New York taxpayers are reportedly paying $2.5 million for Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s defense lawyer, who is defending the governor against multiple sexual assault allegations, allegations that he and his staff hid the total number of COVID-19 nursing home deaths, and allegations that he used his staff to write his book about handling the COVID-19 pandemic – while he made over $5 million for that book.
“Taxpayers are being forced to shell out more than $900 an hour for Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s lead defense lawyer, to help him try and fend off charges that he used staffers to help write a book detailing his handling of the pandemic and claims that he and aides hid from the public the true death toll among patients of nursing homes,” the New York Post reported.
“The $2.5 million deal, revealed in a contract made public through a Freedom of Information Request by The Post, was struck even though Cuomo sold the rights to his coronavirus memoir for $5.1 million and has around $17 million in his campaign war chest,” the New York Post continued. “The three-term Democrat is also holding a $10,000-a-head fundraiser later this month amid an ongoing impeachment probe by the state Assembly’s Judiciary Committee.”
Quickly after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cuomo barred nursing homes from refusing admission to people who were currently infected with the virus, mandating the most vulnerable population to be housed with those infected with the virus. The reported number of subsequent nursing home deaths were about half of the true number.
“The new number of 9,056 recovering patients sent to hundreds of nursing homes is more than 40% higher than what the state health department previously released,” The Associated Press reported. “The new figures come as the Cuomo administration has been forced in recent weeks to acknowledge it has been underreporting the overall number of COVID-19 deaths among long-term care residents. It is now nearly 15,000 up from the 8,500 previously disclosed.”
In order to hide the true number of nursing home deaths, Cuomo’s top aides went as far as to rewrite a report from state health officials.
“The number — more than 9,000 by that point in June — was not public, and the governor’s most senior aides wanted to keep it that way,” The New York Times reported. “They rewrote the report to take it out, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The New York Times.”
Cuomo’s omission of the number of nursing home deaths from the state health officials’ report occurred as he was allegedly forcing his staff to write his self-congratulating book on his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic – a book apparently as fictional as the COVID-19 data reported by his administration.
“The extraordinary intervention, which came just as Mr. Cuomo was starting to write a book on his pandemic achievements, was the earliest act yet known in what critics have called a monthslong effort by the governor and his aides to obscure the full scope of nursing home deaths,” the Times added.
Cuomo allegedly forced his staff to write his fantasy book likely because he was spending so much time working on attacking the character of Lindsay Boylan, one of the many, many women accusing Cuomo of sexual misconduct.
“Days after Lindsey Boylan became the first woman to accuse Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of sexual harassment in a series of Twitter posts in December, people tied to the governor started circulating an open letter that they hoped former staff members would sign,” the Times reported.
“The letter was a full-on attack on Ms. Boylan’s credibility, suggesting that her accusation was premeditated and politically motivated,” the Times continued. “It disclosed personnel complaints filed against her and attempted to link her to supporters of former President Donald J. Trump.”
In summary, as Cuomo so humbly boasts in early versions of his book, he is “not a superhero.”
