New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio believes Gov. Andrew Cuomo threatened an assemblyman who was critical of his coronavirus response, an allegation the governor has denied, calling it “nothing new.”
Ron Kim, the assemblyman, told CNN that he received a phone call from Cuomo as his team sought to keep under wraps the full extent of COVID-19 deaths linked to nursing homes, a burgeoning controversy for the Democratic governor. On Thursday morning, de Blasio weighed in.
“That’s classic Andrew Cuomo,” the mayor said. “A lot of people in New York state have received those phone calls. You know, the bullying is nothing new. I believe Ron Kim, and it’s very, very sad, no public servant, no person who is telling the truth should be treated that way. But yeah, the threats, the belittling, the demand that someone change their statement right that moment, many, many times I’ve heard that, and I know a lot of other people in the state have heard that.”
He said he believes Kim’s version of events “100%,” adding, “I know him. He’s a good public servant. I’ve always seen him as a person of integrity. It’s just the script is exactly what a lot of us have heard before. It’s not a surprise. It’s sad. It’s not the way people should be treated. You know, a lot of people get intimidated by that. I give him credit for not being intimidated.”
De Blasio previously called for an investigation into Cuomo’s handling of the nursing home scandal.
Kim alleged that Cuomo called him last week directly “to threaten my career if I did not cover up for Melissa [DeRosa] and what she said. He tried to pressure me to issue a statement, and it was a very traumatizing experience,” and he said that the governor warned him that the assemblyman hadn’t experienced his “wrath,” which could “destroy” him.
Cuomo senior adviser Rich Azzopardi accused Kim of “lying” in a prior statement to the Washington Examiner, adding, “I know because I was one of three other people in the room when the phone call occurred. At no time did anyone threaten to ‘destroy’ anyone with their ‘wrath,’ nor engage in a ‘cover-up.’ That’s beyond the pale and is, unfortunately, part of a yearslong pattern of lies by Mr. Kim against this administration.”
In response to the reports of his interaction with Kim, Cuomo accused the assemblyman of “unethical if not illegal” behavior stemming from an unrelated dispute.
The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding de Blasio’s input.
Kim, an assemblyman representing a district in Queens, emerged as a Cuomo critic when he promoted allegations of corruption in the governor’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. After first suspecting impropriety in April 2020, Kim asked President Biden to provide full data behind New York’s nursing home fatalities on the first day of his administration.
About a week later, New York Attorney General Letitia James released a report outlining what Kim called a “cover-up” from Cuomo due to the underreporting of nursing home deaths by as much as 50%. Weeks later, Cuomo aide DeRosa admitted to state Democrats that the administration “froze” when the Trump Justice Department started asking questions about its handling of the nursing home situation.
Both the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office are investigating Cuomo’s handling of the nursing home situation.
