Via America’s Lawyer: Critics blast NY governor Andrew Cuomo for withholding thousands of nursing home COVID deaths from the DOJ, fearing the staggering numbers would trigger a frenzy. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: More damning information has come out this past week showing that New York governor Andrew Cuomo tried intentionally to suppress data about the number of COVID nursing home deaths that he was faced with. Joining me to talk about it is Farron Cousins, editor of the trial lawyer magazine. No surprise, you know, before they got here, we were talking about this is a guy who was toying with the idea of running for president. You know why he didn’t? Because he knew this was building. He knew he was lying to the American public about the number of deaths that were taking place in nursing home cases.
Farron Cousins: Right. You know, he, he was heralded in the early days of the pandemic and oh, look how good New York is, looking at all the great stuff Cuomo has done. And we find out now, I mean, at this point, every couple of days more damning information comes out about how badly Cuomo not only screwed it up, but tried to cover it up. And this, the latest developments that we have here is that yes, the Trump DOJ tried to get information from Cuomo. We need to know how many people have died in your nursing homes from COVID and then Cuomo’s people accidentally let it slip that, well, we didn’t know what to tell them. Were we going to tell them the truth? Were we going to lie to them?
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: It, it’s absolutely just sinister.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, it is.
Farron Cousins: What his administration did.
Mike Papantonio: Well, interesting couple of points. First of all, Melissa DeRosa is an, she didn’t mean to be a whistleblower.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: She, she was giving, she was telling the truth about his cover-up. She was telling the truth about how his administration intentionally would not allow the federal government to get involved. Now here’s where it’s important. This is 10,000 people in nursing homes died, 10,000 people, and so when the feds were looking at it and when even the state health department was looking at it, they were saying, if you’ll give us this information, we can help. So it’s, it’s a kin to murder. It’s a kin to manslaughter by covering it up. The new help could not come in. There needs to be a recall on this guy and the, and the state legislator needs to take some real, real strong actions about what’s happened here. Look at what happened in Flint, Michigan, when it, when, when they made decisions like this and people were indicted for manslaughter.
Farron Cousins: Right. It really is no different what Cuomo did here. And we know in the early days too, they were taking people from nursing homes, packing them all into other nursing homes. When the people would eventually die, they were trying to say that, okay, well, they had COVID, but they also had heart disease. So how about you mark it as heart disease instead of a COVID death? You know, that’s the kind of thing and we’ve actually seen that in other States as well, Florida, pretty notorious for it. But, but nobody has the numbers.
Mike Papantonio: No.
Farron Cousins: That New York and Cuomo have had and that’s why this is such a disgusting story.
Mike Papantonio: Numbers are startling. Just like you said, what they would say, well, this person died outside the nursing home facility.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: So it’s not a nursing home death. They got the COVID in the facility, went to the hospital and they died and this creep covered it up because he didn’t want to look bad. And the truth is had he done his job, something would, now interesting Letitia James, of course the attorney general up there, she sees governor in her sights.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And I think that’s where it’s, that’s where he’s going to have a difficult time. She’s going to go after him. If she’s really, if she’s astute as I think she is, she’s going to go after him.
Farron Cousins: Well, we’re, what we learned, the big takeaway from all this and yes, he needs to be indicted and investigated, you know, but everybody is so desperate for a hero that this was the guy they were lifting up on their shoulders 10 months ago.
Mike Papantonio: Wow, what.
Farron Cousins: As look at how great Cuomo is. We have to stop that as a country. I know we, we don’t do that, but so many people just want anybody to emerge as a leader that they’ll latch onto anybody.
Mike Papantonio: Farron, that, that is brilliant because that is this, always in search of a hero. Always we need a hero, whether it’s the Democrats looking for their hero or the Republicans looking for their tribal hero, this is a great, that is an incredibly important point.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
