“New developments seem to happen every day,” said Psaki of the recent allegations. “We find them worrisome. The president finds them worrisome ”.
She added that safeguards exist to prevent states from administering vaccines inappropriately and to ensure that they are “distributed in a fair and equitable manner”.
Contact with local authorities by Cuomo vaccine secretary Larry Schwartz – reported over the weekend by The Washington Post and the New York Times – raised alarms due to the perception that a county’s vaccine supply could be affected if it did not. expressed sufficient support for the governor, although no official said that Schwartz made any direct link between the two. Schwartz said that vaccination site determinations are maintained regardless of his other requests.
“Nobody indicated that they were uncomfortable or that they didn’t want to talk to me,” he told The Washington Post.
At least one local official was so nervous as to file a notification of an impending ethics complaint to the state attorney general’s public integrity unit on Friday. The attorney general’s office is investigating separately the recent allegations of sexual misconduct against the governor, an investigation being conducted by two outside lawyers.
On Monday, at least two Democratic county executives confirmed that they were contacted by Schwartz about Cuomo, but both said they did not feel the call had crossed ethical boundaries.
“At no time did I feel any pressure and the vaccine issue never came up,” said Monroe County executive Adam Bello, who asked for Cuomo’s resignation in a statement.
Schwartz, who previously served as Cuomo’s chief aide, has held various positions in and around the state government in the years since he left the governor’s office and is widely seen as a replacement for the governor. He was brought in a year ago to assist the state’s response to Covid-19 and his portfolio included overseeing the state’s efforts to acquire ventilators and personal protective equipment, as well as the person in charge of vaccine allocations.
Schwartz often played the role of bad cop for Cuomo and was periodically criticized for his relentless tactics.
Cuomo’s office on Monday afternoon released a statement defending Schwartz and saying that he “would never link political support to public health decisions”.
“Any suggestion that Larry acted unethically or otherwise than in the best interests of the New Yorkers he served selflessly is patently false,” said Beth Garvey, the governor’s acting adviser.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who took advantage of the opportunities to twist the knife in Cuomo after spending years as his punching bag, said on Monday that Schwartz’s meddling needs to be investigated by state or federal officials.
“If the vaccine supply is being distributed for political reasons, in many ways it is the worst thing we hear about all these scandals, and they are all horrible, because it literally means that some people may not get the help they need and may not live as a result, ”he told reporters.