Seems like Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan are about to get in some big trouble. The Justice Department’s civil rights division recently demanded data from the governors as part of an investigation correlating their nursing home policies to spikes in coronavirus fatalities.
In a testament led by Assistant Attorney General, Eric Dreiband, four states (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan) had required nursing homes to admit COVID-19 patients to their vulnerable populations without adequate testing.
The request for nursing home data will open the investigation under the “Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act,” a federal law intended to protect the rights of people in state or local correctional facilities, nursing homes, mental health facilities, and institutions for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
The situation came to light after a March 25 order, by Gov. Cuomo, to require nursing homes to take positive virus patients. The current official count from New York shows over 6,000 nursing home patient deaths from coronavirus. The count could actually be much higher, though, because of how the state is counting the deaths.
For example, if a person died in the hospital, even if they got the virus in the nursing home, it wouldn’t be counted as a “nursing home death.” This would reduce the actual number. One count even estimated that the number was between eleven and twelve thousand nursing home deaths. Because we don’t know the real number, the investigation has opened.
Fox News Senior Meteorologist, Janice Dean, whose in-laws both died of the virus in a nursing home, welcomed the investigation with open arms. Cuomo’s order to return recovering COVID-19 patients into these facilities made them, and others, sitting ducks. The most vulnerable loved ones could not protect themselves.
What was Cuomo’s response to all of this? “This is all politics. Mr. Barr cannot spell the word ‘justice.’ He doesn’t even feign to be impartial,” he said. Gov. Cuomo has forfeited his credibility as a leader, but he’ll probably find some loophole excuse to blame the Trump Administration for all of this. He’s probably just stalling for time until he has to produce those documents to the Department of Justice.
The worst part of it all is that not only did this happen, but families were not allowed in some places to even check on their elderly loved ones. The isolation and heartbreak hit those who died, without the comforts of their family, while Democratic governors, like Cuomo, just insisted on more lockdowns for political points.
Cuomo is in for a rude awakening.
