GOP-led House panel to refer former NY Gov. Cuomo to DOJ for potential prosecution over report on Covid nursing home deaths

CNN — The Republican-led House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Thursday morning will send a letter to US Attorney General Merrick Garland referring a potential criminal case involving former New York Democratic Gov. At issue is Cuomo’s truthfulness regarding his role in the writing and review of a state health department report from June 2020 that underestimated the nursing home death count by nearly half. Subcommittee chairman Rep. Brad Wenstrup, an Ohio Republican, has alleged the former governor’s “misguided decision effectively admitted thousands of COVID-19 positive patients into nursing homes, causing predictable but deadly consequences for New York’s most vulnerable.” Earlier Wednesday, Cuomo’s legal team filed a referral letter to the Justice Department requesting they investigate an alleged abuse of power by the select committee, with a particular focus on Wenstrup, whom they claim to be in cahoots with a Fox News personality and her husband, who is part of a separate Covid-related lawsuit against the former governor. A June 28, 2020, email she sent was titled “Edits to nursing home doc.” Cuomo denied the edits were his, but Kennedy told the subcommittee, “I believe this to be his handwriting.” Cuomo’s allegedly “false statements,” the subcommittee said in a letter obtained by CNN, were made during a June 11 transcribed interview and related to “his involvement in and knowledge of the drafting of the July 6 Report.” “As explained in the attached referral,” the subcommittee letter signed by Wenstrup states, “Mr. Cuomo made multiple criminally false statements, including that he was neither involved in the drafting nor the review of the July 6 Report.” Cuomo, according to the letter, “also testified that he did not have any discussions about the July 6 Report being peer reviewed” and that he didn’t know whether the report was to be reviewed by individuals not in the department of health.