Gillibrand confirms Cuomo nursing home probe, but doesn't back impeachment or resignation

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Sen. Kirstin Gillibrand said she believes Gov. Andrew Cuomo -- who is under heavy scrutiny due to an expanding nursing home scandal in New York -- should not resign or be impeached, despite an ongoing investigation by the Justice Department. 

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New York's Democratic junior senator said she is "aware that there's already any investigation ongoing at the federal level," but said the issues inside nursing homes are "not something isolated to New York alone." 

A member of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, Gillibrand said she intends to have a thorough review of the care of elderly people in nursing homes "because older Americans in nursing homes all across the country suffer disproportionately because when COVID got into these nursing homes and these assisted living facilities it spread like wildfire."

The focus on Cuomo comes as liberal CNN and the governor's brother, host Chris Cuomo, has given the Democrat's controversies little to no airtime. Previously, the network gave Chris Cuomo free rein to conduct friendly, comical interviews with the governor, who wrote a book about successfully handling the pandemic in the middle of the pandemic.

"A lot of our older Americans have really born the brunt of COVID," Gillibrand said during a news conference Friday.

A former presidential candidate, Gillibrand refrained from placing direct blame on Cuomo, who directed nursing homes in New York back in March to accept patients who were positive for COVID-19, which likely caused a spike in deaths at assisted living facilities. 

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Recently, Cuomo's top aide Melissa DeRosa admitted that the administration did not turn over complete data related to nursing homes to DOJ officials probing the matter in four states including New York. 

Health officials admitted that the death toll had exceeded 15,000-- almost 10,000 more deaths than had previously been reported by the state at the end of January. 

Still, Gillibrand said: "I hope we can have hearings on the broader issue because this is not something isolated to New York alone." 

"I know that there is an ongoing investigation that I will not comment on, but I can do my part on the federal level to look at the broader issue through the aging committee which I will be here to do," she said. 

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"This is not our last pandemic and we need to be prepared for the next disease to hit our communities this hard and that's what my job is to do."