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<\/a>Disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo went beyond crooked to conceal nursing home COVID-19 deaths, profit off his lucrative book deal and sexually harass 12 women.
AP Photo\/Mary Altaffer, File<\/p><\/div>\n
Resist the temptation and remember the Rule of Cuomo: Whatever you know about him, it\u2019s not the whole story.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s always more, and it\u2019s always worse than you thought. Much worse.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s one lesson from the\u00a0state Assembly report,<\/a>\u00a0which reveals new details of Cuomo\u2019s venality. From sexual harassment to lies about nursing-home deaths and his forbidden\u00a0use of state employees<\/a>\u00a0to help finish his book, the governor is convincingly portrayed as a\u00a0greedy, dishonest man<\/a>\u00a0without a shred of decency.<\/p>\n Another lesson from the report is that New York desperately needs a functioning two-party system. If there had been a GOP check on total\u00a0Democratic control in Albany,<\/a>\u00a0Cuomo\u2019s gross misconduct could have been flagged earlier.<\/p>\n In one sense, the Assembly report is late to the party, with the attorney general concluding in August that Cuomo was guilty of sexually\u00a0harassing 11 women,<\/a>\u00a0which led to his resignation.<\/p>\n Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie never\u00a0showed much appetite<\/a>\u00a0for taking on the vengeful governor, and tried to spike his chamber\u2019s report on impeachment\u00a0when Cuomo quit.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n Fortunately, Heastie surrendered to the pressure to continue and the finished product confirms the AG\u2019s finding on harassment and breaks important new ground in other areas. Key among those is showing how Cuomo overruled\u00a0Department of Health<\/a>\u00a0employees and reduced the number of reported\u00a0nursing-home deaths<\/a>\u00a0by about 35 percent on the very days he was negotiating the contract for his\u00a0book deal on pandemic<\/a>\u00a0leadership.<\/p>\n The timing persuasively makes the case that Cuomo struck it rich with the deception, with his book contract worth at\u00a0least $5.2 million<\/a>\u00a0and potentially as much as $6.4 million. If the truth had been known, it\u2019s hard to imagine that the publisher, Crown, a division of\u00a0Penguin Random House,<\/a>\u00a0would have agreed to pay so much. It\u2019s possible there might not have been a book at all.<\/p>\n In effect, the fabricated death totals were a lucrative lie for Cuomo.<\/p>\n As Assemblyman Ron Kim of Queens told The Post, \u201cIt\u2019s crystal clear now that Andrew Cuomo has had a financial motive to suppress nursing-home death toll numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n Cuomo had reportedly threatened\u00a0to \u201cdestroy\u201d Kim<\/a>\u00a0if the Dem didn\u2019t retract an assertion to\u00a0The Post last February<\/a>\u00a0that the administration was hiding the death numbers from the Legislature.<\/p>\n The findings should stiffen the spines of members of the\u00a0Joint Commission on Public Integrity<\/a>\u00a0to claw back some of Cuomo\u2019s book money. Combined with his rampant use of government staff for the project despite his written agreement not to, his\u00a0manipulation of death<\/a>\u00a0reports to make the book more appealing cannot be overlooked.<\/p>\n The report might also light a fire under the\u00a0FBI in Brooklyn,<\/a>\u00a0which has supposedly been investigating Cuomo\u2019s withholding of accurate nursing home deaths from the Department of Justice. Then again, perhaps the FBI is too busy raiding the homes of\u00a0muckraking journalists<\/a>\u00a0at Project Veritas and hunting down\u00a0\u201cdomestic terrorist\u201d<\/a>\u00a0parents who object to their children being indoctrinated on radical racial theories.<\/p>\n On harassment, the report finds\u00a0\u201coverwhelming evidence\u201d<\/a>\u00a0of Cuomo\u2019s guilt and goes into detail on the two most serious cases. One involves an unnamed state trooper and the other centers on\u00a0aide Brittany Commisso,<\/a>\u00a0who claims Cuomo groped her breast.<\/p>\n The report, prepared by the Davis Polk & Wardwell law firm, concludes that each case \u201cindependently satisfies the definition of sexual harassment under New York State law.\u201d That line and references to law-enforcement officials suggests Cuomo still could face prosecution.<\/p>\n The biggest lapse is how the report fails to deal with the impact of Cuomo\u2019s infamous\u00a0March 25th order\u00a0<\/a>of last year that required nursing homes to admit discharged hospital patients infected with COVID-19. The order also barred the homes from even\u00a0testing the patients<\/a>\u00a0until they were admitted.<\/p>\n The deadly effects were first revealed\u00a0by The Post,\u00a0<\/a>with families and facility operators insisting the infected patients spread\u00a0the deadly virus<\/a>\u00a0like wildfire, especially in homes that did not have enough safety gear for staff and were not able to segregate\u00a0COVID cases.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n It was after those news accounts, which Cuomo\u00a0denounced as \u201cpolitics,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0that he began hiding the true number of nursing home deaths by changing how they were counted. Initially, patients who contracted the disease in a nursing home and died were reported in nursing home totals, even if they actually died in a hospital.<\/p>\n When those numbers reached 10,000 in a matter of weeks, Cuomo had them reduced to about 6,500 by separating those who died\u00a0\u201cout of facility.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0New York was the only state to report its deaths to Washington that way.<\/p>\n The two issues came together on July 6, 2020, when Cuomo had his\u00a0first meeting with publishers<\/a>\u00a0and his administration released the false total of nursing home deaths.<\/p>\n Despite knowing all that, investigators duck the obvious implication, saying they have no evidence the March 25th order \u201cincreased the number of COVID-19 fatalities in nursing homes.\u201d<\/p>\n The lame conclusion makes no sense. Why else would Cuomo\u00a0hide the deaths<\/a>\u00a0and rescind the March 25th order if it played no role?<\/p>\n Similarly, the report punts on Cuomo\u2019s related claim that COVID-19 \u201cwas likely introduced into nursing homes by infected staff.\u201d<\/p>\n Those two statements conflict with the parts of the report that document extensively how Cuomo and his cult-like staff marginalized the\u00a0Department of Health<\/a>\u00a0and manipulated numbers to buttress his image.<\/p>\n In fact, later press accounts detailed how the report\u00a0claiming staff transmission<\/a>\u00a0was written by Cuomo\u2019s office and outside contractors, over the objections of the Department of Health.<\/p>\n All of which proves that the Rule of Cuomo also applies to investigators: However much you know about his venality, there\u2019s always more.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>