New York Governor Andrew Cuomo received requests for resignation or impeachment this week after new damaging details emerged about the state’s handling of the asylum coronavirus outbreak and subsequent retention of vital information on the death toll – with even Democratic critics calling for more transparency from the governor’s office.
It is not the first ethics scandal to shake Cuomo’s long term in office.
In April 2014, Cuomo drew criticism after dissolving the so-called Moreland Commission, a public corruption watchdog he had created just a few months earlier.
In this September 14, 2018 archive photo, Governor Melissa DeRosa’s Secretary is accompanied by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as she speaks to reporters during a press conference in New York. De Rosa, Cuomo’s top aide, told top Democrats frustrated by the delay in reporting data on deaths in nursing homes that the government “froze” with concerns about what information “would be used against us,” according to a Democratic lawmaker who attended the meeting on Wednesday, February 10, 2021, and a partial transcript provided by the governor’s office. (Photo AP / Mary Altaffer, Archive)
The 25-member commission, made up of several New York prosecutors, was investigating mainly political corruption and campaign funding violations for nine months, from July 2013 until Cuomo closed it, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time.
The abrupt end was part of an agreement with state lawmakers that led to the creation of new rules of ethics in Albany, the state capital.
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But the strike came before the commission concluded its investigations of several lawmakers, and Cuomo was accused of interfering in his work and caring for his political allies.
The New York Times in July 2014 reported that Cuomo’s office had “hindered” the commission’s efforts and that then Cuomo’s governor secretary, Lawrence Schwartz, allegedly told members to back off from their investigation at an advertising company that it counted on the governor among its clients.
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Cuomo’s current secretary to the governor, Melissa DeRosa, was quoted in a bombshell New York Post report on Thursday about a leaked conference call with state Democrats about the controversial handling of the coronavirus pandemic in nursing homes.
On Friday, DeRosa took the call.
“I was explaining that when we received the DOJ inquiry, we needed to temporarily cancel the request from the Legislature [about data on the nursing home crisis] to handle the federal request first, “she said.” As I said in a liaison with lawmakers, we could not respond to their request as quickly as anyone would like. But we are committed to being better partners in the future, as we share the same goal of keeping New Yorkers as healthy as possible during the pandemic. “
In 2014, former US attorney for New York’s Southern District Preet Bharara seized the commission’s paperwork and continued where it left off after Cuomo closed it, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Bharara got convictions from two leading state political figures: former State Assembly President Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, and the former state Senate majority leader, Dean Skelos, a Republican.
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Bharara also conducted a nearly two-year investigation into how the Cuomo government handled the commission, but gave up after finding “insufficient evidence to prove a federal crime”.