Governor Cuomo’s top aide has privately apologized to Democratic lawmakers for withholding the death toll from COVID-19 by the state, saying they froze for fear the federal prosecutors would use the true numbers against us, The Post has learned . .
The miraculous acknowledgment of a cover-up was made by Gov. Melissa DeRosa’s secretary during a video conference call with the Democratic leaders of the state, in which she said the Cuomo government rejected a legislative request for the vote in August because ‘exactly the same time’, [then-President Donald Trump] turning it into a giant political football, ‘according to an audio recording of the two-hour-plus meeting.
“He starts tweeting that we killed everyone in nursing homes,” DeRosa said. ‘He starts chasing [New Jersey Gov. Phil] Murphy, start chasing [California Gov. Gavin] Newsom, start afterwards [Michigan Gov.] Gretchen Whitmer. ”
In addition to the attack on Cuomo’s fellow Democratic governors, DeRosa said, Trump is ordering the Department of Justice to conduct an investigation into us. ‘
“And we actually froze,” she told lawmakers during the call.
‘Because then we were in a position where we were not sure whether what we would give to the Department of Justice, or what we would give to you, what we were going to say, would be used against us while we were not. do not know if there will be an investigation. ”
DeRosa added: “It played a very big role in this.”
After dropping the bomb, DeRosa asked for some appreciation for the context and apologized to the Cuomo government’s first apology for dealing with nursing homes amid the pandemic.
But instead of a mea culpa to the grieving relatives of more than 13,000 dead elderly people or the critics who say the health department has distributed COVID-19 in the care facilities with a March 25 order from the health department that nursing homes be infected patients, DeRosa tried to make amends with the fellow Democrats for the political inconvenience it caused.
“We apologize,” she said. “I do understand the position you were in. I know this is not fair. It was not our intention to put you in the political position with the Republicans. ‘
According to the survey, Richard Gottfried (D-Manhattan)’s chairman of the Health Committee of the Assembly immediately expressed DeRosa’s remorse.
“I do not have enough time today to explain all the reasons why I do not give it credit at all,” said Gottfried, one of the lawmakers who demanded the death toll in August.
Chairman Rachel May (D-Syracuse), chairwoman of the Senate Aging Committee – which was battered during her re-election last year over the issue of deaths in nursing homes – also intervened in DeRosa, saying her former opponent launched another broad-edge earlier in the day. .
“And for me, the biggest problem of all is to feel that I have to defend a government that apparently has to defend something – or at least not attack -,” she said.
‘And in a pandemic, if you want the public to trust the public health officials, and there’s a clear feeling that they will not come, to be with you, it’s really hard and it stays difficult.’
Member of Parliament Ron Kim (D-Queens), who took part in the call, told The Post on Thursday that DeRosa’s remarks sound “as if they are admitting that they are trying to evade having any incriminating evidence that the government or the [Health Department] in further problems with the Department of Justice. ”
“This is how I understand their reasoning why they could not share the data in real time,” Kim said.
“They first had to make sure the state was protected from federal investigation.”
Kim, whose uncle presumably died of COVID-19 in a nursing home in April, also said he was not happy with DeRosa’s apology.
“It’s not enough how merciful they are to us,” he said. “They have to show it to the public and the families – and they have not done it yet.”
In addition to stoning lawmakers to steal the total number of nursing homes killed by COVID-19, Cuomo’s administration has also denied requests from the news media – including The Post – and a lawsuit against the Freedom of Information filed by the Empire Center public policy has been instituted, fought.
Instead, it only revealed data on the number of residents who died in their nursing homes.
But after Attorney General Letitia James released a damning report last month that estimated the deaths of nursing homes in hospitals would increase anger by more than 50 percent, Health Commissioner Howard Zucker finally released figures showing that the combined total from January 12 743 was 19.
Just a day earlier, the DOH had publicly acknowledged only 8,711 deaths in nursing homes.
In a Wednesday letter to lawmakers, Zucker said the total number of nursing home residents killed by COVID-19 rose to 13,297. That number rises to 15,049 when auxiliary care and adult care facilities are taken into account.
The controversy generated by James’ report led to a notorious news conference in which Cuomo rightly rejected the case where the deaths actually occurred in nursing homes.
“Who cares [if they] died in hospital, died in a nursing home? They died, “he said.
During Wednesday’s conference call, DeRosa said it appears the DOJ is no longer focused on deaths in the New York City nursing home.
“All signs indicate that they are not looking at this, they have abandoned it,” she said.
“They never formally launched an investigation. They sent a number of questions and after that we satisfied the questions and it seems that they are gone. ”
Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said in a prepared statement: “We have explained that the Trump administration is in the midst of a politically motivated effort to blame democracies for COVID deaths and that we are cooperating with Federal document productions and that it was the priority and now that it is over, we can address the state legislature. ”
“That said, we worked simultaneously to complete the audit of information they requested,” he added.
The DOJ declined to comment.