Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is scheduled to testify publicly on Sept. 10 before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, where he will be grilled about the thousands of deaths in his state's nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Andrew Cuomo owes answers to the 15,000 families who lost loved ones in New York's nursing homes during the Covid-19 pandemic," Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, who chairs the subcommittee, said in a statement, reported The New York Times on Tuesday.
"On Sept. 10, Americans will finally have the opportunity to hear directly from the governor about these potentially fatal nursing home policies," Wenstrup added.
At least a half-dozen former Cuomo administration officials have also spoken with the subcommittee through transcribed interviews.
Cuomo testified behind closed doors in June for seven hours to House Republicans, who said they pressed him about a state Health Department from March 25, 2020, requiring nursing homes in the state to accept COVID patients from hospitals.
The disease ended up spreading through nursing homes, killing more than 15,000 people by June 2021.
The testimony's transcript has not been released, but Wenstrup described Cuomo as being "shockingly callous" and said he showed "little remorse for the thousands of lives lost."
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., a subcommittee member, told Newsmax in June that Cuomo "blamed everybody and took zero accountability" in his testimony.
She said the former governor blamed an "unknown staffer," for the directive, the federal government, and the nursing homes themselves, telling the subcommittee that the facilities "could have rejected these patients if they could not care for them."
After his June deposition, the former governor said the Trump administration, not his leadership in New York, should be blamed for how the pandemic was handled.
"I think the federal government failed this nation, and it was abysmal," he told reporters in June. "How did COVID get to the United States in December and nobody knew? How did it take so many months before we had testing — basic testing — in place? How did you have a president of the United States running around saying it's going to be gone when the weather gets warm?"
Cuomo also argued that his state's Health Department followed guidance from federal officials, and said that if he knew then what he knows now, he would have told the officials not to listen to the federal government because "they don't know what they're talking about."
A report commissioned by the state of New York recently criticized Cuomo on how he handled the pandemic but did not blame him for the nursing home deaths, finding that they were consistent with national statistics.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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