View a transcript of her remarks below:
“This day has been a long time coming. Each of our offices have heard from constituents who have lost loved ones resulting from Andrew Cuomo‘s fatal directive issued on March 25, regarding our nursing homes, forcing nursing homes to take positive COVID patients. So today’s deposition was a step in delivering accountability and delivering long overdue answers to those families who are still mourning the loss of their loved ones. A few highlights from the deposition today: The deposition began with Governor, former Governor, Cuomo‘s lawyer adamant that I could not ask questions since I’m not a member of the Committee. What we informed her and I informed her was that I was going to ask questions as Chair of the House Republican Conference waving onto the Committee and like other New Yorkers, ask questions on behalf of my constituents. The former Governor called Democratic staff members conspiracy theorists, bizarre, obsessive when it came to Democrat staff’s questions regarding Cuomo‘s team cooking the books when it came to testing numbers. In addition, under my questioning, former Governor Cuomo admitted that the New York directive language on March 25 was not the same language as CMS guidance despite his public attempt to point fingers and blame CMS to try to blame President Trump. In the deposition, he admitted that the language in the March 25 directive was not the language in CMS. In addition, he smeared Tish James’ report as overly political. He smeared Kathy Hochul who was serving as his Lieutenant Governor at the time. When asked about his staff’s inappropriate behavior and smearing of nursing home families who lost loved ones, he did finally admit that that was unkind and not appropriate. He also went so far as to say that his senior staff, when they suggested other members to lie on depositions, he made it a point to say, ‘Suggesting to lie is not perjury,’ so he is complicit to obstructing justice. At the end after hours and hours and hours, I asked him, ‘Does he apologize to these families?’ And finally, he said that he already has, and I said, ‘Does he have accountability?’ And despite hours and hours of trying to blame everybody else in the final moments of the deposition, he said, ‘Ultimately as the New York Governor, there is accountability for how they handled nursing homes.’ This is an important step. We’re going to continue doing the important work of this Select Committee.”
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