Andrew Cuomo, once a COVID star, grilled by Congress over pandemic missteps

Dan Diamond | The Washington Post

CUOMO: Democrats in Congress have repeatedly joined Republicans in calling for scrutiny of how Andrew M. Cuomo (D) handled the pandemic while he was New York's governor. Salwan Georges/The Washington Post

Andrew M. Cuomo - who won national acclaim in early 2020 for his seemingly steady management as the coronavirus ravaged New York - on Tuesday faced an aggressive panel in Congress, which battered the former New York governor over his administration’s controversial directive to send more than 9,000 coronavirus-infected people back into nursing homes.

And lawmakers demanded that he apologize for other pandemic decisions.

“It appears there’s to be no soul-searching from you, governor … no self-critique of what could have been done better. … Just doubling-down and blaming others,” said Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), who chairs the House panel dedicated to investigating the nation’s coronavirus response.

The combative and sometimes theatrical hearing was held more than four years after the nursing home order was issued and more than three years after Cuomo resigned as governor amid a cascade of sexual harassment complaints. It unfolded on an afternoon when D.C. was abuzz about Tuesday’s presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, and not the years-old pandemic decisions of a former governor.

Slow-walked accurate data

But Democrats joined Republicans to insist that Cuomo explain whether his administration slow-walked accurate data on nursing home deaths, in a hearing room packed with attendees who lost family members to COVID in New York nursing homes.

“Any public official who sought to obscure transparency or mislead the American people during the COVID-19 pandemic should answer to the American public - regardless of political party,” said Rep. Raul Ruiz (Calif.), the panel’s top Democrat.

Wenstrup and his GOP colleagues issued a report Monday concluding that Cuomo and his aides worked to influence a New York health department report that shifted blame for the nursing home deaths away from the Cuomo administration’s order.

Cuomo countered that his administration had acted appropriately, particularly given the chaos in the earliest days of the pandemic, and that his record had been distorted by political opponents. He also focused on the Trump administration’s failures to provide personal protective equipment, coronavirus testing and other crucial supplies in early 2020.

“It was the COVID ‘Hunger Games,’” Cuomo said, invoking the fictional series about a winner-take-all society. “The federal government was nowhere to be found.”


Much of Tuesday’s hearing focused on the March 2020 order by Cuomo’s administration - issued as New York reeled from the nation’s first surge of coronavirus, and intended to preserve hospital capacity - that forced the state’s nursing homes to readmit residents who had developed COVID. Lawmakers said the decision resulted in a dangerous situation: Many facilities’ older and often vulnerable residents were exposed to a deadly disease months before vaccines and treatments became available.

Potentially thousands of people

The decision has been linked to the deaths of at least hundreds and potentially thousands of people, according to outside experts and analysts. Those experts and some officials have acknowledged there was no need to force nursing homes to house coronavirus-infected patients given ample emergency capacity elsewhere in New York City, the outbreak’s epicenter in March 2020, and across the state. A pair of temporary hospitals, including a Navy hospital ship, went mostly unused.

The order came to haunt the New York governor after he received national praise, a book deal and even an Emmy award for his televised coronavirus briefings early in the pandemic. (Cuomo later lost the Emmy after the sexual harassment allegations, which he has denied.) Families of nursing home residents swiftly demanded answers, and Cuomo rescinded the directive six weeks after it was issued amid public criticism.

While Cuomo insisted Tuesday that his administration’s order was in line with federal guidance, members of the panel cited federal officials and public health experts who have said the decision was harmful, and Republicans urged Cuomo to be more contrite.


Wenstrup, who said Cuomo’s team had threatened the panel during its inquiry, announced that the New York governor’s office was being subpoenaed in an effort to secure additional documents about Cuomo’s response that he said had not been turned over. The office of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said it would comply with the subpoena.

Some GOP lawmakers pressed Cuomo on matters such as whether his 2020 memoir on his pandemic response distracted from his actual response, with New York Republicans particularly eager to question their longtime rival under oath.


‘As seniors were dying?’

“When were you negotiating for your multimillion-dollar advance deal for your book? As seniors were dying in nursing homes?” asked Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), demanding that Cuomo turn around and apologize to attendees in the room, an exchange that won her a share of applause.

The panel’s Democrats, meanwhile, joined Cuomo in faulting Trump’s pandemic response but did little else to defend the former New York governor. They also unveiled legislation to boost funding for federal inspectors who monitor how nursing homes protect residents from infections and other dangers, saying problems revealed by the pandemic went far beyond New York.

“One thing is certain: There is still more we can and must do to protect and advance the health of our nation’s seniors,” Ruiz said.

The scrutiny of Cuomo’s COVID decisions has built for years. The state’s attorney general in January 2021 issued a report concluding that Cuomo’s administration had significantly undercounted nursing home deaths in public data. In a conversation with state lawmakers the following month, a Cuomo aide blamed some of the administration’s transparency problems on pressure from the Trump administration.


“He has been squirming about it visibly from the moment it became public news and … he rarely speaks about it with honesty,” said Bill Hammond, senior fellow for health policy at the Empire Center for Public Policy, a New York think tank that sued the state to release nursing home data. Hammond on Monday night posted an analysis of the documents obtained by the House panel, concluding that they show new evidence of patient harm.

Holistic examination

While Hammond and others have called for a holistic examination of Cuomo’s actions, Tuesday’s hearing broke little new ground, as lawmakers and Cuomo battled over the definitions of words such as “directive” and “shall,” and whether Cuomo was given enough time to answer members’ questions. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) accused Cuomo of “murdering people’s parents, grandparents and great-grandparents” through his administration’s nursing home order; invoked sexual-harassment allegations against Cuomo; and asked about a former aide recently charged by federal officials with secretly working with China.

“I’ve read a lot about you, including the fact that 13 women that worked for you accused you of sexually inappropriate behavior,” Taylor Greene said.

“I’ve read a lot about you, too, congresswoman,” Cuomo responded.

Ahead of the hearing, Cuomo and his aides telegraphed their own plan to be combative with the House panel, dismissing it in op-eds and statements as a “MAGA COVID panel” led by a “foot doctor.” (Wenstrup is a podiatric surgeon.) Cuomo’s team also warned the House panel that they may file state bar ethics complaints about the lawyers conducting their inquiry, according to a House staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation.


Rich Azzopardi, a Cuomo spokesman, said his colleagues were “reminding” House lawyers that there were consequences for making “false and misleading” statements in the report that Republicans issued Monday.

“I do think lawyers have an ethical obligation to tell the truth, and I don’t think there’s a lot of that in this report,” Azzopardi said. He also shared a competing report written by a former Cuomo health official that defends the former governor’s pandemic decisions.

Cuomo has tried to link his nursing home policy to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president, and other Democratic governors who also encouraged nursing homes to readmit patients positive for the coronavirus in the pandemic’s early days. Hammond said the policies were significantly different, with New York going further than other states in requiring nursing homes to accept such patients - rather than the more flexible approach adopted by Minnesota that allowed nursing homes to turn away infected people.

The panel has spent more than a year examining New York’s nursing home policy, first in a May 2023 hearing with outside experts and then in interviews with Cuomo and his aides behind closed doors. The interview transcripts were posted Monday.

Congressional Democrats have long maintained they were shocked by the Cuomo administration’s order, given older Americans’ vulnerability to the virus.

“It wasn’t rocket science” to keep sick patients out of nursing homes, said Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.), a physician, at last year’s hearing. “Sometimes bad decisions are made. But we have got to try to understand why those decisions were made.”