meeting was called following new accusations that Cuomo had abused his power during the pandemic.

JCOPE went into private session just minutes after Commissioner George Weissman read a statement complaining that he and other GOP appointees were denied information about important matters.

“Commissioners are now being told that to be denied information confidential or otherwise, is confidential in and of itself,” Weissman said.

Whether JCOPE can conduct an impartial, independent investigation of these scandals remains an open question. Many of JCOPE's board members were either directly appointed by Governor Cuomo or his political allies in New York's legislature. Its staff's political allegiance is rumored to be similarly biased. The state's ethics watchdog has shown signs it is both ethically compromised and untrustworthy.

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9 April 2021: Governor Cuomo Forced to Sign Repeal of COVID Legal Immunity

Governor signs Queens assemblyman’s bill repealing nursing home immunity into law

The report covers Ron Kim's victory over Governor Cuomo in forcing the repeal of the legal immunity the governor originally gifted to a powerful hospital and nursing home lobby on 2 April 2020 at the height of his power, which he would go on to sign into law on 6 April 2020.

State Assemblyman Ron Kim’s legislation to repeal an immunity law shielding nursing homes from lawsuits amid the COVID-19 outbreak was signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday, April 6.

Kim’s bill, which passed by a vote of 149-1 in the Assembly and 63-0 in the Senate, repeals Article 30-D of the Public Health Law (Emergency of Disaster Treatment Protection Act), that was granted by Cuomo at the height of the pandemic in March 2020. The law instituted severe liability standards that essentially insulated nursing homes and their executive leadership from criminal or civil liability. Specifically, liability would only pertain to cases in which gross negligence, reckless misconduct, or instances where intentional malfeasance has occurred.

“Finally, after a year of grief, setbacks, frustration, and gaslighting by this administration, thousands of families who lost loved ones begin to seek some form of real closure,” Kim said in a statement to QNS. “Although this can never fill the void of losing a family member, it will create a path towards finally holding these for-profit operators accountable for their actions.”

With such strong majorities in favor of the repeal of Governor Cuomo's gift of legal immunity, he had little choice but to sign the measure reversing that gift into law. It's another indication of how politically weakened he has become.

Even so, it is only a partial victory for Assemblyman Kim. His mission to right the wrongs done by Governor Cuomo and his administration by holding them fully accountable for the consequences of their COVID nursing home policies remains unfinished.

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9 April 2021: Opinions - Cuomo Shouldn't Be Impeached

The knives are out for Cuomo

This first op-ed is from attorney Jim Zirin, who has a strange attitude:

If Cuomo runs again in 2022, the voters can decide whether he, de Blasio or Zeldin — or maybe, don’t laugh, Andrew Giuliani — is the best candidate. Election, yes; impeachment, no.

Make no mistake, I believe that sexual harassment is a serious thing, although based on much of what has come out so far, there is only a frisson of harassment, not anything close to what, say, Bill Clinton did in the Oval Office.

Bad nursing home statistics are plainly not enough to finish Cuomo, so suddenly we have a lineup of eight women (one anonymous) who say Cuomo was putting the moves on them or thinking about putting the moves on them or “grooming” them for a sexual encounter or hiring them for their looks. Even by today’s standards, the punishment has to fit the crime.

What a strangely dismissive attitude regarding hundreds, if not thousands, of COVID deaths among New York nursing home residents that could have been avoided if not for the Cuomo administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive forcing nursing homes to blindly admit patients known to have COVID infections during the 46 days it was in effect.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Time To Resign

Contrast the lawyer's opinion above with the student editors of The Oswegonian, who are also against impeachment, but for a different reason:

While due process still exists and no criminal charges have been filed against Cuomo, he should leave the office of governor with dignity instead of being dragged out kicking and screaming in a lengthy and embarrassing trial.

Cuomo’s attempts at apologizing are embarrassing as well. He deflects the blame, clearly not regretting that he did what he is accused of but that he is in trouble for it. He sets conditional apologies and expects to get away with it, while all it accomplishes is turning away his supporters.

Instead of simply admitting that the actions Cuomo was accused of are wrong, he deflected the blame onto those that were “offended” by it, saying “What I also understand is, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter my intent. What it matters is if anybody was offended by it,” in a press briefing in March.

Coupled with the scandal of underreporting nursing home deaths, Cuomo should take his bow with grace and leave office. If Cuomo were to resign, the state would not go without a governor until the 2022 governor election. Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul would take over the position of governor until the 2022 election.

If any concrete evidence is found, Cuomo should resign from the position of governor. To be tried for any sexual harassment while in the position of governor would not only be an embarrassment to the state of New York, but to his and his father’s legacies.

Just imagine how put out the student opinion writers might be if they ever find out Governor Cuomo's and his administration's policies and actions contributed to the COVID death toll at New York's nursing homes!

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