The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic issued its final report Monday, uncovering instances of fraud and misconduct by government officials during the 2020 pandemic. 

Throughout their investigation, lawmakers found that Cuomo “knowingly and willfully made false statements” to the subcommittee “on numerous occasions” related to the nursing home deaths. As a result, the subcommittee has referred Cuomo to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. 

One of the top five bipartisan findings of the 520-page report concluded that Cuomo engaged in malpractice by engaging in a cover-up scheme with the New York State Executive Board to hide the number of nursing home deaths caused by his statewide executive order. 

Beginning in March 2020, many states issued guidance to reduce exposure to COVID-19 among vulnerable populations in nursing homes by barring those diagnosed with the disease from accessing those facilities. However, on March 25, New York issued a contradictory policy that required nursing homes and long-term facilities to still admit individuals who tested positive for COVID-19. 

That policy resulted in more than 9,000 COVID-19 patients being admitted to nursing homes between March 25, 2020, and May 8, 2020, according to the report. 

“This unjustifiably exposed vulnerable nursing home populations to COVID-19, causing predictable but disastrous consequences — including excess deaths,” said the report. 

The Cuomo administration rescinded that policy just six weeks later due to public pushback, which Cuomo himself described as being made because the public was “so nervous and so concerned.” 

The former governor’s office later published a report on July 6 seeking to tie the high number of COVID-19-related deaths in nursing homes to be the fault of nursing home staff — rather than as a result of Cuomo’s March 25 directive. 

That report was heavily edited by the New York executive chamber to “show more causality,” lawmakers found. The executive chamber also removed nursing home deaths that occurred outside of the facilities, such as deaths that occurred following a transfer to the hospital — resulting in a report that “was not fully transparent.” 

However, the July 6 report was not independently drafted or peer-reviewed by the New York Health Department despite claims from Cuomo and his staff that it was, according to the report. Instead, lawmakers found that Cuomo not only reviewed the report but also was “intimately involved” in editing its findings to make them appear more casual. 

It’s not clear whether the DOJ will move forward with the subcommittee’s recommendation to prosecute Cuomo. However, the department has also been investigating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the report, which lawmakers discovered despite not being previously reported. 

However, the report could have negative effects for Cuomo as he weighs a bid as New York City’s mayor, according to the Wall Street Journal.

A spokesman for Cuomo rejected the report’s findings, calling its conclusions “flat-out false.” Instead, the spokesman pointed to federal data showing New York sitting at 39 in terms of pro rata nursing home deaths.

“This is the same weak gruel the MAGA Republicans on this committee have been peddling for months if not years,” Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said in a statement. “From the very beginning, this has been an abuse of power and a waste of taxpayer money aimed at punishing perceived political enemies — like Dr. Fauci, Governor Cuomo, and ‘the deep state’ — that does nothing to make us more prepared for the next pandemic.”