This announcement from the DOJ:
Department of Justice Requesting Data From Governors of States that Issued COVID-19 Orders that May Have Resulted in Deaths of Elderly Nursing Home Residents https://t.co/V60wYlxcLR
— U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) August 26, 2020
Covered by the NY Post:
DOJ probes nursing home deaths in 4 states — including in NY
The US Justice Department has opened a preliminary inquiry into the coronavirus nursing home policies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan that it says “may have resulted in the deaths of thousands of elderly nursing home residents.”
The Justice Dept. release says the state “required nursing homes to admit COVID-19 patients to their vulnerable populations, often without adequate testing.”
“Protecting the rights of some of society’s most vulnerable members, including elderly nursing home residents, is one of our country’s most important obligations. We must ensure they are adequately cared for with dignity and respect and not unnecessarily put at risk,” said Eric Dreiban, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division.
I’m glad that the DOJ is doing this but what I fear (know) will happen is that the DOJ will do fuck-all nothing with the information.
Cuomo might have violated the civil rights of over 6,000 elderly people in New York to death, but do anyone actually believe the FBI will handcuff him and perp walk him out of the Governor’s Mansion into a federal holding cell the way he deserves?
This won’t end with a bang but with a whimper.
What will impress me is having a US Attorney that has the solid brass balls to toss Cuomo and de Blasio into a maximum-security federal penitentiary on 18 U.S. Code § 241 to get cornholed.
Sadly, this will not land Cuomo in prison. It should, but I’d bet the most likely scenario is that the DOJ will issue a statement or report after all is said and done which shows Cuomo’s actions contributed to the deaths, but no indictment will be coming. It could then be used against Cuomo as a political weapon, but Democrats won’t care, as the Left worships death and totalitarianism. Assuming Trump wins, the pendulum almost always swings back after a two term President, pray that Cuomo doesn’t become number 46.
Cuomo and the other three governors were only engaging their inner socialist. Just think of it as encouraging a little budget savings, and not a darwinian program to terminate thousands of elderly. They were applying their rules fairly, with no discrimination by race, sex, color, religion, creed, or gender. How could such a non discriminatory policy be wrong?
While in Minnesota, 75% of the dead were in congregant living, nursing homes, assisted living, and group homes. Which is an improvement from June, when it was over 80% of the dead. The other thing they had in common was most of these facilities were in the Twin Cities Metro area. We supposedly didn’t even have those insane rules either.
Based on the way Cuomo & Co. are already manipulating the data, I expect getting any meaningful data from the governors will be difficult if not impossible. Criminal charges, if any, will likely fall on the nursing home managers. Cuomo has already lied, saying that the nursing homes could refuse active COVID patients when, as a practical matter, they couldn’t. And of course, the media spin will be that Trump is trying to tear down St. Andrew of Albany for political purposes.
Speculations on why the Governor’s issued these orders, etc… is one thing, but the real question is: “Was there in fact a crime, or any kind of malpractice?”
IANAL alert, but that little I do know is that the executive orders may not have been illegal in any way, and while the outcome was disastrous, was the action sufficiently bad to warrant investigation? Did is rise to the level of malpractice?
Here is why I think this will end up as a big hot nothingburger.
1. The Governors had the authority to issue the order.
2. The Governors were being advised by all their experts that the hospitals were going to be overrun at a moment’s notice, and nothing took precedent over ensuring COVID-19 patients got priority.
3. Even with field hospitals, and the Navy’s hospital ships, the “experts” were still predicting an extinction level event.
So, the Governors took action to preserve hospital facilities. Just because those order had extremely bad results does not justify any charges. Had the tide of the virus turned the other way, and instead of waning it exploded into the 2+million deaths initially projected, Cuomo and company would have been hailed as heroes.
Yes. This is going to go nowhere, but not because more likely because the proof some kind of malfeasance or negligence is not there.
In Pennsylvania, “Doctor” Levine (supposedly a pediatrician, but, really, simply a politician with a medical degree) removed his mother from a nursing home to a hotel before ordering death into nursing homes. IMO, this should be sufficiently egregious to pierce sovereign immunity, for either “doctor” Levine, governor Wolf, or both. If our “justice” officials keep allowing the guilty among our rulers to go free, it will eventually get to Henry Bowman’s solution, or ropes and lampposts. I keep hoping there’ll be some criminal prosecutions before that switch gets flipped
YMMV…