Inquiry to probe Cuomo kin tests
Health Department’s expediting of virus checks to be added to escalating impeachment review
The state Assembly’s impeachment inquiry into the multiple scandals engulfing Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s administration has a new topic: Whether high-level officials with the state Health Department were dispatched to run prioritized coronavirus tests on relatives and associates of the governor.
State Assemblyman Charles Lavine of Long Island, who chairs the Assembly’s Judiciary Committee, said that panel’s investigation will now also examine the information that people close to the governor or his administration had received special treatment for coronavirus testing in the early weeks of the pandemic. But Lavine said the matter will not take precedent over the panel’s review of multiple sexual misconduct allegations made against Cuomo, his administration’s handling of COVID-19 in nursing homes, or the cover-up of construction flaws by the
company that built the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge.
“While the Assembly investigation will look into these most recent allegations, the investigation’s primary focus remains questions related to sexual harassment, nursing homes and bridge safety,” Lavine said.
Attorney General Letitia James' office issued a statement earlier Thursday urging the state's Joint Commission on Public Ethics to investigate the alleged preferential testing, according to the Associated Press.
The Times Union first reported on Wednesday evening that Cuomo and state health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker ordered DOH officials to conduct prioritized coronavirus testing on the governor’s relatives as well as influential people with ties to the administration, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter.
Members of Cuomo’s family including his brother, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, as well as his mother Matilda Cuomo, and at least one of his sisters were also tested by top Health Department officials — some several times, the sources said.
The medical officials enlisted to do the testing, which often took place at private residences, included Dr. Eleanor Adams, an epidemiologist who graduated from Harvard Medical School and in August became a special adviser to Zucker. Adams conducted testing on Chris Cuomo at his residence on Long Island, according to the two people.
CNN issued a statement in response to the news on Wednesday evening.
“We generally do not get involved in the medical decisions of our employees,” said a release from CNN spokesman Matt Dornic posted on Twitter by media critic Erik Wemple of the Washington Post, which also reported on the testing program. “However, it is not surprising that in the earliest days of a once-in-a-century global pandemic, when Chris was showing symptoms and was concerned about possible spread, he turned to anyone he could for advice and assistance, as any human being would.”
The priority testing included rushing those samples to the state-run Wadsworth Center laboratory in Albany, where top officials were directed to expedite the tests. That often resulted in daily data runs of tests being interrupted to obtain rapid results for the high-priority samples that were dubbed “critical samples,” sources said.
It may be a violation of state Public Officers Law for a state official to use state resources to benefit another individual, including a family member. No state officer, employee, legislator or legislative employee “should use or attempt to use his or her official position to secure unwarranted privileges or exemptions for himself or herself or others,” according to Section 74 of the law.
“I think that this is a potential violation ... and I think that that question needs to be thoroughly investigated,” Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause of New York and an attorney, told the Times Union.
“There’s the ethics aspect of it, and then there’s the legal aspect of it,” she said. “In both systems of analysis, this is objectionable conduct . ... Our ethics law is not always the clearest and strongest, but this is clear and it’s particularly objectionable when you look at the context in which this conduct took place. ”
A few state workers who were assigned last year to a state-run call center for coronavirus testing told the Times Union on Thursday that they recalled police officers, physicians, nurses, paramedics and other front-line workers calling that hotline — some of them overcome with emotion — pleading to get tested during the initial stages of the pandemic. Due to the shortage of testing capabilities at that time, they said, even front-line workers were often unable to be tested despite being exposed to COVID-19 or having symptoms associated with the infectious disease.
Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group said the state’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics would need to decide whether the actions of the governor was a violation.
“JCOPE would have to decide if the governor’s office can articulate a defensible reason for the way in which it (tested) these people,’” Horner said in an email. “No public officer should use their office for the personal benefit of themselves or others. In some cases (e.g. getting some agency staffer to cut the grass of an agency head’s home), that review is obvious. The spotlight should be on JCOPE and what the governor’s office states as their rationale. Absent a good one, it could be a violation.”
Horner noted that JCOPE has faced abundant criticism for what critics see as excessive fealty to Cuomo, “but it is their job.”
An official in Cuomo’s office said on background the program was “being a little bit distorted with, like, a devious intent . ... We made sure to test people they believed were exposed. All of this was being done in good faith in an effort to trace the virus.”
Chris Cuomo announced last March 31 that he had tested positive and would be quarantining in his Long Island residence in Southampton, where he continued doing his nightly show despite being ill with COVID-19.
CNN faced criticism for allowing Chris Cuomo to repeatedly interview his older brother as the governor emerged as a trusted voice in the early months of the pandemic. After the Cuomo administration was beset by a worsening set of scandals over the past several weeks, the anchor has been far more distanced, and opened one recent show by acknowledging the controversies.
“Obviously, I am aware of what is going on with my brother — and obviously I cannot cover it, because he is my brother,” he said on air March 1, two days after the New York Times published the account of a former aide, Charlotte Bennett, who said the governor had peppered her with inappropriate questions.