Janice Dean says she wants to thank the Democratic lawmaker who leaked the new bombshell that the Cuomo administration withheld the real number of COVID-19 related fatalities the past year. Their initial report put the number at just under 7,000 deaths, but recent findings by the state attorney general's office prompted Health Commissioner Howard Zucker to release the more accurate number, 12,743 deaths as of Jan. 19. According to the NY Post, Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa admitted on a video conference call on Thursday that the administration "froze" when they saw the actual numbers and kept them hidden for fear the Department of Justice would come after them.
“And basically, we froze,” she told lawmakers on the call. “Because then we were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, what we start saying, was going to be used against us while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation.”
Fox News senior meteorologist Janice Dean has a personal stake in the fight to hold the Cuomo administration accountable. Both of her in-laws died last year in New York nursing homes and she's determined to find out how much Gov. Cuomo's decision to force those facilities to accept recovering COVID patients had to do with those tragedies. An AP report that came out about the same time as the NY Post offering revealed that the Cuomo administration also undercounted the number of recovering patients they sent to facilities. The new number of 9,056 recovering patients "is more than 40% higher" than what the state health department told us, the AP reports.
"He still thinks this can bounce off him," Mark Steyn noted in an interview with Dean on Fox News.
"It can't," Dean responded. "Not now. We have an admission. And I would like to thank whoever that Democratic lawmaker was yesterday that gave us that information. Because I believe all of them should go to jail."
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who was disrespected by one of Cuomo's aides after she requested a DOJ investigation, released a scathing statement about the NY Post bombshell. She upgraded from a request for an investigation to a request for a prosecution.
"This bombshell admission of a coverup and the remarks by the Secretary to the Governor indicating intent to obstruct any federal investigation is a stunning and criminal abuse of power," she explains.
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— Rep. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik) February 12, 2021
Gov. Cuomo won an Emmy last year for his daily coronavirus press conferences, and wrote a book about his supposed leadership during the pandemic, which was still very much raging at the time of publication.