ALBANY – The FBI and the US attorney’s office in Brooklyn have launched an investigation that is examining, at least in part, the actions of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s task force against coronavirus in the management of nursing homes and other health care facilities. long-term care during the pandemic, the Times Union found.
The investigation of the United States attorney’s office in the East District of New York is apparently in its early stages and focuses on the work of some of the senior members of the governor’s task force, according to a person with direct knowledge of the subject that is not allowed to comment publicly.
Last March, when the virus began to spread in New York, Cuomo issued a press release listing the initial 13 members of his coronavirus task force, which was headed by Linda Lacewell, a lawyer and former chief of staff for Cuomo. Lacewell is the superintendent of the state’s Department of Financial Services. Other members of the task force include state health commissioner Howard Zucker, secretary of governor Melissa DeRosa and Beth Garvey, adviser to the governor.
“As we said publicly, the DOJ (Department of Justice) has been investigating this for months,” said Richard Azzopardi, a spokesman for the governor. “We have been cooperating with them and will continue to cooperate.”
Azzopardi did not reveal whether any members of the administration were interviewed or whether he received a subpoena.
John Marzulli, a spokesman for the US attorney’s office in Brooklyn, said on Wednesday afternoon that he could not “confirm or deny” whether the office has initiated an investigation.
Almost three weeks after the governor’s task force was announced last year, the state health department issued an order stating that nursing homes and other long-term care facilities should accept residents who were being discharged from hospitals, even if they still tested positive for infectious diseases, as long as they could take care of them properly.
That directive, which was rescinded less than two months later, has been the focus of a storm of criticism directed at the Cuomo government, including allegations that the order – which the governor said was based on federal guidance – contributed to the high number of fatalities of residents of nursing homes in New York. This claim was largely rejected in a Department of Health report released in July.
Last month, Attorney General Letitia James’s office issued a hard-hitting report that concluded that the practice may have increased the risk of COVID-19 infections in the assembled facilities and that the Cuomo administration delayed the report that thousands of other residents of asylums died in hospitals after being infected in their residential facilities.
It is unclear whether the federal investigation by the acting federal prosecutor’s office Seth D. DuCharme is linked to two letters that the Cuomo administration received from a lawyer in the civilian division of the Department of Justice in Washington, DC last year, seeking information on state nursing home policies and data.
The controversy re-simmered last week when DeRosa, in a closed-door meeting with top Democrats in the state legislature with the authority to summon and investigate the governor’s administration, told the group that the administration had concealed information that lawmakers had asked for asylum for months due to the Department of Justice inquiry.
DeRosa, at the private meeting that was the subject of a subsequent leak, characterized the Justice Department official who sent the letter, Jeffrey Clark, a lawyer who headed the department’s civil division, as a “political hack” that she claimed to have pursued the investigation at the request of President Donald J. Trump.
“Basically, we froze because we were in a position where we weren’t sure whether what we were going to give the Department of Justice or what we gave you and what we started to say would be used against us and we weren’t sure if there would be an investigation,” DeRosa told Democratic lawmakers.
In a formal statement the day after his comments were leaked, DeRosa said the government cooperated fully with the Department of Justice.
The recent investigation by the US attorney’s office in Brooklyn is not the first time that federal prosecutors in New York have launched investigations in the Northern District of New York, which extends from Kingston to the Canadian border with headquarters in Albany and Syracuse. A vast case of fraud and bribery involving top Cuomo advisers in Albany was prosecuted by the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan; the indictment by NXIVM co-founder Keith Raniere and other key members of his organization was brought by the United States attorney’s office in Brooklyn.
Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released a statement on Wednesday urging President Joe Biden to allow Antoinette Bacon, the United States attorney for the Northern District of New York, to be assigned to investigate the Cuomo administration in connection with his report of deaths in nursing homes.
Grassley noted that US attorney in the southern district of New York, Audrey Strauss, is DeRosa’s mother-in-law and should not be involved in any investigation.
Bacon, who was appointed US acting prosecutor in Albany in September, is among dozens of prosecutors who can be removed from office by the Biden government. Bacon had recently been the Justice Department’s national senior justice coordinator and served as the national white collar crime coordinator at the US prosecutors’ executive office.
She is a highly decorated prosecutor and has received special awards from the IRS, the United States Post Office and the Department of Justice “for her cases of fraud, waste, abuse and corruption”, according to her professional biography.
But the investigation conducted by the US attorney’s office in Brooklyn apparently does not involve the Northern District.
Earlier this week, Cuomo barely apologized for the way his government dealt with data on fatalities in nursing homes, noting repeatedly that they had created a “void” by failing to provide the information requested by state lawmakers.
“Apologize? Look, I said several times, we made a mistake in creating the void,” he said. “When we didn’t provide the information, it allowed the press, the people, the cynics, the politicians to fill the void. When you don’t correct that information, you allow it to continue and we create the void ”.
Republicans at all levels of the New York government spectrum, and many Democrats too, have repeatedly called for independent investigations of the state’s nursing home policies and guidelines during the ongoing pandemic. Some of these critics also raised questions about whether there was a link between political decisions and hospitals or other special interests that do business with the state or are subject to its regulatory agencies.
Previous nursing home coverage
State lawmakers also pushed for the use of legislative subpoenas to get answers from top officials, including Zucker.
Legislators who attended the meeting with DeRosa included Representative John McDonald, D-Cohoes, chairman of the Assembly’s Oversight, Analysis and Investigations Committee, and Senator James Skoufis, an Orange County Democrat who chairs the Investigations and Operations Committee. Government officials. Skoufis and the aging committee chairwoman Rachel May, who were at the meeting, faced appeals from Republicans for their presidencies to be overthrown by Senate majority leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins because they did not alert their legislative colleagues to what was said .
Skoufis had previously been criticized by Republican lawmakers for not immediately issuing subpoenas for the information they had asked the health commissioner last summer. Skoufis said he would use power if necessary, but would decide this issue after Zucker appeared on the Legislative’s joint budget hearings panel.
In a statement after last week’s meeting with DeRosa, Skoufis did not mention his comments on the government’s decision to withhold data in the light of the Justice Department’s civil division inquiry. He said it was “unacceptable that it took so long”.
“To be clear, we will certainly have more questions when we review this information,” said Skoufis of the data that was handed over to state lawmakers last week. “While some of our Republican colleagues in the legislature continue to play politics shamefully with the tragedy that has unfolded in our state’s nursing homes, we are instead committed to getting answers, holding stakeholders accountable and proposing legislative solutions in a sober and careful. “
Cuomo said this week that he does not believe there should be an outside investigation into how his government is dealing with asylums during the pandemic or its delay in reporting the death toll.
“The state of New York (Department of Health) has always reported fully and publicly all deaths from COVID in nursing homes and hospitals. They have always been fully denounced, ”said Cuomo on Monday. “I don’t think there is anything to clarify here. … There is nothing to investigate. “