Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to testify before House panel on pandemic response

(CNN) — Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is set to testify publicly before a GOP-led House panel on Tuesday where he is expected to face questions over his handling of the pandemic during his time in office and Covid-era nursing home policy in the state.

The public hearing will offer a high-profile opportunity for Republicans to grill the former governor after he testified in June behind closed doors before members of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Cuomo, a Democrat, has been out of office for several years, and it is unclear what new information may emerge from the testimony. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testified on the pandemic at a contentious public hearing before the same subcommittee in June.

Cuomo was in the national spotlight early in the outbreak for his daily coronavirus briefings and passionate pleas for more medical equipment from the federal government, but later became a focus of controversy over deaths in nursing homes. The former governor has defended his handling of the pandemic, saying that the state followed federal guidelines.

A spokesperson for Cuomo has confirmed that the former governor will testify.

“The one question that needs to be answered is still being ignored: ‘Why did more people die from COVID in the United States than any other country and how do we make sure it never happens again?’ It is Governor Cuomo’s pleasure to join the committee once again to try to get an answer,” said Rich Azzopardi, Cuomo’s spokesperson.

New York state’s handling of nursing homes and their residents during the pandemic has been a subject of scrutiny, particularly after the state health department issued a controversial advisory on March 25, 2020, relating to hospital discharges and nursing home admissions.

The advisory stated that residents must not be denied admission to nursing homes “solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19” and that nursing homes “are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission.”

In May 2020, Cuomo announced an executive order requiring patients to test negative for Covid-19 before being discharged from a hospital to a nursing home.

Cuomo has said that New York followed federal guidelines when sending coronavirus patients to nursing homes and that the advisory was consistent with guidance from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, Republicans on the House panel released a 48-page memo stating that Cuomo was “involved in the decision that led to the March 25 Directive.”

The memo further states that the directive “was not consistent with applicable federal guidance regarding hospital to nursing home transfers and COVID-19 related infection control” and that the policy ultimately had “predictable but disastrous consequences.”

The memo also accuses the Cuomo administration of manipulating data, which concealed the magnitude of nursing home deaths, and claims that top advisers to the governor influenced a report by the Department of Health in order to shift the blame for the deaths of nursing home residents.

As part of its investigation, the subcommittee interviewed Cuomo and approximately 10 aides in addition to reviewing more than 550,000 pages of documents.

Azzopardi, the Cuomo spokesperson, said in a statement, “This MAGA Congressional Committee came up short on verifying the Big Lie they’ve been peddling for years: Its report does not conclude there was any causality between the March 25th DOH guidance and deaths in nursing homes.” The statement says that the claim of Cuomo’s involvement with the guidance “not only wasn’t supported by the testimony they cited,” but is “directly contradicted” by testimony from a former health department official.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James issued a report in 2021 finding that the New York State Department of Health undercounted Covid-19 deaths among nursing home residents by approximately 50%. The New York health department undercounted the number of Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes by thousands during Cuomo’s time in office, an audit conducted by state officials found in 2022.

Critics have argued that counting only residents who died inside nursing homes while excluding residents who died in hospitals led to a much lower count of nursing home deaths, which helped Cuomo portray New York as having a better response to the pandemic than other parts of the country.

“Andrew Cuomo owes answers to the 15,000 families who lost loved ones in New York’s nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup, an Ohio Republican who chairs the subcommittee and is also a doctor, said in a statement announcing that Cuomo would appear publicly before the panel. “On September 10, Americans will have the opportunity to hear directly from the former governor about New York’s potentially fatal nursing home policies.”

Azzopardi said in the statement that the report shows that “out-of-facility nursing home tabulations were initially withheld due to legitimate concerns over accuracy.”

Cuomo has been investigated by the Department of Justice, Manhattan district attorney, New York attorney general and the New York State Assembly, none of which brought charges for his handling of the pandemic.

A release from the committee announcing the memo further states that current New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, also a Democrat, “has not been cooperative” with document and information requests, and the panel is “considering next steps,” including “potentially issuing a subpoena.”

The memo states that the New York State Executive Chamber did not produce documents until February 2024, which it says was “more than eight months after the original request,” but notes that the panel “has since received three separate productions amounting to 373,999 documents.”

Cuomo was first elected governor in 2010 and served nearly three full terms before he resigned in August 2021 following the release of a report by James’ office that found he had sexually harassed multiple women. Cuomo has denied the allegations.

CNN’s Paul LeBlanc, Annie Grayer and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn contributed to this report.

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