Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and his top aides were facing new allegations on Friday that they covered up the scope of the death toll in the states nursing homes from the coronavirus, after admissions that they withheld data in an effort to forestall potential investigations into state misconduct. The latest revelations came in the wake of private remarks by the governors top aide, Melissa DeRosa, and a cascading series of reports and court orders that have nearly doubled the states official toll of nursing home deaths in the last two weeks. The disclosures have left Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, scrambling to contain the political fallout, as lawmakers of both parties call for censure, including stripping the governor of his emergency powers during the pandemic, federal and state investigations and resignations of Ms. DeRosa and other top officials. In a conversation first reported on by the New York Post, Ms. DeRosa told a group of top lawmakers on Wednesday during a call to address the nursing home situation that basically, we froze, after being asked last summer for information by the Trump administrations Department of Justice.
At the time, the governors office was simultaneously facing requests from the State Legislature for similar information.
We were in a position where we werent sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, and what we start saying, was going to be used against us and we werent sure if there was going to be an investigation, Ms. DeRosa told lawmakers, according to a partial transcript obtained by The New York Times.
The news of Ms. DeRosas remarks sparked a flurry of angry denunciations, including from Mr. Cuomos fellow Democrats.
This is a betrayal of the public trust, State Senator Andrew Gounardes, a Democrat from Brooklyn, said on Twitter. There needs to be full accountability for what happened. ... Early on Friday, Ms. DeRosa, the top nonelected official in the state, sought to clarify the context for her remarks, saying she was trying to explain that we needed to temporarily set aside the Legislatures request to deal with the federal request first.
We informed the houses of this at the time, she said, referring to the upper and lower chambers of the Legislature. ... As I said on a call with legislators, we could not fulfill their request as quickly as anyone would have liked, she said.
The revelation of Ms. DeRosas remarks comes two weeks after a damning report from Letitia James, the states attorney general, who accused the Cuomo administration of undercounting coronavirus related deaths connected to nursing homes by the thousands.
The report forced the states health department to make public more than 3,800 previously unreported deaths of residents who died outside a facility, like in a hospital, and had not been included in the states official nursing home tally.