House Republicans issued a subpoena on Tuesday to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for his testimony regarding his decision to allow patients with COVID-19 into nursing homes during the height of the pandemic.
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) said on Tuesday that Cuomo’s nursing home policies “had deadly consequences for New York’s most vulnerable population.”
“Former Gov. Cuomo owes answers to the 15,000 families who lost loved ones in New York nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Wenstrup said. “His testimony is crucial to uncover the circumstances that led to his misguided policies and for ensuring that fatal mistakes never happen again.”
Cuomo’s nursing home guidance issued on March 25, 2020, prevented nursing homes from refusing to admit or readmit patients with confirmed cases of COVID-19 into their facilities, which Cuomo has insisted was in keeping with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the time.
The subcommittee is also seeking to ask the former New York governor about his administration’s efforts to downplay the negative consequences of the policy.
“This is an obvious press charade: They issue a subpoena as a press release,” Rich Azzopardi, Cuomo’s spokesman, told the Washington Examiner in response to a request for comment. “Congress is officially a circus, and they are nothing but clowns.”
In a letter accompanying the subpoena, Wenstrup alleges that Cuomo’s office “heavily edited — or at the very least, filtered” the data regarding nursing home deaths from the New York State Department of Health, which only accounted for 6,432 deaths despite the fact that earlier drafts of the report estimated the death count to be over 9,800.
A report from New York Attorney General Letitia James published in 2021 found that COVID-19 nursing home deaths may have been “undercounted by [the NYSDOH] by approximately 50 percent.”
Cuomo resigned from his position in August 2021 in the wake of a report from James that found he had sexually harassed 11 women, including staffers and others who did not work for his administration.
Wenstrup wrote that Cuomo and his attorney, Rita Glavin, have “repeatedly and consistently dismissed, deflected, or ignored all questions and requests” relating to nursing home deaths in New York after the March 25 directive.
The subcommittee has been requesting voluntary testimony from Cuomo since May 2023. Following several weeks of communication between subcommittee staff and Cuomo’s attorney, the subcommittee informed Cuomo in mid-February that they would begin looking into “evaluating the use of the compulsory process” to secure his testimony.
In February, Cuomo’s attorney provided dates in August 2024 that Cuomo would be available for interviews, more than a year after the subcommittee’s initial transcribed interview request.
“It is now clear that your strategy from the beginning has been to delay and undermine our
investigation,” Wenstrup said.
Azzopardi said that the delay “is on them, not us.”
Glavin responded to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment by calling the subcommittee’s description of events as “disingenuous” and “political nonsense aimed at getting their names in the press.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“There was no need for a subpoena, and they know it. And their letter shows they’ve already made up their minds before even hearing from Governor Cuomo. Pure political theater,” Glavin said.
“It is well past time for Cuomo to stop dodging accountability to Congress and start answering honestly to the American people,” Wenstrup said.
