The Department of Justice has reportedly opened a criminal investigation into former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo over his testimony about COVID-era nursing home deaths, though the mayoral frontrunner is unaware of the probe, his spokesperson said.
“We have never been informed of any such matter, so why would someone leak it now?” spokesman Rich Azzopardi told news outlets. “The answer is obvious: This is lawfare and election interference plain and simple — something President Trump and his top Department of Justice officials say they are against.”
The criminal investigation into the Democrat began about a month ago, The New York Times reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
The Republican-led panel House Oversight and Government Reform Committee asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to pursue criminal charges against Cuomo, a Democrat, for making “criminally false statements” during a June 11, 2024, interview with the House COVID subcommittee.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) charged that there was “overwhelming evidence” that Cuomo, 67, presided over a July 6, 2020, audit that undercounted the total number of deaths in New York senior care facilities during the pandemic by 46%.
In his testimony, the ex-governor was adamant that he had not drafted, reviewed, discussed or consulted people for “peer-review” on the nursing home report, which was published by the New York State Department of Health.
Comer previously referred Cuomo for prosecution last year, but his request was denied by former President Joe Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland. […]
The report Cuomo is accused of lying to Congress about downplayed the consequences of his infamous March 25, 2020, directive forcing recovering COVID patients into senior care facilities without mandated testing to see if they could still infect others.
By May 10, when Cuomo revoked the order, thousands of sick New Yorkers had been either admitted or readmitted into nursing homes.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had acknowledged the risk of asymptomatic spread six days earlier — but media outlets had been reporting on the possibility of such infections since early April.
Cuomo told lawmakers last year that he did not “recall” even seeing the July 2020 nursing home report before its publication.
Emails obtained by subcommittee staff, however, show that Cuomo aides discussed his participation in the drafting of the audit — and the former governor’s own handwritten edits were also submitted as evidence to the DOJ.
Those edits included a note stating that by the date the nursing home mandate was rescinded, “the disease was already in the nursing homes” — and crossing out the word “death” to replace it with the approximate timeline it took for infections to become fatalities, among others.
“New York is 6,600?” Cuomo scrawled in the margins of one draft page — despite more than 9,000 perishing when counting those who were in hospitals. The final report cited just 6,432 fatalities. (New York Post)
Cuomo “testified truthfully to the best of his recollection about events from four years earlier," Azzopardi said, "and he offered to address any follow-up questions from the subcommittee — but from the beginning this was all transparently political.”
While the former governor and some media outlets are painting the investigation as politically motivated, many senior advocacy organizations and conservatives are celebrating the probe.
Our full statement: pic.twitter.com/yRBd8GjSmu
— VoicesForSeniors (@Voices4Seniors) May 21, 2025
🚨 #BREAKING: DOJ has launched a criminal probe into Andrew Cuomo over his testimony on his COVID response
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) May 21, 2025
Cuomo perjured himself MULTIPLE TIMES, and HID RECORDS from the committee
He’s also responsible for the deaths of THOUSANDS of nursing home patients
LOCK HIM UP! pic.twitter.com/cDp8EZWjBZ
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