Federal prosecutors last month subpoenaed material tied to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s memoir, “American Crisis,” from individuals who edited early versions of the book in part of their probe into COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The Journal, citing unnamed sources, reported that these prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York Brooklyn, sought contracts and other “materials used to pitch the book to publishers.”
Michael Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor, told the paper that the materials could be valuable in the probe.
“If reflections memorialized in records and notes are inconsistent with what he was saying publicly or with disclosure to health or government officials, that is potentially problematic,” he said.
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Cuomo’s office did not immediately respond to an after-hours email from Fox News. Last month, Cuomo blamed Republicans for politicizing health decisions in the state.
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He called the decision on March 25, 2020, by the State Department of Health to order nursing homes to accept “medically stable” COVID-19 patients “smart.”
“They wanted to blame nursing home deaths on that order. They then wanted to blame a report that clearly said how COVID got into nursing homes had nothing to do with March 25th. They’ve taken every attempt to politicize it and blame Democratic states. They then not only politicized that, they tried to criminalize it,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo’s administration has also been accused of engaging in a concerted months-long effort to deliberately play down the number of COVID-19-related deaths among nursing home patients in the state.
Cuomo’s book, called “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic,” was published in October and debuted as a bestseller. It details lessons learned as New York quickly became the epicenter of the pandemic outbreak in the early months of 2020.
Fox Business and the Associated Press contributed to this report
