One of the House committees that we haven't heard from as often as the Oversight Committee is the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. But they've been keeping busy as well, with some new reports coming out this week. One in particular may be of interest as it involves former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. You may recall some of the bad old days in 2020 when the fawning legacy media trotted out Cuomo basically on a daily basis to give updates on the government response to the pandemic, treating him as a counterbalance to Donald Trump's own briefings. Some media figures were even referring to him as "the shadow President" during that period. Unbeknownst to many at the time, however, Cuomo was responsible for all manner of bad decisions and misinformation, with some of it costing many lives. Now the Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic is revealing just how bad things were, particularly in terms of Cuomo's orders regarding nursing homes. Not only did as many as 9,000 people needlessly die because of his policies, but some of his aides have testified that he intentionally "edited" a state report, deliberately trying to dial down the number of deaths of those infected in the nursing homes. They knew that this would all come out in the end and predicted that it would be "a great debacle." (NY Post)

Gov. Andrew Cuomo allegedly himself “edited” a state report that deflated New York’s COVID-19 death toll in nursing homes — which his top aides pressured health officials into releasing, despite knowing the issue would turn into a “great debacle,” according to the stunning results of an investigation by a US House committee.

Cuomo “absolutely” signed off on the disastrous directive early in the pandemic forcing coronavirus patients back into nursing homes — leading to as many as 9,000 excess COVID deaths — the final congressional report and witness testimonies exclusively obtained by The Post show.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic conducted the probe and majority staff released the findings ahead of a public hearing with the 66-year-old ex-governor on Tuesday, charging his office with making several “demonstrably false” statements and engaging in a “cover-up.”

The hearing was scheduled for today, so you probably won't be seeing all that much coverage of it given the big presidential debate, but it's an important topic to keep an eye on. Cuomo is sticking to his guns and claiming that he was only issuing "guidelines" that were based on the guidance being put out by the White House. (They never miss an opportunity to blame Trump.)

To a certain extent, that is true. When it came to things like facemasks and social distancing, we were all navigating uncharted waters at that point. Only later would we learn that the Sainted Dr. Fauci and his friends had made most of those guidelines up out of thin air. But there are two elements to this alibi that don't hold water. First of all, the White House was issuing "guidance" that the states could choose to implement, modify, or ignore. Cuomo was issuing orders, frequently overriding the concerns raised by medical professionals. The order forcing the nursing homes to accept residents who tested positive for COVID outraged many in the medical community who may not have known much about COVID yet, but were fully aware that putting sick people with a new and highly transmissible disease in with seniors who were the most susceptible to it was simply insanity.

Yet even that error could be written off as a "mistake" if you are being generous. Going back and personally editing state reports to make the death toll appear significantly lower is another matter entirely. One of the first major changes made after it became apparent how disastrous the situation had become was to restrict the count to patients who died inside the nursing homes. Anyone who was seen to be on their last legs after contracting the disease and was moved to an emergency room or other hospital bed, later dying there was not counted as "a nursing home death." That lopped a huge chunk out of the total figure.

Other language in the state report was constantly being edited by Cuomo through one of his top aides. More quotes from the White House were worked in strategically, giving the impression that Cuomo was helpless in the face of the bureaucracy and was simply "following the lead" set by Washington. These were not minor corrections. This was, as Cuomo's own aides put it, a coverup, plain and simple. Some might readily identify it as fraud. Sadly, it's probably too late at this point to restore any sort of justice to the families who lost their elderly loved ones in this fashion. Andrew Cuomo appears to have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He's been caught engaging in all manner of shady dealings, but he always seems to skate away at the last moment by the skin of his teeth.