Congressional report ahead of Gov. Cuomo's COVID hearing says he knowingly 'edited' low-ball death reports

WASHINGTON DC - As Democrat former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo prepares to testify before The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in a public hearing Tuesday, the subcommittee has released damning findings that Cuomo himself not only "edited" a state report which low-balled the state's COVID deaths in nursing homes, but also predicted the matter becoming a "great debacle."

Reporting from The New York Post, citing an exclusively obtained final congressional report and witness testimony, revealed that the office of Gov. Cuomo "absolutely" authorized the fateful order that forced New York nursing homes to accept recovering COVID patients and subsequently contributed to as many as 9,000 deaths among the elderly residents.

The outlet reported that the congressional investigators accused Cuomo in the Monday memo of making what they termed "demonstrably false" statements perpetuating a "cover-up" indicated when key staffers directly contradicted his testimony before the subcommittee.

The reported "smoking gun" in the congressional report was an email from Cuomo's aide Stephanie Benton dated Jun 7th, 2020 regarding the death count in the nursing homes, in which Benton wrote, "This is going to be the great debacle in the history books." She added, “Don’t u [sic] see how bad this is? Or do we admit error and give up?”

The Post reported that according to four of Cuomo's aides, the email was likely dictated by the Governor and emailed by Benton.
 

This "great debacle" email - which witnesses say came indirectly from Cuomo - shows that he recognized the March 25 order as a threat to his image and legacy, and wanted his team to push back harder https://t.co/OftM70lVl1 pic.twitter.com/Y7GPqcIhVs

— Bill Hammond (@NYHammond) September 9, 2024

The Congressional report found that Cuomo and an inner circle of associates "reviewed" and "edited" the controversial 33-page report, issued in July by the state Health Department as reported by The New York Times. The report subsequently found Cuomo’s policies were not to blame for the excess COVID deaths. The report had, as is now widely know, dramatically under-reported the death toll. 

Cuomo’s then-director of operations, Dr. Jim Malatras, testified to the subcommittee, saying, "The report that I was editing had the total number of fatalities in all the charts until Ms. DeRosa intervened." Cuomo's top aide Melissa DeRosa had reportedly “laid out the points that she wanted to have touched upon in the report.”
 

“She was constantly editing it, Mr. Cuomo was editing it,” Malatras told Congress.

Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) openly condemned the disgraced former Governor who left office under the cloud of a massive sexual harassment scandal. He told reporters Monday, “The Cuomo Administration is responsible for recklessly exposing New York’s most vulnerable population to COVID-19. Today’s memo holds Mr. Cuomo and his team accountable for their failures and provides the most detailed and comprehensive accounting of New York’s pandemic-era wrongdoing.”

“The Select Subcommittee has heard more than 50 hours of testimony with high-ranking, former Cuomo Administration officials and reviewed hundreds of thousands of documents — all of which paint a clear picture that the former Governor and his team issued disastrous, unscientific guidance on March 25, 2020, and have since attempted to deflect their actions,” he said according to The Post.

“We hope that this memo provides clarity to the American people who deserve answers and accountability to the families and friends of the victims who especially deserve honesty from Mr. Cuomo and his former staff.”