The Justice Department has reportedly opened a criminal investigation into former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for allegedly lying to Congress about the nursing home deaths in the Empire State during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The probe into the New York City mayoral frontrunner was launched about a month ago by the Washington, DC, US Attorney’s Office, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing two people familiar with the matter.
The office was led at the time by Ed Martin, who was replaced earlier this month by Jeanine Pirro.
The Republican-led panel asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to pursue criminal charges against Cuomo, a Democrat, for making “criminally false statements” during a June 11, 2024, interview with the House COVID subcommittee.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) charged that there was “overwhelming evidence” that Cuomo, 67, presided over a July 6, 2020, audit that undercounted the total number of deaths in New York senior care facilities during the pandemic by 46%.
In his testimony, the ex-governor was adamant that he had not drafted, reviewed, discussed or consulted people for “peer-review” on the nursing home report, which was published by the New York State Department of Health.
Comer previously referred Cuomo for prosecution last year, but his request was denied by former President Joe Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The former governor’s spokesperson Rich Azzopardi told The Post that he was unaware of any investigation — slamming the prospect of one as “lawfare and election interference.”
“We have never been informed of any such matter, so why would someone leak it now?” he said in a statement. “The answer is obvious: This is lawfare and election interference plain and simple — something President Trump and his top Department of Justice officials say they are against.
“Governor Cuomo testified truthfully to the best of his recollection about events from four years earlier, and he offered to address any follow-up questions from the Subcommittee — but from the beginning this was all transparently political,” he added.
“The wheels of justice are finally beginning to turn,” Voices for Seniors said in a statement on X. “For over five years, our movement has been fueled by heartbreak and a single-minded demand for the truth.
“This investigation is not just justified, it’s overdue. The evidence paints a damning picture of al reader more concerned with image than integrity. Grieving families have waited long enough.”
“Thank God our fight has not been in vain,” cofounder Vivian Zayas, whose mom, Ana Martinez, died of COVID after a stint in a West Islip nursing home in 2020, told The Post.
She said nursing home families sent three letters to Bondi urging a criminal probe of Cuomo.
“We’re just elated this investigation of Cuomo is going forward. It’s a long overdue victory for the nursing home families and their loved ones,” Zayas added.
Daniel Arbeeny, a co-founder of We Care Memorial Wall for COVID nursing home victims, also applauded the probe.
“Cuomo should be held accountable. It’s that simple,” said Arbeeny, whose father, Norman, died from COVID.
“We need to know if Cuomo was lying about following federal guidelines. He forced nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients and thousands of nursing home residents needlessly died.”
The report Cuomo is accused of lying to Congress about downplayed the consequences of his infamous March 25, 2020, directive forcing recovering COVID patients into senior care facilities without mandated testing to see if they could still infect others.
By May 10, when Cuomo revoked the order, thousands of sick New Yorkers had been either admitted or readmitted into nursing homes.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had acknowledged the risk of asymptomatic spread six days earlier — but media outlets had been reporting on the possibility of such infections since early April.
Cuomo told lawmakers last year that he did not “recall” even seeing the July 2020 nursing home report before its publication.
Emails obtained by subcommittee staff, however, show that Cuomo aides discussed his participation in the drafting of the audit — and the former governor’s own handwritten edits were also submitted as evidence to the DOJ.
Those edits included a note stating that by the date the nursing home mandate was rescinded, “the disease was already in the nursing homes” — and crossing out the word “death” to replace it with the approximate timeline it took for infections to become fatalities, among others.
“New York is 6,600?” Cuomo scrawled in the margins of one draft page — despite more than 9,000 perishing when counting those who were in hospitals. The final report cited just 6,432 fatalities.
Pirro, who is handling the probe, is a former political rival of Cuomo’s who has been publicly critical of the ex-governor’s pandemic nursing home policy.
“You cannot escape the consequences of your intentional and reckless acts,” Pirro, a former Fox News host, raged in a 2021 segment on the network about Cuomo, according to the New York Times.
“You cannot escape your intentional coverup,” she added, arguing that Cuomo doomed seniors to “a death sentence.”
Pirro further argued that New York prosecutors should consider manslaughter and negligent homicide charges against Cuomo over his nursing home policy.
Pirro ran a failed campaign against Cuomo in the 2006 race for New York attorney general.
The report of the investigation into the mayoral frontrunner comes one day after Cuomo released a new campaign ad touting his leadership during the pandemic.
“It was the greatest health crisis in our history — and when New Yorkers were desperate for leadership — Andrew Cuomo delivered,” the narrator says in the 30-second spot, titled, “Crisis.”
“He didn’t just provide information in those daily COVID briefings — he acted, building emergency hospitals and deploying first responders,” the ad continues.
Cuomo defended his nursing home policy earlier Tuesday during an interview on the “Honestly with Bari Weiss” podcast.
“When you now go back and look at the facts, everything New York state did followed federal guidance,” he asserted.
Cuomo dismissed claims that he undercounted nursing home deaths as “so untrue” and the result of “politics.”
“I get the politics. I understand why they were doing it and why they had their outlets echo it over and over and over — and then it was amplified by the nursing home families who just bought into all this conservative rhetoric,” he said.
“Only 12 states did better” than New York in terms of preventing deaths during the pandemic, the mayoral hopeful insisted.
Democratic socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani — who is running second to Cuomo in the race — blasted the former governor and President Trump in a statement.
“Andrew Cuomo’s career has been defined by corruption and deceit and his lying to Congress about his COVID response is no exception. But Donald Trump cannot be trusted to pursue justice. While I believe New Yorkers should reject the disgraced ex-Governor at the ballot box, the Trump administration’s actions are dangerous.”
The DOJ did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
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