Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is set to testify publicly later this month on Capitol Hill regarding his handling of the COVID-19 outbreak during his tenure.
The hearing, organized by the Republican-led House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, is scheduled for Sept. 10.
The panel is investigating the Cuomo administration’s nursing home policies in the first weeks of the pandemic, particularly a directive from March 2020 that barred nursing homes from refusing people just because they had COVID-19.
Cuomo, who has maintained that he was following federal guidance with that directive, previously appeared before lawmakers for closed door testimony in June.
In a statement, Ohio Republican U.S. Rep. Brad Wenstrup, who chairs the subcommittee, wrote, “Andrew Cuomo owes answers to the 15,000 families who lost loved ones in New York’s nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic … During closed-door testimony, Mr. Cuomo was shockingly callous when pressed to explain discrepancies in nursing home death counts, repeatedly deflected responsibility for the nursing home directive, and most egregiously, showed little remorse for the thousands of lives lost.”
The committee has also spoken privately with a handful of other individuals in Cuomo’s orbit.
In a statement, Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi wrote, “This committee has continued to engage in false political attacks blaming New York for nursing home deaths despite the fact that New York was following guidance from Trump’s CDC and CMS. More than a dozen other states - Democratic and Republican - followed the same guidance.”
“They refuse to look in the mirror at their own anti-science policies that caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths or call the one witness who is most relevant and was supposed to lead the entire effort: Donald Trump,” he said.