A Republican House committee chairman on Monday renewed a call for the Justice Department to prosecute former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, asserting that Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, lied to Congress about his actions during the Covid pandemic.
Republicans initially referred Mr. Cuomo to the department for prosecution last October, when Democrats were in power, but apparently no action was taken.
By resubmitting the case to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Representative James Comer of Kentucky appears to be hoping for a different outcome now that Republicans have taken charge of the federal government and Mr. Cuomo is a leading candidate for mayor of New York City.
In a brief letter, Mr. Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, urged Ms. Bondi to revisit the matter. He called Mr. Cuomo “a man with a history of corruption and deceit, now caught red-handed lying to Congress.”
The fresh broadside from Washington may cause Mr. Cuomo political headaches as he campaigns for office. But it is unclear if it will lead to a different legal outcome.
The Justice Department has no obligation to take up the case. Referrals like the one sent by Mr. Comer do not bear any legal weight, and have historically amounted to little more than news releases.
Chad Gilmartin, a Justice Department spokesman, declined to comment on the matter.
House Republicans contend that the former governor engaged in a “conscious, calculated effort” to dodge accountability for Covid-related deaths in New York nursing homes.
In closed-door testimony, Mr. Cuomo said that he had not reviewed a 2020 state government report that significantly undercounted the people who died in the state’s nursing homes in the early days of the pandemic.
The New York Times subsequently reported that Mr. Cuomo had not only seen the report but had personally written portions of early drafts.
Mr. Cuomo blamed the discrepancy on his memory, insisting that he had not intended to lie to Congress, which is a federal crime.
Rich Azzopardi, Mr. Cuomo’s spokesman, dismissed Mr. Comer’s latest action as “a meritless press release that was nonsense last year and is even more so now.”
He pointed to a long string of similar partisan referrals from Congress that went nowhere, as well as a longstanding Justice Department policy meant to stop prosecutors from taking actions that could influence an election. Justice Department leaders recently cited that principle themselves to justify dismissing charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, months before Mr. Comer pushed them to look into Mr. Cuomo.
Still, President Trump and his administration have shown they are willing to take actions that their predecessors did not, to target enemies or to try to impose their priories on Democratic-run cities and states.
New York has already been a target more than once.
In February, federal prosecutors accused Mr. Trump’s Justice Department appointees of pursuing a corrupt bargain with Mr. Adams to drop corruption charges against him in exchange for help accelerating deportations.
And last week, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency urged the department to prosecute New York’s attorney general, a leading Trump adversary, over what he claimed were falsified home mortgage records.
Nicholas Fandos is a Times reporter covering New York politics and government.
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