Tag: investigation

Report: FBI Now Probing Cuomo’s Corporate Immunity Law

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.dailyposter.com/p/report-fbi-now-probing-cuomos-corporate

Excerpt:

The probe follows a Daily Poster investigative series detailing how one of Cuomo’s biggest donors, the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA) — a lobby group that represents hospital systems and nursing home operators — said it “drafted and aggressively advocated for” the corporate immunity provision. Cuomo’s administration quietly inserted the measure into his state’s budget as thousands lay dying from COVID-19 in New York nursing homes. 

Critics say that the immunity law removed a key deterrent to corporate malfeasance, and victims and their families were subsequently stripped of their legal rights. Cuomo’s original executive order shielding front line health care workers from lawsuits was widely reported, but not the governor’s separate budget language extending immunity to hospital and nursing home corporations’ executives and board members. 

Author(s): David Sirota, Joel Warner, Andrew Perez, Julia Rock

Publication Date: 18 March 2021

Publication Site: Daily Poster

Why Cuomo Should Be Worried About a Federal Probe

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-cuomo-should-be-worried-about-a-federal-probe-11613945987

Excerpt:

What caught the Justice Department’s eye was Gov. Cuomo’s claim that New York’s nursing-home deaths were lower than many other states’ and that his March 25 order didn’t contribute to the extremely high number of New Yorkers who died from Covid. Given the virus’s disproportionate effect on the elderly, sick and frail, this seemed unlikely. On Aug. 26, Justice’s Civil Rights Division, relying on its jurisdiction to investigate government-run facilities under the federal Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, asked the Cuomo administration for data on New York’s publicly run nursing homes, which account for less than 5% of nursing homes in the state.

In September, New York produced data showing it had underreported Covid deaths in government-run nursing homes by a third. The undercounting appeared to be due to several factors. First, when a nursing-home resident who contracted Covid died after being transported to a hospital for treatment, New York didn’t count it as a “nursing-home death.” Second, New York didn’t include deaths occurring before the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services began requiring Covid reporting from nursing homes in mid-May. CMS made reporting prior Covid deaths optional, and New York apparently elected to keep the information to itself.

Author(s): John B. Daukas

Publication Date: 21 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Cuomo-gate: A Nixonian Scandal Is Engulfing New York

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.dailyposter.com/p/cuomo-gate-a-nixonian-scandal-is

Graphic:

Excerpt:

The Daily Poster had been covering the story for months before it exploded this week. The scandal is a cautionary tale of hubris, megalomania, and corruption that left a literal mountain of preventable COVID deaths in its wake. Now we are about to see whether a blue state’s democratic institutions can hold wrongdoers accountable, or whether America’s culture of impunity can once again protect the powerful from facing any consequences at all.

…..

Two national news outlets today detailed Cuomo’s new campaign of retribution against one lawmaker in his own party who dared to ask questions about constituents and family members who died under Cuomo’s nursing home policies. Cuomo held a press conference to publicly berate the same Democrat, while another New York news outlet reported that other lawmakers are now facing threats.  

….

Cuomo’s political machine received more than $2 million from the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA), its executives, and its lobbying firms. The health care industry group also funneled more than $450,000 to members of the New York legislature in 2020. 

Author(s): David Sirota

Publication Date: 17 February 2021

Publication Site: Daily Poster

Cuomo Accuses NY Lawmakers of ‘Extortion’ Over Calls to Investigate Nursing Home Deaths

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/cuomo-accuses-ny-lawmakers-of-extortion-over-calls-to-investigate-nursing-home-deaths/

Excerpt:

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Monday blasted state lawmakers who have threatened to rescind his emergency powers and open investigations into his administration’s coverup of its mishandling of nursing home coronavirus deaths.

“You can’t use a subpoena or the threat of investigation to leverage a person,” Cuomo said in a briefing on Monday. “That’s a crime, it’s called abuse of process, it’s called extortion.”

He also defended his earlier policy that forced nursing homes to accept coronavirus-positive patients after they were discharged from hospitals, saying that it was not sick residents who spread the virus within the nursing homes amid New York’s first wave in the spring, but visitors and staff.

Of 613 nursing homes in the state, 365 received a COVID-positive patient from the hospital, Cuomo said. Ninety-eight percent of nursing homes that admitted a patient from the hospital already had COVID in their facility before the patient was admitted, he said.

Author(s): Brittany Bernstein

Publication Date: 15 February 2021

Publication Site: National Review

GameStop Mania Is Focus of Federal Probes Into Possible Manipulation

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/gamestop-mania-is-focus-of-federal-probes-into-possible-manipulation-11613066950?mod=djemwhatsnews

Excerpt:

The Justice Department’s fraud section and the San Francisco U.S. attorney’s office have sought information about the activity from brokers and social-media companies that were hubs for the trading frenzy, the people said. Prosecutors have subpoenaed information from brokers such as Robinhood Markets Inc., the popular online brokerage that many individual investors used to trade GameStop and other shares, the people said.

GameStop shares surged from about $20 to $483 over a period of two weeks in January. The stock has since fallen to around $50. It was fueled by an army of bullish individual traders exhorting one another on Reddit to buy the shares and squeeze hedge funds that bet the price would fall. Traders who bet stock prices will decline are known as short sellers.

Author(s): Dave Michaels

Publication Date: 11 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal