House Republicans have referred former NY Governor Andrew Cuomo to Department of Justice (DOJ) over false testimony to Congress about the state’s COVID-19 nursing home death toll during the height of the pandemic.
The request, directed at Attorney General Pam Bondi, comes amid mounting evidence that Cuomo personally helped draft and edit a July 2020 report that significantly undercounted fatalities in senior care facilities.
According to the House Oversight Committee, which is leading the charge, Cuomo’s actions amounted to “criminally false statements” — a federal offense that could carry up to five years in prison for each of the three alleged lies.
Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) issued a strong statement Monday, declaring, “Andrew Cuomo is a man with a history of corruption and deceit, now caught red-handed lying to Congress during the Select Subcommittee’s investigation into the COVID-19 nursing home tragedy in New York. This wasn’t a slip-up — it was a calculated cover-up.”
Cuomo’s controversial March 25, 2020, directive required nursing homes to admit or re-admit patients recovering from COVID-19 — without requiring that they first test negative. This decision, critics argue, contributed to a devastating outbreak in the state’s long-term care facilities. By the time Cuomo rescinded the order on May 10, thousands of elderly residents had already died.
Though the state’s official July 2020 report placed the number of nursing home deaths at 6,432, later investigations found the real number was more than 9,000 when including residents who died after being transferred to hospitals.
Despite this, Cuomo claimed in a June 2023 sworn interview before the House COVID Subcommittee that he had no involvement in drafting, editing, or even reviewing the report before its publication.
“I did not. Maybe it was in the inbox, but I did not,” Cuomo told lawmakers, insisting he never saw the report in advance and didn’t provide feedback.
But emails and documents obtained by the committee contradict that claim. Evidence includes discussions among Cuomo aides about his direct input, as well as pages of handwritten edits made by the former governor himself. These edits reportedly downplayed the death toll and included notes such as “New York is 6,600?”—a figure that omitted hospital deaths and grossly underrepresented the total loss of life.
Further, former Cuomo aide Farrah Kennedy confirmed in her own testimony that she frequently transcribed his handwritten notes and recognized the script on the documents in question. Several other officials, including top aides Melissa DeRosa, Jim Malatras, and Gareth Rhodes, testified that a June 2020 email chain expressing concern over the death count’s historical impact was likely dictated by Cuomo.
“Documents prove Mr. Cuomo’s testimony to be false,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), the former chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, wrote in his referral letter to the DOJ.
This is the second time House Republicans have urged the Justice Department to bring charges against Cuomo. The original referral was made under former Attorney General Merrick Garland, who declined to act on it. Republicans are now pressing AG Pam Bondi to take the matter more seriously.
“The evidence is overwhelming,” Comer said. “Cuomo must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
The political stakes are high. Cuomo, once a rising Democratic star, resigned in 2021 amid unrelated sexual harassment allegations but remains a powerful political figure and is reportedly considering a run for New York City mayor.
In response to the renewed criminal referral, Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi dismissed the effort as “a meritless press release that was nonsense last year and is even more so now.”
Azzopardi further accused House Republicans of weaponizing the justice system for political gain, saying, “As the DOJ constantly reminds people, this kind of transparent attempt at election interference and lawfare violates their own policies.” He likened the referral to similar ones filed in recent years against figures like Hillary Clinton, Planned Parenthood, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, which were ultimately not pursued.
Cuomo’s legal team also submitted their own request last October, calling on the Justice Department to investigate Rep. Wenstrup. They accused him of colluding with the husband of Fox News meteorologist Janice Dean — a vocal critic of Cuomo’s handling of nursing home deaths — and violating federalism by launching an investigation into a state-level decision.
“The committee counsels … know there is no basis for this pre-election [MAGA] exercise and affirmatively chose to act unethically in order to help their masters score cheap political points,” Azzopardi said in a previous statement.
Nonetheless, House Republicans insist this is not about politics, but accountability.
“Cuomo didn’t just make a bad policy decision—he tried to cover it up and mislead the American people,” said Rep. Comer. “That kind of deception cannot go unpunished, especially when it cost thousands of lives.”