President Biden’s Department of Justice has officially declined to investigate orders made in three Democrat states that forced nursing homes to accept individuals infected with COVID-19, resulting in the deaths of thousands of residents.
The Daily Wire reported, “In a letter sent to House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), the DOJ informed the congressman that it would not open an investigation into New York, Pennsylvania, or Michigan’s treatment of nursing home patients during the coronavirus pandemic. The DOJ has, however, opened an investigation into New Jersey’s nursing home policies relating to two specific nursing homes in the state.”
The Civil Rights Division requested information from the four aforementioned states via letters dated August 26, 2020.
“Each state provided information in response to the request," wrote Deputy Assistant Attorney General Joe Gaeta. "We have reviewed the information provided by these states along with additional information available to the Department. Based on that review, we have decided not to open a CRIPA [Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act] investigation of any public nursing facility within New York, Pennsylvania, or Michigan at this time.”
In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo mandated nursing homes to accept COVID-19 positive people quickly after the beginning of the pandemic. Cuomo then reportedly directed his aides to rewrite a report by New York state health officials to censor the number of nursing home deaths.
“The number — more than 9,000 by that point in June — was not public, and the governor’s most senior aides wanted to keep it that way,” the New York Times reported. “They rewrote the report to take it out.”
“The extraordinary intervention, which came just as Mr. Cuomo was starting to write a book on his pandemic achievements, was the earliest act yet known in what critics have called a monthslong effort by the governor and his aides to obscure the full scope of nursing home deaths,” the Times added.
The state’s reported number of nursing home deaths were about half of the actual number.
“The new number of 9,056 recovering patients sent to hundreds of nursing homes is more than 40% higher than what the state health department previously released,” the Associated Press reported. “The new figures come as the Cuomo administration has been forced in recent weeks to acknowledge it has been underreporting the overall number of COVID-19 deaths among long-term care residents. It is now nearly 15,000 up from the 8,500 previously disclosed.”
Over 13,000 nursing and personal care home residents died from COVID-19 in Pennsylvania, according to data gathered by the state's Department of Health. The nearly 20,000 COVID-related deaths in Michigan nursing homes accounted for 30% of the state's total fatalities due to the virus, according to Bridge Michigan.
