House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., has referred former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to President Donald Trump’s Justice Department for criminal prosecution.
Cuomo, who is now considered the leading candidate in the upcoming June Democratic primary for New York City mayor, was originally referred to the Biden Justice Department in October 2024. At the time, former Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), then-chair of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, accused Cuomo of making “multiple criminally false statements” to Congress regarding his handling of COVID-19-related nursing home deaths in 2020.
In a letter sent Monday to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Comer stated that “to our knowledge, the Biden Administration ignored this referral despite clear facts and evidence.” He urged Bondi to review the case and “take appropriate action.”
“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,” Comer said in a statement Monday, Fox News reported. “This wasn’t a slip-up – it was a calculated cover-up by a man seeking to shield himself from responsibility for the devastating loss of life in New York’s nursing homes.”
Comer added: “Let’s be clear: lying to Congress is a federal crime. Mr. Cuomo must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The House Oversight Committee is prepared to fully cooperate with the Justice Department’s investigation into Andrew Cuomo’s actions and ensure he’s held to account.”
Reached for comment by Fox News, Cuomo’s spokesman, Richard Azzopardi, rejected Comer’s letter as “nothing more than a meritless press release that was nonsense last year and is even more so now.”
“As the DOJ constantly reminds people, this kind of transparent attempt at election interference and lawfare violates their own policies,” Azzopardi told Fox. “Referrals like these – which have been also made against Planned Parenthood, Hillary Clinton and Anthony Fauci – don’t have to be resubmitted with a new administration, so the only point to doing this is politics.”
In a letter to former Attorney General Merrick Garland last October, Wenstrup detailed that the Cuomo administration issued a directive on March 25, 2020, requiring nursing homes to admit or re-admit patients who may have been COVID-19 positive, while also prohibiting those facilities from testing the patients prior to admission or re-admission.
The New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) later released a report on July 6, 2020, titled “Factors Associated with Nursing Home Infections and Fatalities in New York State During the COVID-19 Global Health Crisis.” The report claimed that the spike in nursing home COVID-19 deaths was primarily due to infected staff, not the March 25 directive.
Comer said that sworn testimony and new documents contained in the select subcommittee’s referral to DOJ showed Cuomo “personally drafted and edited portions of this purportedly independent and peer-reviewed report.”
In a January 2021 investigative report, New York Attorney General Letitia James stated that the Cuomo administration may have underreported nursing home COVID-19 deaths by as much as 50%.
The House Select Subcommittee began its investigation in May 2023 and, after months of delays, issued a subpoena for Cuomo’s testimony in March 2024. The former governor participated in a transcribed interview on June 11, 2024, and later testified before the subcommittee on September 10, 2024.
During his testimony, Cuomo claimed he was not involved in drafting or reviewing the July 6 report, had no discussions regarding its peer review status, and was unaware whether it had been reviewed by anyone outside the New York State Department of Health.
However, Wenstrup stated that documents obtained by the subcommittee contradict all three assertions, indicating Cuomo’s testimony was false.
It’s unclear if the Justice Department, now under Trump’s control, will pursue action against Cuomo, Fox reported.