“There seem to be new developments every day,” Psaki said of recent allegations. “We find them worrying. The president finds them worrying. ”
She added that precautions exist to prevent states from improperly administering vaccines and ensuring that they are “fairly and equitably distributed.”
Outreach to local officials by Cuomo’s vaccine tsar Larry Schwartz – as reported by The Washington Post and New York Times over the weekend – has raised alarm over the perception that the province’s vaccine supply could be affected if they do not express sufficient support for the governor although no official said Schwartz made a direct connection between the two. Schwartz said the vaccination site is being held independently of his other requests.
“No one indicated that they were uncomfortable or that they did not want to talk to me,” he told The Washington Post.
At least one local official was so nervous that he lodged an impending ethical complaint with the Attorney General’s unit for public integrity on Friday. The Attorney General’s Office is investigating separately the recent allegations of sexual misconduct against the governor, an investigation led by two outside attorneys.
On Monday, at least two Democrats in the county confirmed that Schwartz had contacted them about Cuomo, but both said they did not feel the call exceeded any ethical boundaries.
“I have never been under pressure and the topic of vaccines has never been raised,” Monroe County executive Adam Bello, who asked Cuomo to resign, said in a statement.
Schwartz, who previously served as Cuomo’s leading assistant, has held numerous positions in and around the state government in the years since he left the governor’s office and is widely seen as a maintenance for the governor. He was brought in a year ago to help with the state’s response to Covid-19, and his portfolio oversaw, among other things, the state’s efforts to procure fans and personal protective equipment, as well as the scorer on the award of vaccines.
Schwartz often played the role of a bad cop for Cuomo and took to his spare tactics from time to time.
Cuomo’s office released a statement Monday afternoon in which he defended Schwartz, saying he would “never link political support to public health decisions.”
“Any suggestion that Larry should act in any way unethical or in any other way than in the interest of the New Yorkers he selflessly served is apparently false,” said Beth Garvey, the governor’s acting councilor.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who took the opportunity to turn the knife on Cuomo after spending years as his punching bag, said Monday that Schwartz’s involvement should be investigated by the state or federal government.
‘If the supply of vaccines is being spent for political reasons, it’s in many ways the worst thing we’re heard in all these scandals, and it’s terrible, because it literally means that some people may not get the help they’re getting. not needed and may not live as a result, ”he told reporters.