Governor Andrew Cuomo’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, who admitted to state Democratic lawmakers that the governor’s administration withheld vital data on nursing home deaths from the U.S. Department of Justice while they were under investigation, now says that they were “comprehensive and transparent” in responding to requests for information from the Justice Department.
New York, along with three other states, was under investigation for the excessive number of deaths that occurred in nursing homes during the pandemic. DeRosa said in the call that the withheld data could “be used against us” in any legal proceeding.
Well, yes, but for what other reason would a criminal deliberately withhold evidence?
“We were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, what we start saying, was going to be used against us while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation,” DeRosa told the lawmakers.
But today, Cuomo’s office is singing a different tune.
“We informed the houses of this at the time,” DeRosa said in a statement that was posted on Twitter by Rich Azzopardi, a senior Cuomo adviser. “We were comprehensive and transparent in our responses to the DOJ, and then had to immediately focus our resources on the second wave and vaccine rollout.
How many “resources” are necessary, to tell the truth? And I guess Cuomo’s people can’t walk and chew gum at the same time if they can’t properly respond to a request from the national government and deal with the pandemic at the same time.
Pure baloney.
“As I said on a call with legislators, we could not fulfill their request as quickly as anyone would have liked. But we are committed to being better partners going forward as we share the same goal of keeping New Yorkers as healthy as possible during the pandemic.”
Got that? They’re not withholding the data, it’s just not being done quickly.
Added to the revelation that the Attorney General Letitia James discovered Cuomo’s office undercounted nursing home deaths by as much as 50 percent, a picture of incompetence and deviousness of Cuomo’s management of the pandemic is emerging. DeRosa’s revelations show that Cuomo’s office was up to nothing more than a clumsy attempt at a cover-up.
Cuomo — who Democrats were hoping would step in and save them when the nomination appeared to belong to Joe Biden — has been kneecapped by his own staff. Now, even the mainstream media, including the New York Times, will join the feeding frenzy.
In a year, the left will pretend they never supported him and always knew he was dishonest.
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