{"id":53661,"date":"2021-02-22T15:37:13","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T19:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=53661"},"modified":"2021-02-22T15:39:17","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T19:39:17","slug":"gov-cuomo-should-be-very-worried-about-nursing-home-crime-wave-cover-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=53661","title":{"rendered":"Gov. Cuomo Should Be Very Worried About Nursing Home Crime Wave Cover-Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former DOJ official: Gov. Cuomo should be worried about federal probe into COVID-19 nursing home deaths<\/h1>\n

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John Daukas says Janice Dean, other grieving families will get answers<\/h3>\n

Talia KaplanBy Talia Kaplan | Fox News<\/p>\n

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John Daukas,\u00a0<\/a>who served as acting U.S. attorney general for the\u00a0Justice Department\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0Civil Rights Division, explained on Monday why he believes\u00a0New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo<\/a>\u00a0should be worried about a federal probe into the\u00a0alleged undercounting of nursing home deaths<\/a>\u00a0amid the\u00a0COVID-19\u00a0<\/a>pandemic.<\/p>\n

“On March 25th the\u00a0governor issued his order that\u00a0required nursing homes to accept\u00a0people who could be infected,\u00a0still infected with COVID, and\u00a0something that’s often overlooked, the\u00a0order prohibited the nursing\u00a0homes from testing those people\u00a0to determine if they had COVID so those people were put back in\u00a0with a very vulnerable\u00a0population,” Daukas told “Fox & Friends<\/a>” on Monday.<\/p>\n

“New York by the summer had by far the highest death rate in the country, over 32,000 deaths, twice the deaths of any other state,” he continued.<\/p>\n

“But the governor was going around\u00a0saying the nursing home deaths\u00a0were very low and that didn’t\u00a0seem right to us at the\u00a0Department of Justice so we asked for information on\u00a0state-run nursing homes, which my\u00a0group, the civil rights division,\u00a0has jurisdiction over and New\u00a0York provided data to us that\u00a0showed that they had understated\u00a0the deaths in those nursing\u00a0homes by one-third,” Daukas added.<\/p>\n

Cuomo has found himself at the center of a federal investigation into whether his administration sought to hide the true toll of the pandemic.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0New York Post reported earlier this month\u00a0<\/a>that Melissa DeRosa, Cuomo\u2019s top aide, told lawmakers the administration had withheld the numbers for fear of them being “used against us.”<\/p>\n

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In an\u00a0op-ed for the Wall Street Journal,<\/a>\u00a0Daukas, wrote that DeRosa\u2019s reported admissions weren’t “merely negligent, but intentional and perhaps criminal.”<\/p>\n

Daukas said numerous federal statutes could apply, noting that Cuomo\u2019s administration is accusing of both making false statements to the federal government and trying to thwart an investigation.<\/p>\n

“Even if it cannot be proved that the Cuomo administration knowingly provided false information to Justice and the (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services), New York\u2019s willful failure to provide information may itself constitute a criminal offense\u2014particularly if the intent was to thwart a federal investigation\u2014which, after all, is exactly what Ms. DeRosa reportedly said the administration did,” Daukas wrote.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Daukas told host\u00a0Steve Doocy<\/a> that after the Department of Justice learned that nursing home deaths were understated, “we\u00a0went to our sister division, the\u00a0Civil Division of the Department\u00a0of Justice that asked for the\u00a0same information for the over\u00a0600 private nursing homes in the\u00a0state of New York and New York\u00a0stonewalled and didn’t produce\u00a0anything throughout the rest of\u00a0the year, perhaps waiting for a\u00a0change in administration.”<\/p>\n

Daukas appeared on “Fox & Friends” on Monday with Fox News senior meteorologist\u00a0Janice Dean,\u00a0<\/a>who\u00a0lost her elderly in-laws<\/a>\u00a0to COVID-19.\u00a0\u00a0Dean had said she believes Cuomo or his administration were behind the decision to allow infected patients back into nursing homes.<\/p>\n

She told Fox News in August\u00a0<\/a>her husband\u2019s father, who was in a nursing home and rehabilitation center, died the same day she and her husband found out he was sick.<\/p>\n

Dean noted that her husband\u2019s mother “contracted coronavirus in\u00a0her assisted living facility and was transported to the\u00a0hospital and died in the\u00a0hospital.” Her mother-in-law died on April 14, about two weeks after her father-in-law passed away from the novel coronavirus.<\/p>\n

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