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Watch What Happened When Cuomo Was Confronted on His Disastrous COVID-19 Nursing Home Decisions

Madeline Leesman
Madeline Leesman  |  September 11, 2024 11:30 AM

In a congressional hearing on Tuesday, disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) defended the policies he signed off on during the COVID-19 pandemic that contributed to the deaths of residents in nursing homes throughout the state. 

As Townhall covered, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic published the findings from its investigation into the former governor. The investigation claimed that Cuomo’s office “absolutely” signed off on a directive at the onset of the pandemic that forced COVID-19 positive patients back into nursing homes.

Reportedly, this led to as many as 9,000 excess COVID-19 deaths. Additionally, the report claimed that the governor and his inner circle “edited” the state Department of Health report that undercounted the fatalities. 

“The Cuomo Administration is responsible for recklessly exposing New York’s most vulnerable population to COVID-19. Today’s memo holds Mr. Cuomo and his team accountable for their failures and provides the most detailed and comprehensive accounting of New York’s pandemic-era wrongdoing,” subcommittee chair Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) said ahead of the hearing.

During the hearing, Cuomo said that he still stands by his directive, which he claims followed CDC guidance. 

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“This was an ongoing raging political debate where the Republicans were saying ‘March 25 caused deaths’...” Cuomo said in the hearing before being cut off. 

Then, Cuomo blamed his directive on former President Donald Trump, who was in office at the time. 

“I was debriefed by the commissioner of health who said ‘this is the theory of CMS and CDC and DOH, that these people are no longer infectious,” he said. 

“The governor was desperate to change the narrative to dispel the notion that his administraion failed nursing home residents, that he failed to ask any questions,” Rep. James Comer (R-KY) said. 

Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene pointed out that Cuomo’s policies during the COVID-19 “murdered” people. 

In March 2020, days after Cuomo signed the directive putting COVID-19 positive people in nursing homes, Trump sent a Navy hospital ship to New York City to 

“That was just a few days after you signed the directive to put COVID-19 patients into nursing homes on March 25, which led to murdering people’s parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. Yes. Murdering them,” Greene said. 

“Today, you said that high deaths in nursing homes is a conspiracy theory. Would you like to turn to the people here in this room today whose mothers died and their fathers died in these nursing homes and call them ‘conspiracy theorists?’”

Cuomo then denied saying this, and then denied stating that nursing home staff spread COVID-19 in nursing homes. 

“I’m saying what a lot of people believe your actions did,” Greene said.

“The disgraced former governor and his top aides were caught covering up their culpability and guilt to selfishly save their shredded reputations,” New York Rep. Elise Stefanik said in the hearing. 

“This investigation found that you…and your senior aides made a deliberate decision to exclude certain COVID-19 related nursing home deaths to hide and undercount the actual mortality rate in nursing homes,” Stefanik added. “And for the public, Gov. Cuomo changed the methodology of counting nursing home fatalities to exclude out-of-facility deaths, to undercount those.”

Stefanik then pressed the former governor on his book deal.

“When were you negotiating for your multi-million dollar advance deal for your book as seniors were dying in nursing homes?”

“You can’t make up facts, congresswoman,” Cuomo retorted. 

“You’re the one making up facts. You’re the one who undercounted nursing home deaths…there are families sitting here…I want you to turn around and apologize, which you have failed to do.”

Cuomo called apologizing to the families “political theater"  and started rambling about Trump.

"There is a reason why you are the former governor of New York state and you will never hold elected office again," Stefanik concluded.