By Micaiah Bilger
Article Source

Disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo refused to testify Wednesday at a U.S. House hearing about his order that forced nursing homes to receive patients who tested positive for COVID-19, placing them with those most likely to die from the virus.

Cuomo, a pro-abortion Democrat, resigned in 2021 amid accusations of sexually harassing women and covering up nursing home deaths linked to his COVID-19 order. Investigations into his handling of the coronavirus pandemic continue.

This month, Republican lawmakers asked Cuomo to testify before the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on COVID-19 about his 2020 nursing home order, but he did not show up, The New York Post reports.

“Corrupt Andrew Cuomo failed to show up and answer our requests for transparency and accountability on behalf of the families who lost their loved ones due to his deadly nursing home order and criminal cover up,” New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik told the Post. “He cannot hide from the truth. We know Cuomo and Gov. [Kathy] Hochul are to blame for the deaths of over 15,000 New Yorkers.”

In early 2020, Cuomo received wide-spread praise in the mainstream media for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, pro-life advocates quickly expressed alarm after the governor ordered nursing homes to receive COVID-positive patients, meaning people with the virus were placed together with those most likely to die from it.

Eventually, evidence began to surface that state health officials under the Cuomo administration failed to report all of the nursing home deaths to the public. In March, an audit by State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli found the Cuomo administration failed to report 4,000 nursing home deaths to COVID-19, likely in an attempt to keep up the positive publicity for Cuomo.

U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana, said the former governor owes it to the victims’ families to testify.

“We asked him to testify at this very hearing and he still to this day has not even responded,” Scalise said. “He didn’t even feel that he owed those victims a response to the questions we had for him.”

A spokesman for Cuomo told the Post that they did not receive Scalise’s letter.

Here’s more from the report:

A book released last month by former White House adviser Jared Kushner said that Cuomo specifically mentioned his concern about nursing home safety 10 days before ordering homes to take sick patients.

Cuomo allegedly told Kushner, “For nursing homes, this could be like fire through dry grass,” before proceeding to issue the controversial order the following week.

Many have demanded accountability from Cuomo for putting vulnerable patients at greater risk, including Janice Dean, a Fox News meteorologist whose in-laws both died in New York during that time.

“Elder care homes were turned into death traps,” Dean said in 2020 when questions began surfacing about Cuomo’s actions.

The former governor first began facing criticism in early 2020 after he issued an executive order requiring nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients. That order since has been linked to more than 15,000 deaths in nursing homes during the pandemic.

In early 2021, New York Attorney General Letitia James accused Cuomo and his administration of covering up the deaths of thousands of nursing home patients related to that order. Later that year, her office also accused the governor of sexually molesting several women.

Around the same time, an explosive New York Times report exposed how several of Cuomo’s top aides helped to hide approximately 9,000 people’s deaths to COVID in nursing homes. Meanwhile, the Democrat governor was receiving massive media praise for his handling of the pandemic and getting ready to profit from his new book, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.”