A Republican-led congressional panel on the COVID-19 pandemic has referred former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to the Department of Justice for possible prosecution for allegedly lying at a closed-door hearing.
The House of Representatives subcommittee sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland Wednesday accusing Cuomo of making “criminally false statements” to the panel when he testified on June 11.
The GOP-run panel says Cuomo “knowingly and willfully made materially false statements” in response to questions about a state Department of Health report on nursing home infections and deaths that was released on July 6, 2020.
The subcommittee says Cuomo lied about whether he contributed to the report or knew about the involvement of outside consultants.
Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi called the panel’s actions a “joke” and a politically motivated “taxpayer-funded farce,” NBC News reported.
Cuomo told the committee he didn’t recall the details about the preparation of the 2020 report, Azzopardi said.
The Department of Justice has not commented on the referral. Prosecutors are under no obligation to investigate or charge Cuomo.
The Cuomo administration initially won widespread acclaim for its handling of the pandemic, which struck New York first and hardest in March 2020 before spreading across the nation.
But Cuomo later came under significant scrutiny for requiring nursing homes to readmit recovering COVID patients in an effort to avoid overwhelming hospitals.
Critics say that policy led to widespread additional spread of the deadly virus in the early days of the pandemic when elderly were mostly defenseless against its ravages.
An estimated 84,000 New York state residents have died from COVID. Millions perished worldwide before the widespread availability of effective vaccines effectively ended the pandemic.
Cuomo resigned the governor’s mansion in August 2021, amid unrelated sexual harassment allegations, which he has repeatedly denied