#Cuomo blames The Post when pressed on probe of nursing home deaths

Gov. Andrew Cuomo accused The Post Friday of waging a partisan attack — for merely asking whether he would support an independent probe of nursing home deaths in New York during the coronavirus pandemic.

The thin-skinned response from the state’s chief executive was immediately challenged by other media outlets and even fellow Democrats who have also called into question a March 25 directive from the Cuomo administration that compelled nursing homes to take in COVID-19 patients at the early height of the virus’ outbreak.

Asked by The Post at an Albany press conference if he would support having an independent investigator conduct a review of the state’s handling of nursing homes during the COVID-19 crisis, Cuomo said, “I don’t believe your categorization is correct. I believe it is a political issue.

“I think it is the New York Post. I think it’s Michael Goodwin, I think it’s Bob McManus,” he said, referring to two Post columnists. “I think it’s Fox TV. I think it is all politically motivated. If anybody looked at the facts, they would know it is wholly absurd on its face,” the governor said, spouting his oft-repeated political rhetoric in lieu of answering the question.

“People died in nursing homes — that is very unfortunate. Just on the top line we have, we are number 35th in the nation in percentage of deaths in the nursing homes. Go talk to 34 other states. First, go talk to the Republican states now — Florida, Texas, Arizona — ask them what is happening in nursing homes. It’s all politics,” Cuomo railed.

But Cuomo was challenged in real time on social media for dismissing questions about what caused more than 6,300 nursing home deaths linked to COVID-19. Critics have argued that the state Health Department has lowballed the number of deaths because the tally doesn’t include nursing home residents who were stricken with the killer bug and were transported to hospitals for treatment where they later died.

“The Post is far from the only media outlet calling for an independent investigation. From the @timesunion edit board,” the Times Union of Albany editor Casey Seilor said in a tweet just moments after Cuomo uttered his claim, and linking to that paper’s own editorial.

Cuomo has come under fire for the controversial March 25 state order that required nursing homes to admit or readmit recovering COVID-19 patients discharged from hospitals without testing during the peak of the pandemic. He later repealed the policy after withering criticism, much of it coming as a result of The Post’s coverage of the nursing home debacle.

The state Health Department recently released an in-house report that blamed infected nursing home staffers and visitors — not its admission policy — with spreading the disease to frail, vulnerable nursing home residents. Critics rejected the report’s findings as self-serving and not credible.

Meanwhile, Cuomo’s fellow Democrats in the state Legislature who are holding hearings on the nursing home deaths next month disputed the governor’s assertion that wanting to get to the bottom of what happened is a partisan issue.

“I don’t think the Health Department report was adequate or thorough,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairwoman Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan).

“We don’t think asking questions about what happened in the nursing homes is a partisan issue. It’s about learning about what happened so we can come up with a protocol so it doesn’t happen again,” she said.

Krueger was among 22 Democratic senators who sent a letter to Cuomo last month urging an overhaul of the state’s oversight of nursing homes.

And toward the end of the press conference, another reporter, Nick Reisman of Spectrum News, followed up on The Post’s query with the governor, asking him, “Why not have an independent review of what went on in these nursing homes … are you interested in doing something like that?”

Cuomo responded, “No, you could do a lot of review and investigations — but you need facts first. You look at the facts in that report. It’s not even close — there’s no factual basis. The timelines don’t even work.”