Embattled New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s problems aren’t going away any time soon. Now, the feds are increasing their investigation into Cuomo’s dubious handling of the Coronavirus to include if he let family members jump the line for difficult-to-find Covid tests while individuals in nursing homes were going without and paying the ultimate price.
According to The Daily Wire:
“Federal investigators are examining whether New York state officials gave priority access to COVID-19 testing to some of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s close associates and his brother during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, according to people familiar with the matter,” Fox News reported Thursday. “The review of the testing marks an expansion of the probe that the investigators, based in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York, opened in February to look at how the Cuomo administration handled COVID-19 in nursing homes.”
As the Daily Wire reported earlier this year, “High-level members of the state Department of Health were directed last year by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker to conduct prioritized coronavirus testing on the governor’s relatives as well as influential people with ties to the administration…Members of Cuomo’s family including his brother, his mother, and at least one of his sisters were also tested by top health department officials — some several times.”
In addition, it appears many of those requests were given priority over pleas from nursing homes that desperately needed to know whether patients returning to their facilities were putting other residents at risk. Despite direct requests, the New York Department of Health provided only enough COVID-19 testing kits for three nursing facilities, per the New York Post.
Cuomo is also facing an impeachment inquiry which will also be expanded to investigate Cuomo’s mishandling of Coronavirus testing.
“The impeachment investigation into New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo will also examine whether members of the Democratic governor’s family were given priority access to coronavirus tests in the first weeks of the pandemic last year,” according to a “key lawmaker” who spoke to the Wall Street Journal. “State Assemblyman Charles Lavine, a Democrat from Nassau County, said in an interview on Thursday that the allocation of coronavirus tests last year ‘will certainly receive some attention” in the inquiry he oversees as head of the chamber’s Judiciary Committee.’”
The FBI is also investigating whether Cuomo’s office deliberately hid data regarding how many nursing home deaths resulted from his Covid policies.
