By Chris Wade | The Center Square contributor
(Worthy News) – A House Republican panel is recommending criminal charges against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, alleging the Democrat made false statements to Congress during his testimony on the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Monday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform sent a criminal referral letter asking Attorney General Pam Bondi to charge Cuomo with making false statements to Congress as part of an investigation into his administration’s response to COVID-19 nursing home deaths in New York state.
The panel’s chairman, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., called Cuomo a “man with a history of corruption and deceit” and said he was “now caught red-handed lying to Congress” and called for him to “be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
“This wasn’t a slip-up — it was a calculated cover-up by a man seeking to shield himself from responsibility for the devastating loss of life in New York’s nursing homes,” Comer said in a statement. “Let’s be clear: lying to Congress is a federal crime.”
Cuomo was grilled by members of the Republican-controlled Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic during a September hearing when they Cuomo with questions for hours about the controversial March 25, 2020 directive issued by his administration in the early days of the pandemic that required nursing homes and long-term care facilities in New York to admit COVID-19-positive patients.
His directive required nursing homes to begin accepting “medically stable” patients recovering from COVID-19 as they were discharged from hospitals. It was rescinded after several weeks, but Cuomo was widely criticized for contributing to the high death toll in the state’s long-term care facilities.
Cuomo, a Democrat who stepped down from office in 2021 amid sexual harassment allegations, defended himself before the House panel and blasted GOP members for conducting a “partisan” investigation. He pointed out that the DOJ had previously looked at the allegations against him and found no wrongdoing.
The demands to open a new DOJ investigation come as Cuomo is seeking to resurrect his political career with a challenge to incumbent New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who is running as an independent. President Donald Trump has praised Adams over the Democrat’s vocal support for his deportation policies.
“This is nothing more than a meritless press release that was nonsense last year and is even more so now,” Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said Monday in a statement. “As the DOJ constantly reminds people, this kind of transparent attempt at election interference and law-fare violates their own policies.”
Cuomo has pointed the blame for the high number of COVID-19 deaths nationwide on Trump, whom he claimed “willfully deceived the American people” during the pandemic.
House Republicans have cited evidence from testimony that Cuomo and his team “made a deliberate decision to exclude scientifically significant nursing home-related COVID-19 deaths from mortality rates” and “heavily edited” New York State Department of Health documents “to shift blame away from Mr. Cuomo and his team.”
Over 80,000 New Yorkers died of COVID-19 from the beginning of the pandemic to May 2023, including 15,000 nursing home residents, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Copyright 1999-2026 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
Latest News from Worthy News
North Korea fired about 10 short-range ballistic missiles toward its eastern waters Thursday, South Korea’s military said, a sharp show of force just one day after Pyongyang dismissed President Donald Trump’s decision to scale back U.S.–South Korea military drills.
The Pentagon has ordered 30 American colleges and universities to audit foreign research partnerships and cut off any arrangements deemed a threat to U.S. national security, with officials warning that schools could lose federal research funding if they fail to comply.
The U.S. military’s heavy use of Tomahawk cruise missiles during the conflict with Iran is sharpening concerns in Washington over America’s ability to sustain long-range precision warfare while also preparing for future threats.
Israel has warned Syria not to allow Turkey to establish a deeper military foothold inside the country, escalating a growing diplomatic confrontation between Jerusalem and Ankara after an Israeli strike on the Abu al-Duhur military air base in northern Syria.
The USS George Washington aircraft carrier is now operating in the Middle East, U.S. Central Command said Thursday, marking a major carrier rotation as the USS Abraham Lincoln prepares to end one of the Navy’s most punishing recent deployments.
The death toll from the collapse of an artisanal gold mine in western Central African Republic has risen to more than 100, with others still missing or trapped beneath rubble, underscoring broader concerns about safety risks faced by miners across the region, rescue workers and local officials said.
Ukrainian authorities said Thursday at least 16 people were killed and about 40 injured in massive overnight Russian drone and missile strikes on Kyiv and the wider region, while neighboring countries were placed on high alert amid reports of drones entering or approaching their territory.