House COVID panel may subpoena ex-Gov. Cuomo over nursing home scandal

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic is weighing a subpoena of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo if he snubs their final request for records about his decision to place COVID-infected patients in nursing homes and long-term care facilities at the onset of the outbreak.

Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) threatened in a Tuesday letter to “evaluate” compulsory measures if Cuomo failed to produce documents about his administration’s COVID policies by Oct. 17, according to a copy of the missive exclusively obtained by The Post.

“To date, we have not received a single document from you. The Select Subcommittee is comprised of physicians from both sides of the aisle and members who take our responsibilities seriously,” Wenstrup wrote to the former governor.

“Contrary to your and your spokesman’s unfortunate statements, this investigation is the result of your clearly medically misguided decision to expose New York’s most vulnerable to COVID-19 by issuing the ‘must admit’ orders, which had predic[t]able but deadly consequences for 15,000 nursing home residents,” he added.

“Any attempt to cover up the truth and conceal culpability is not acceptable to the American people. The Select Subcommittee is committed to a transparent investigation and expects you to be forthcoming during this process.”

A spokesman for the former governor told The Post in a statement that the letter was “a farce.”

“This letter is a farce — the data they seek — which has already been reviewed twice by the DOJ, as well as the State Assembly and the AG, all of which found no there, there — is with the state,” Rich Azzopardi said.

“Once again, it’s unfortunate that some DC politicians are seeking to transparently weaponize people’s pain to advance a political agenda.”

The Empire State’s Department of Health under Cuomo issued an order on March 25, 2020, that forced senior care facilities to accept COVID-positive patients discharged from hospitals.

The then-governor partially rescinded that mandate during a May 10, 2020, press conference, preventing COVID-infected New Yorkers from being moved directly from hospitals to nursing homes while allowing admissions from other facilities.

Cuomo’s administration in a July 2020 report downplayed the total number of COVID fatalities related to the policy by excluding deaths of patients that occurred outside of any facilities.

But senior Cuomo adviser Melissa DeRosa later admitted in February 2021 that the decision to hide the true number of deaths was made out of a fear that the data would “be used against us” by federal prosecutors.

In March 2022, New York’s Department of Health ultimately found that Cuomo had “misled the public” in undercounting such deaths by more than 50%.

The House panel also sent a letter to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Dorector Mandy Cohen, requesting a transcribed interview with Dr. Howard Zucker, the former commissioner of the New York State Department of Health.

“It would be an injustice to humankind to not conduct a thorough postmortem review in this situation,” Wenstrup said, asking for the current CDC deputy director for global health to come in for a sit-down interview on Nov. 30.

The documents and interview are expected to help in a “postmortem” of COVID policies as well as “inform potential future legislation to improve governmental responses to future pandemics,” he added.

The panel had previously sought Cuomo for his own transcribed interview, which he dodged.

Similar records requests were also sent to New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, whose responses are now being evaluated by the select subcommittee, according to a spokeswoman.

The select subcommittee’s earlier letters in May asked Cuomo for data on case counts and deaths related to his administration’s nursing-home mandate.

Cuomo resigned in August 2021 after New York Attorney General Letitia James issued a report that found 11 women had been sexually harassed or mistreated by the governor.