The New York Times reports that top aides for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo rewrote a nursing home report to hide the higher death toll in those homes.
Here’s what The New York Times reports:
“After the state attorney general revealed earlier this year that thousands of deaths of nursing home residents had been undercounted, Mr. Cuomo finally released the complete data, saying he had withheld it out of concern that the Trump administration might pursue a politically motivated inquiry into the state’s handling of the outbreak in nursing homes.
“But Mr. Cuomo and his aides actually began concealing the numbers months earlier, as his aides were battling their own top health officials, and well before requests for data arrived from federal authorities, according to documents and interviews with six people with direct knowledge of the discussions, who requested anonymity to describe the closed-door debates.”
The report put the death toll about 50% higher than what the Cuomo administration made public, per The New York Times.
New York Attorney General Letitia James will begin an investigation into the controversy, according to CNN.
The recent round of controversies will have an impact on Cuomo’s political career, too. The New York Times reports Cuomo may seek a fourth term in office so his political campaign may be impacted by such an investigation.
Flashback
In mid-February, Cuomo faced allegations he and his aides covered up the death toll numbers in nursing homes in New York during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, which I wrote about before.
Context
The new report comes as Cuomo faces a whirlwind of controversy over sexual harassment claims, as I wrote about for the Deseret News.
- Anna Ruch, 33, told The New York Times that Cuomo asked to kiss her at a wedding in 2019.
- Lindsey Boylan, a former state economic development official, told The Daily Beast that Cuomo harassed her on different occasions from 2015 to 2018.
- Charlotte Bennett, a former aide to Cuomo, said Cuomo asked her “whether she was monogamous in her relationships and if she had ever had sex with older men,” per The New York Times.