New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo this week made calls for his resignation or impeachment after damaging new details emerged about how the state handled the coronavirus outbreak in nursing homes and its subsequent withholding of vital information about the death toll – including Democratic critics called for greater transparency from the governor’s office.
It is not the first ethical scandal to turn Cuomo’s long tenure upside down.
In April 2014, Cuomo was criticized for dissolving the so-called Moreland Commission, a public corruption watchdog panel he had set up just months earlier.
In this September 14, 2018 file photo, Gov. Secretary Melissa DeRosa is joined by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo as she speaks to reporters at a news conference in New York. De Rosa, Cuomo’s top assistant, told Democrats who were frustrated with the government’s long-delayed release of data on nursing home deaths that the government was ‘frozen’ over concerns about what information would ‘be used against us,’ according to a Democrat. legislator. who attended the meeting on Wednesday, February 10, 2021 and a partial transcript from the office of the governor. (AP Photo / Mary Altaffer, File)
The 25-member committee, made up of a number of New York prosecutors, primarily investigated political corruption and campaign finance violations for nine months from July 2013 until Cuomo called it quits, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time.
The abrupt end was part of a deal with state lawmakers that led to the creation of new ethical rules in Albany, the state capital.
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But the closure came before the commission had finalized its investigation of numerous lawmakers, and Cuomo was accused of interfering with her work and looking for his political allies.
The New York Times reported in July 2014 that Cuomo’s office had “ hindered ” the committee’s efforts and that Cuomo’s then-Secretary to the Governor, Lawrence Schwartz, had reportedly told members to withdraw from his investigation into a advertising agency that the Governor to his customers.
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Cuomo’s current governor secretary, Melissa DeRosa, was named in a bombshell New York Post report on Thursday about a leaked conference call with top state Democrats about the government’s controversial approach to the coronavirus pandemic in nursing homes.
On Friday, DeRosa addressed the appeal.
I explained that when we received the DOJ investigation, we had to temporarily set aside the legislature’s request [about data on the nursing home crisis] to deal with the federal request first, ”she said. As I said in a call with lawmakers, we couldn’t fulfill their request as quickly as someone would have liked. But we are determined to be better partners in the future as we share the same goal of keeping New Yorkers as healthy as possible during the pandemic. “
In 2014, former United States Attorney for New York’s Southern District, Preet Bharara, confiscated the committee’s paperwork and picked up where it left off after Cuomo closed it, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Bharara has been convicted of two key state political figures: former popular assembly chairman Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, and former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, a Republican.
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Bharara had also conducted a nearly two-year investigation into how the Cuomo government handled the commission, but gave up after finding “insufficient evidence to prove a federal crime.”