Cuomo's nursing home cover-up was a federal crime, obstruction of justice: Stefanik
Rep. Elis Stefanik on the New York GOP's impeachment effort against Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
A New York Daily News columnist defended embattled New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo amid an onslaught of sexual harassment allegations on Tuesday, praising his handling of coronavirus and essentially dismissing his multiple scandals.
Author Linda Stasi’s opinion piece, "We were right to laud Cuomo: Don’t let scandals distract from pandemic competence," features an image of the governor hugging a woman with the caption, "No touching allowed?"
Cuomo, a Democrat, has been accused of sexual harassment and unwanted touching by five women, but Stasi seemed unbothered by "unproven sexual misconduct allegations" because of his coronavirus response.
"The rumors of his death have been greatly exaggerated. No, Gov. Cuomo is not a dead duck or even necessarily a lame duck — and he shouldn’t be. He may not be perfect, but he has been the perfect man for our perilous pandemic times," Stasi wrote to open the piece.
"How quickly the pols calling for his ouster over unproven sexual misconduct allegations have forgotten that New York was, at the onset of the pandemic, COVID central," she wrote. "In fact, New York in April of 2020 had not just the highest rate of COVID positivity of any state, but the highest rate of COVID positivity of any country!"
Stasi added, "New Yorkers were dying and suffering all around us like some dystopian play about the end of the world," and felt Cuomo saved the day despite his alleged cover-up of thousands of nursing home deaths.
Cuomo initially ordered New York nursing homes to accept people with coronavirus but eventually changed his mind. His administration has since been accused of fudging data to cover up how many deaths occurred – but that information is missing from Stasi’s column where she fawned over the governor’s press conferences.
"Have people forgotten how the whole country tuned in every day to watch Cuomo’s honest pandemic updates and how he gave us the only hope we had that somehow we’d get past it?" she pondered.
CUOMO SEXUAL HARASSMENT SCANDAL MAY BE OVERSHADOWING NY'S NURSING HOME DEATHS, SOME CRITICS WORRY
Fox News senior meteorologist Janice Dean, who has been an outspoken critic of Gov. Cuomo after her in-laws died in New York nursing homes, blasted Stasi.
"You are an accomplice. A gas lighter. An enabler. And all those bodies piled up in morgues and in storage trucks you wrote about? Those were our dead relatives @NYGovCuomo helped kill and then hid the numbers. Shame on @lindastasi @NYDailyNews," Dean tweeted in response to Stasi.
Stasi also boasted Cuomo warned against holiday gatherings that resulted in an increase of COVID cases and credited him for a decline in positivity rate. She then pivoted back to the sexual harassment allegations, choosing to politicize the misconduct claims.
"Ever notice how, with sexual misconduct allegations, Democrats seem to immediately want to destroy the man and Republicans seem to immediately want to destroy the woman? What happened to waiting to condemn until all investigations have been done?" Stasi asked.
"Ironically, calling for his resignation because he’s supposedly distracted is in itself a distraction," she wrote. "He has shown us he can multi-task as he continues to deal with all of the overwhelming horrors that have beset us as a state."
Stasi claimed all sexual harassment should be taken seriously but contradicted herself in the next sentence.
"But 15-year-old allegations that weren’t either reported then, or were in fact dealt with correctly back then, should not be causing this uproar now that the news has shifted away from the pandemic and we begin to emerge from the darkness of quarantine," Stasi wrote. "As for the allegations, let the very competent and tough Letitia James do her investigation, and while it’s ongoing, let the governor continue to do his job."
JANICE DEAN: IF CUOMO WON'T RESIGN, IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS SHOULD BEGIN
Stasi admitted Cuomo "never figured out that in this day, that a boss just can’t go around hugging and kissing people" at the end of the column.
"I’m not saying that these allegations aren’t real, and that the governor never figured out that in this day, that a boss just can’t go around hugging and kissing people — no matter how Italian he is. I’m a hugging and kissing Italian-American myself," Stasi wrote. "Meantime, and almost ridiculously, the pols calling for his head have themselves become distracted by the hugging-kissing scandal. Right now what we don’t need is herd mentality — we need herd immunity."
Many others slammed the column on Twitter:
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