On Monday, an attorney who represented former New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s executive chamber revealed that the Manhattan district attorney’s office had closed its investigation into how Cuomo’s administration handled Covid-19 in nursing homes. Fox Meteorologist Janice Dean, the most vociferous and trenchant critic of Cuomo for his policies after her husband’s parents died in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, fired on Twitter:
The new Manhattan DA is excusing our former corrupt governor of several charges he was facing regarding nursing homes and sexual assault. There are still investigations underway with FBI, DOJ eastern district and AG but there’s no doubt they’re making deals with the devil.
The new Manhattan DA is excusing our former corrupt governor of several charges he was facing regarding nursing homes and sexual assault. There are still investigations underway with FBI, DOJ eastern district and AG but there’s no doubt they’re making deals with the devil.
— Janice Dean (@JaniceDean) January 4, 2022
The attorney who represented Cuomo’s executive chamber, Elkan Abramowitz, said the head of the Manhattan district attorney’s elder-care unit contacted him.
Abramowitz said, “I was told that after a thorough investigation—as we have said all along—there was no evidence to suggest that any laws were broken,” The Wall Street Journal reported, noting the various investigations that had been launched into the nursing home scandal, including the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights bureau asking for death data from state-run nursing homes in August 2020; a further investigation by another DOJ division that examined private nursing homes, and federal prosecutors based in Brooklyn seeking nursing-home death data.
Fox News noted in June 2020 that over 6,200 elderly residents might have died from COVID-19 in New York nursing homes according to state health department statistics. Months prior, on March 25, 2020, the New York Department of Health issued an advisory that stated nursing homes had to accept residents returning from hospitals whether or not they had a diagnosis of COVID-19. The advisory stated:
During this global health emergency, all NHs must comply with the expedited receipt of residents returning from hospitals to NHs. Residents are deemed appropriate for return to a NH upon a determination by the hospital physician or designee that the resident is medically stable for return.
Hospital discharge planners must confirm to the NH, by telephone, that the resident is medically stable for discharge. Comprehensive discharge instructions must be provided by the hospital prior to the transport of a resident to the NH.
No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.NHs are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.
The Daily Wire reported on May 10, 2020, that a report from New York state authorities showed that “at least 4,813 residents with confirmed or presumed cases of COVID-19 have died at 351 of New York’s 613 nursing homes since March 1, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration’s new list,” according to Time Magazine.
The Journal noted that state officials “withheld data on the full number of Covid-19 deaths among nursing-home residents, and aides to Mr. Cuomo successfully pushed to use a lower tally in a Health Department report on the matter. Republican and Democratic lawmakers criticized Mr. Cuomo for suppressing the death toll while negotiating a $5.1 million contract to write a memoir about his experience during the pandemic.”