New York governor Andrew Cuomo may finally be facing a partial reckoning for sending elderly COVID patients back into nursing homes, thereby spreading the disease to the most vulnerable group of all, the elderly.  New York State also has the highest COVID death toll (42,000) but is only the fourth largest state by population.  Yet Cuomo has written a book crediting his performance as magnificent and has enjoyed favorable media treatment and, until now, high levels of public approval.  

Thanks to a report by New York attorney general Letitia James, it is now on the public record that the COVID deaths among nursing home residents were undercounted by as much as 50%, mostly thanks to the trick of failing to count the deaths of those who were readmitted to hospitals and died there.

CNBC writes:

The investigation found that the number of Covid deaths among nursing home residents in some facilities rose by more than 50% when residents who died in the hospital are counted. The state's official Covid-19 death toll in nursing homes, which stands at more than 8,700, excludes patients who died after being transported to a hospital.

Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has faced criticism for failing to disclose the total number of nursing-home residents who have died of Covid-19. In her sweeping report, James, also a Democrat, found that "many nursing home residents died from Covid-19 in hospitals after being transferred from their nursing homes, which is not reflected in D.O.H.'s published total nursing home death data."

In my book, sending COVID patients into nursing homes, where the risk of disease spread and lethality was highest, was nearly criminal.  I also note that there was a financial interest in killing off elderly patients, whose nursing home care in many cases fell to the State of New York, costing it tens of thousands of dollars annually per resident/patient.

A.G. James is no hero in my book for exposing the deceptive death count.  She is an ambitious political rival of Cuomo.  Paul Mirengoff of Powerline:

[A] reader points out that Letitia James, the attorney general who issued the report about the undercounting of nursing home deaths, is a political rival of Cuomo with designs on becoming New York's governor. This doesn't undermine her findings. The Cuomo administration concedes the gist of them (but, remarkably, blames the Trump administration for not providing guidance).

However, James' report does raise interesting possibilities for New York politics. Our reader, a longtime close observer of New York politics, tells me:

[James] is a lefty who got her start in the quasi-Marxist Working Families Party. The report may be her opening salvo in her campaign against Cuomo. 

If AOC runs against Schumer as I think she will, then Letitia James is assured of a big lefty turnout.

Disgraceful as was Cuomo's sending thousands to death, his lies and excuses blaming everyone but himself for the carnage are even more repulsive, at least on a rhetorical level.  In an epic Twitter thread, Tom Elliott chronicles the cowardly and mendacious antics of the son of a guv.  Read the whole thing.  Twitter is not allowing me to embed the tweets, so I post a couple of screen grabs, which won't allow you to play the videos.  If your stomach can stand the lying and hypocrisy, do click on the link about and subject yourself to this bullying weasel's pathetic blame-shifting.

Thanks to the bare-knuckle politics among the top Democrats in New York, Cuomo may finally start to get some of the blame he so richly deserves for his miserable handling of the disease.  Even lefty Chris Cillizza of CNN sees that:

The New York governor's daily coronavirus briefings became must-see TV as Cuomo, in his characteristic "I'm-walking-here" patois, delivered updates on the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the Empire State and provided insight into how he and his administration were working to combat the virus. (snip)

Well, it turns out that all the hype obscured a troubling reality: That the New York State Department of Health was drastically undercounting deaths from Covid-19 among nursing home residents. That's at least according to a new report released by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who (like Cuomo) is a Democrat. (snip)

 Should James' report be borne out, it would occasion a serious reexamination of Cuomo's performance during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Janice Dean of Fox News, who lost elderly in-laws to Cuomo's cupidity, takes justified satisfaction in the start of a reckoning for Killer Cuomo:

[O]ur grieving families continued to watch the mainstream media outlets fawn over him and never ask the questions we so desperately wanted to know: Why did he write that executive order to bring infected patients into nursing homes, and why was he covering up the total number of seniors who died including those who passed away in the hospital? 

We never heard the answers. Instead, we watched him promote and celebrate himself, write his leadership book, and win an Emmy Award. 

It was infuriating. Frustrating. Soul crushing. And despite all my attempts for accountability, I was starting to believe we might never see the day that this governor and his administration were called to task. 

Until now. A 76-page report from the New York Attorney General's Office that finally gave us reason to believe that the nightmare we were going through was very real.

Our feelings of hurt, dismay, anger, betrayal from this leader and his Heath Department were valid. What we knew in our hearts was the truth. 

Photo credit: Twitter video screen grab.