Andrew Cuomo is sticking to his story, no matter how many wheels fall off: He’s never going to own up to his disastrous March 25, 2020, “must admit” directive that forced New York nursing homes to accept contagious COVID patients whom hospitals wanted to dump, nor to his efforts to hide the resulting excess death toll.
Ahead of public testimony Tuesday to a House panel, the former gov placed not one but two columns (in the copy-hungry Daily News and Daily Beast) reiterating his utterly dishonest defenses: They made me do it and Donald Trump was out to get me.
This as The Post published exclusive details from the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic findings: The then-gov personally edited a state report that understated New York’s nursing-home COVID death toll, despite lower-downs’ warnings that the lies would become a “great debacle.”
The March 2020 order, issued to please the high-donating hospital lobby, led to thousands of excess deaths.
Cuomo has variously claimed that the order was in keeping with CDC guidance, and even that it was mandated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Yet Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator at the time, testified that New York’s order “violated” federal guidance.
As for the cover-up of the true care-home death toll: When they were finally caught out, Team Cuomo claimed they withheld the truth even from legislative oversight because they feared a probe by the Justice Department.
Of course, they emphasize it was the Trump Justice Department, pretending that it was sure to be a partisan probe, though career professionals ran Justice until the final weeks of Trump’s term: The Donald couldn’t even stop the insane, utterly bogus Russiagate probe.
But the “Fear MAGA” button is practically the only one Cuomo has left, hence his bid to blame Trump for all 1.2 million American pandemic deaths, though well of over half of those came on President Biden’s watch.
Andrew is still pining for his Emmy-winning days as the gov who provided the leadership Trump didn’t.
Too bad Cuomo’s TV briefings came paired with disasters like the care-home orders, as well as absurd and arbitrary lockdown orders such as “You must order real food with a drink” and “No bowling for you!”
Gov. Kathy Hochul, sadly, still hasn’t allowed a full airing of the Empire State’s dirty COVID laundry: The “outside report” she commissioned is a joke.
Yet state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli found that Cuomo had “misled the public” in undercounting the care-home deaths by more than 50%; state Attorney General Tish James’ earlier probe put the deception in the same ballpark.
Maybe the House committee can provide more accountability.
At the very least, The Post is committed to ensuring that Cuomo never gets away with his “alternate facts” lies.
