Leading mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo will face plenty of questions, as he should, from voters about how he handled COVID as governor, when he was a hero to many, as well as a villain to many, but it’s nonsense to suggest that he should face criminal prosecution for lying to Congress.
Last year, following Cuomo’s testimony to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, the partisan Republican chairman of the panel, Brad Wenstrup, said that Cuomo had lied about his involvement in a July 6, 2020 state Health Department report entitled, “Factors Associated with Nursing Home Infections and Fatalities in New York State During the COVID-19 Global Health Crisis.”
Did Cuomo change his story? Did he duck and dodge and weave? Did he misremember and misrecall? Did he intentionally and knowingly commit perjury? Presented last October with a detailed referral letter running more than 100 pages, the Department of Justice declined to seek any charges against Cuomo. That clearly was the appropriate non-action to Wenstrup’s referral, which the select subcommittee’s ranking Democrat refused to sign and which DOJ then filed away under politics
Now, six months later, a different partisan House Republican chairman of a different committee, James Comer atop the Oversight Committee, has resent Wenstrup’s referral letter back to the DOJ.
While the facts, as there are, remain the same, what is different is that instead of straight-arrow Attorney General Merrick Garland, sitting in the top job now is AG Pam Bondi, whose fealty to impartial justice isn’t quite as strong.
What is also different is that Bondi and the man who appointed her, President Trump, have complained for years about the “weaponization of government” or “lawfare,” of using the power of government investigation and prosecution for political ends. Trump says he was the victim of “witch hunts.”
Hmm, so isn’t seeking charges in a closed matter that prosecutors decided not to pursue exactly equal to “weaponization of government?” But isn’t Bondi the one who is supposed to end the weaponization, not kick-start it?
Also, there’s the timing. When Bondi’s DOJ told the Manhattan U.S. attorney and federal judge to drop the corruption indictment against Mayor Adams, one of the reasons offered was that the case was happening too close to the mayoral election and it shouldn’t be interfering.
Another hmm. Early voting in the Democratic mayoral primary starts in just 52 days, so wouldn’t charges against Cuomo now impinge on that election?
Bondi, of course, may not be consistent and may choose to bring a case against Cuomo. But more than likely such a trumped-up indictment, coming from a dormant matter, right before an election, will actually help Cuomo with Democrats seeing naked weaponization of the justice system.
We don’t think that Comer wants to aid Cuomo, but the timing of his request for a Trump DOJ probe may do just that.
Cuomo will have to answer about COVID and about COVID in nursing homes and about what he did and didn’t do with the March 25, 2020 memo directing nursing homes to accept COVID patients from hospitals and the July 6, 2020 report, but those answers will be to the voters of New York, who will be passing judgment on him in a few weeks time.
