‘I’m in hell’: Indigenous Nations activist Leonard Peltier says of his prison conditions amid COVID

Despite the fact that it’s a crime that he’s even in federal prison, Native American rights activist Leonard Peltier is begging for help amid a COVID-19 surge keeping prisoners on unending lockdowns and without booster shots. 

“I’m in hell,” Peltier said in a statement to HuffPost, “and there is no way to deal with it but to take it as long as you can.”

Peltier, 77, has been locked-up since 1975, making him the longest-serving political prisoner in U.S. history. He suffers from diabetes and an abdominal aortic aneurysm. He says the current conditions in his high-security facility in Florida, include lack of phone access, regular showers, fresh air, and healthy food

“Left alone and without attention is like a torture chamber for the sick and old,” he said about his imprisonment in USP Coleman I.

According to Peltier’s attorney, Kevin Sharp, Peltier, along with 1,335 inmates at the facility, have been on lockdown since Jan. 11 and those on his cellblock have yet to receive their COVID-19 booster shots—long after the six-month mark. 

“In and out of lockdown last year at least meant a shower every third day, a meal beyond a sandwich wet with a little peanut butter — but now with COVID for an excuse, nothing. No phone, no window, no fresh air — no humans to gather — no love ones [sic] voice. No relief,” Peltier wrote. 

There are currently 153, 855 inmates currently in federal prisons, and although there are records regarding COVID-19 vaccinations, there are no records regarding booster shoots. 

Health experts have said since the start of the pandemic that inmate conditions are a potential petri dish for the spread of the virus as people are physically unable to separate themselves from one another.

Since the start of his decades-long incarceration, Peltier had denied being involved in a shootout with two plain-clothed FBI agents over a pair of stolen boots at the South Dakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. The shooting left two FBI agents dead and a Native American named Joe Stunz, who was shot in the head by a sniper bullet. His murder has never been investigated. 

The FBI quickly focused their investigation on prominent members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), who were camping on the property at the time. They’d been invited there by the Jumping Bull elders, to protect the Nation from the extreme violence on the reservation at that time. Peltier was an AIM member. 

Peltier’s trial was a joke. First off, the FBI agents were tied to a goon squad, something that was never introduced in court. Additionally, information about a bullet ballistics test that would have exonerated him, was also never introduced. 

Peltier was initially convicted of first-degree murder, but even though that conviction was later thrown out, his sentence was upheld for aiding and abetting a murder. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney James Reynolds, who upheld the conviction, and the federal Appeals Court judge who rejected his early appeals, have both since called for his release along with a plethora of high-powered names—Pope Francis, The Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Muhammad Ali, Robert Redford, Wes Studi, Tantoo Cardinal, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and Marlon Brando, among many others.

“I write today from a position rare for a former prosecutor: to beseech you to commute the sentence of a man who I helped put behind bars,” Reynolds wrote in July. “With time and the benefit of hindsight, I have realized that the prosecution and continued incarceration of Mr. Peltier was and is unjust. We were not able to prove that Mr. Peltier personally committed any offense on the Pine Ridge Reservation.”

Peltier’s entire testimony was given from people who had been threated or intimidated by the FBI, and they have made sure that he will never see the light of day.

Peltier had a chance for release in 2009, but it would have meant admitting to the murder of two FBI agents, and he refused. His parole was then denied. 

“Whatever punishment was meant to be meted out to Leonard has been done. It’s done,” Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva told HuffPost. “The fact that he has held to his innocence shouldn’t be a reason to deny this. He has been consistent about his position from the beginning ― from being arrested to incarcerated to this day.”

Peltier’s attorney Kevin Sharp told the Tennessee Lookout that his client’s release all comes down to politics and fear of retribution from the FBI. 

“In order to get clemency, you have to get the FBI on board. They have an inherent conflict. You have to get the U.S. Attorney’s Office on board. They lied to get him in prison. They have an inherent conflict. They’re not going to say, ‘Oops, sorry,” Sharp told HuffPost. 

Former President Bill Clinton considered clemency, but after surviving his own impeachment hearings, he wouldn’t have wanted to step out and go toe-to-toe with the FBI. Then former President Barack Obama was given Peltier’s case for review and he refused to oppose the FBI. Even former President Donald Trump considered the case but ultimately punted it. 

Peltier’s last chance for clemency is from President Joe Biden. Hundreds of thousands of people have signed petitions supporting his release and with Deb Haaland, the first Indigenous Cabinet Secretary, leading the Interior Department, there’s a sliver of hope to save Peltier from dying in prison. 

Haaland has been a vocal advocate for Peltier’s case, along with Petuuche Gilbert, president of Indigenous World Association; Norman Patrick Brown, who was among one of the young persons who survived the June 26, 1975 shootout; human rights advocate, Eda Gordon; and Lenny Foster, Peltier’s Spiritual Advisor of over 30 years who is Board member of the International Indian Treaty Council and American Indian Movement.

Even Reynolds has pleaded with Biden to grant Peltier clemency as a step toward healing  “the broken relationship” between Native Americans and the U.S. government.

“I urge you to chart a different path in the history of the government’s relationship with its Native people through a show of mercy rather than continued indifference,” he said. “I urge you to take a step towards healing a wound that I had a part in making.”

In October, Grijalva led 10 House Democrats in a letter to the president and Attorney General Merrick Garland beseeching him to expedite Peltier’s release and grant him clemency amid his deteriorating health, his age, and the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“Where are our human rights activists? You are hearing from me, and with me, many desperate men and women! They are turning an already harsh environment into an asylum, and for many who did not receive a death penalty, we are now staring down the face of one! Help me, my brothers and sisters, help me my good friends,” Peltier writes.

To learn more about Peltier’s case, go to Leonard’s Defense Committee’s website www.whoisleonardpeltier.info transcripts and other archival material.

Glenn Beck announces he has COVID-19 while doing commercials for diet bars

Remember Glenn Beck? He’s still around and he’s still doing what he’s always done: grifting away. His modern look includes spectacles and a sort of Kentucky Fried Chicken Colonel Sanders look. Surprising no one, Beck’s evidence-free conspiracy theory stylings, now common on the right, are focused on all of the same tropes of misinformation, disinformation, and anti-vaxxer clickbait that allows for making money on his BlazeTV network.

Wednesday night, on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by MAGA supporters hoping to install a dictator into the office of president, Glenn Beck released a video of his previously recorded interview with Donald Trump. Beck boasted of traveling down to Mar-a-Lago to talk with Trump about all the ways President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are trying to steal your freedoms. Also, Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to steal your penis or something. 

But guess who opened his special interview with the announcement that he has “been diagnosed” with COVID? Glenn Beck did, silly billy. No worries—the grift must go on and Glenn used his COVID diagnosis as a jumping off point to … hawk things during commercial breaks.

Beck, looking very red and like he was about to burst, told his audience that he was at home quarantining, but that you needed to watch his interview with Trump, as liberals want you to worry about the Jan. 6 attempted coup because they don’t want you to know about the gospel of Trump. Then came the first segment: 

  • Trump says something about how wind power and solar power are terrible because you have to update your windmills and solar panels every three decades or something
  • Says we are standing on “liquid gold,” and the push away from fossil fuels is all a part of China’s plan to win.
  • Glenn Beck tells Trump that Putin respects him but doesn’t respect Biden.
  • Oh, liberals are worried about Jan. 6 because they are “scare-mongerers”

Then a quick commercial break to try and scare you into buying a home security system because “your home may not be a secure as you think.” One person you shouldn’t let into your home now? Glenn Beck, who is selling you this as he sits in his home with a positive COVID-19 diagnosis.

Back to the show:

  • Business is being killed by “the mandates.” You should get vaccinated, or not, if you don’t want to, it’s up to you. Business!
  • Dr. Fauci is the new president of the United States. Donald Trump didn’t do most of what Fauci suggested. [Side note: Dr. Fauci was suggesting things to Trump back in January 2020. Looks at watch? Two years later. Excellent job.]

Quick commercial to tell you that “I think it is critically important that you get your finances in order.” You’re telling me. Back to the show!

Joe Biden is trying to pit our children against each other and throw parents in trouble.

We need to abolish public schools and let states decide what students should learn about our country’s history.

Something something “cancel culture.”

Time for a commercial! Beck has COVID-19, in fact he doesn’t have much of an appetite and he had just started a diet. You know what’s saving his life? Diet bars. You know what else? You can buy them by way of Glenn Beck’s diet bar commercial. Back to the show!

  • Trump got 100% of the vote (on something).
  • The impeachment was a “hoax.”
  • Blah blah blah, witch trials.
  • Our army is run by “television generals”
  • Glenn Beck doesn’t “know” if he can tell his son to go into the military these days.

A quick reminder: Glenn Beck was promoting violence in the name of American fascism against other Americans, long before Donald Trump hit the scene. You don’t have to watch the interview, but if you want to see Glenn Beck hawk products ...

Manhattan DA: No Charges Against Cuomo In COVID Nursing Home Death Scandal

By Steve Bittenbender (The Center Square)

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo started 2022 much like he ended 2021, with an apparent legal victory.

A lawyer for the disgraced ex-leader of the state said Monday that the Manhattan district attorney’s office ended its investigation into the Cuomo administration’s nursing home policies during the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis without pressing any charges.

“I was told that after a thorough investigation – as we have said all along – there was no evidence to suggest any laws were broken,” Elkan Abramowitz, former outside counsel for the executive chamber, said in a statement posted by Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi on Twitter.

The news from Manhattan comes after prosecutors in Nassau and Westchester counties said in late December they would not seek charges against the former governor related to sexual harassment allegations made against him.

RELATED: Disgraced Former Gov. Cuomo Ordered To Pay Back $5.1 Million From COVID Book Deal

In late March 2020, as COVID-19 cases were increasing in New York, state officials initiated a new policy requiring nursing homes to accept patients who had tested positive into their facilities.

The rationale was to free up beds at hospitals suddenly taxed by an influx of patients needing treatment. Shortly after the policy started, though, caseloads and deaths at the long-term care facilities skyrocketed.

The administration eventually issued a report that said the policy was not responsible for increased deaths at the facilities. Instead, the administration said community spread brought it in as workers and visitors introduced the virus to nursing homes before additional steps could be taken to control it.

The policy was eventually rescinded in early May.

The administration would also reveal daily death totals regarding people who died at hospitals and nursing homes. In January 2021, however, state Attorney General Letitia James said an investigation by her office determined that while Cuomo and state leaders did not underreport the total number of deaths, the number of deaths attributable to nursing homes was undercounted by up to 50%.

All the while, Cuomo’s national profile rose as his daily COVID-19 briefings made him a national political figure. He eventually received a $5 million book deal regarding his management of the crisis during the early days of the pandemic.

State lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were also critical of Cuomo and the nursing home policy, especially regarding the lack of information the administration revealed about it.

Cuomo resigned in August, not due to the nursing home investigation, but after an independent investigation into several sexual harassment accusations against him. Those sexual harassment allegations and the nursing home policies were also part of an impeachment probe led by members of the state Assembly.

RELATED: Report: Andrew Cuomo Now Under Federal Investigation Over Sexual Harassment Claims

The state’s public ethics agency also pulled its approval of Cuomo’s $5 million book deal. The Joint Commission on Public Ethics also has taken steps to force the former governor to give back the money after the impeachment investigation determined administration officials worked on the book in violation of the conditions it gave in its approval of the book deal.

And while Cuomo may not face prosecution in New York County, that does not mean he will necessarily escape punishment.

Prosecutors in the New York City borough were just one of several agencies investigating Cuomo regarding nursing homes. An investigation by James’ office still continues as well as ones by the FBI and federal prosecutors.

Janice Dean, a Fox News meteorologist who became one of Cuomo’s most outspoken critics after her in-laws died in nursing homes, noted those ongoing inquiries in a statement on Twitter after Monday’s news broke.

“This sounds like a little favor from an outgoing Manhattan DA, which we’ll address with the new DA,” Dean tweeted.

Cyrus Vance served as the Manhattan district attorney until the end of December. Alvin Bragg won election in November and took over officially on New Year’s Day.

A message to Bragg’s office seeking comment was not immediately returned.

Syndicated with permission from The Center Square.

The post Manhattan DA: No Charges Against Cuomo In COVID Nursing Home Death Scandal appeared first on The Political Insider.

Task Force Concludes Cuomo’s Nursing Home Policy Did Lead To More Nursing Home Deaths

The NYSBA (New York State Bar Association) Task Force on Nursing Homes and Long-Term Care determined that Governor Andrew Cuomo’s executive order policy forcing nursing homes to take on patients that had tested positive for COVID-19 led to more deaths.

The report is a devastating indictment on the Democrat governor’s policies and their effects on the elderly in the Empire State during the early stages of the pandemic.

The task force, according to the New York Post, defined Cuomo’s directive as “unreasonable” in both its “absoluteness” and the length of time it was left in effect.

While they were unable to put a particular number on that effect, the NYSBA was able to determine “there are credible reviews that suggest that the directive, for the approximately six weeks that it was in effect, did lead to some number of additional deaths.”

RELATED: Report: Cuomo Being Investigated For Retaliating Against Sexual Harassment Accusers

Task Force: Cuomo Nursing Home Policy Led To More Deaths

Governor Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order on March 25th which forced nursing homes to take on patients that had tested positive for coronavirus.

The order prohibited nursing homes from requiring incoming patients “to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.”

Cuomo’s directive remained in place for over six weeks while well over 15,000 senior citizens succumbed to the virus.

The New York Democrat and his top aides have also been accused of hiding the data on those nursing home deaths and stripping numbers from DOH (Department of Health) reports.

For months Cuomo touted a DOH report which contained an explicit quantifier that the order forcing the care facilities to take on COVID-positive patients was “not a driver of nursing home infections or fatalities.”

The NYSBA task force determined that was not accurate.

“The Department of Health issued a report in 2020 in which it argued unconvincingly that the admission of 6,326 COVID-positive residents during the period the Health directive was in effect had no impact,” the report states.

“That cannot be the case, and has now been shown not to be the case.”

RELATED: Fox News’ Janice Dean: My Family Didn’t Have To Die, Cuomo’s Policy Helped It Happen

Cuomo’s Order Cost Lives

The report that Governor Cuomo’s executive order for nursing homes did lead to more deaths is a small measure of vindication for Fox News meteorologist and author Janice Dean, who has argued for months that his policies led to the deaths of more seniors than in any other state.

She argued in an op-ed column for USA Today over the summer that very point.

Dean’s in-laws were the unfortunate victims of COVID-19, where nursing homes in New York played a significant part.

“At first we didn’t blame anyone for my in-laws’ deaths. This is a pandemic, after all,” she wrote. “Then we learned about a policy that put them in danger.”

Dean’s column featured a sub-heading arguing, “My family didn’t have to die.”

Governor Cuomo is under investigation and impeachment inquiry for a slew of scandals, not the least of which involves the nursing home executive order and subsequent effort to obstruct justice by hiding the numbers.

They include:

  • Numerous sexual misconduct allegations including a police report involving forcibly groping an aide.
  • Bullying and threatening fellow lawmakers and members of the media.
  • Under investigation for a $5.1 million book deal profiting off the pandemic by having aides write and edit portions using state resources.
  • Provided priority COVID-19 testing for his family and associates, also allegedly using state resources.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out admitting over 9,000 Covid patients into nursing homes for 46 days would increase the amount of deaths, but if a 242-page report from the NY State Bar association proves [Cuomo] lied and people died, so be it,” Dean tweeted.

The Fox News personality has suggested many people in the Cuomo administration belong in prison over the nursing home scandal.

“I really feel like he should go to jail,” Dean has said. “And all these people surrounding him that covered this up for so many months, they should go to jail.”

The NYSBA report relied in part on a study by the Empire Center for Public Policy that tied “several hundred and possibly more than 1,000” deaths of nursing home residents to Cuomo’s executive order.

There is now a straight-line correlation between his policies and the deaths of the elderly during the pandemic. The question is, will anybody in New York state do anything about it?

 

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Even federal judges are referencing far-right conspiracy theories to overturn our laws

It should be noted, yet again, that being an actual, bonafide judge in the United States of America requires no qualifications whatsoever. You either are appointed as a judge or win an election to become one, and the rest is filler to be worked out by whoever's been tasked with updating the webpages. They say anybody in America can grow up to be president, but that is obviously a lie. But anyone can grow up to be a judge in America. Louie Gohmert was a judge.

Being a judge is in fact one of the few occupations in America that does not require you to even have a head. Unfortunate roller coaster accident? Got too close to Dick Cheney during a hunting trip? No problem. You can still write opinions. Years before his untimely death, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia outsourced all his important opinions to a family of grumpy squirrels that had taken up residence in his attic and nobody noticed or said a damn thing about it.

In a Friday night news dump, a California judge issued a ruling announcing that the state's assault weapon ban, in place since 1989, was unconstitutional because reasons. It caused a stir primarily for using language that sounded conspicuously like what the National Rifle Association and American militia groups have long been spouting in their newsletters and pamphlets, and mostly for Judge Roger Benitez's comparison of weapons designed explicitly for mass murder to a "Swiss Army Knife." An AR-15 rifle "is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment," Benitez said in his ruling. Whether he had his pants on while writing that sentence is unknown; whether he cribbed it exactly from a gun manufacturer's ad is ... probably worth exploring.

That is not, however, the only bit of bizarre editorializing in the ruling. Judge HasAHead also took it upon himself to opine that assault weapons actually are far less dangerous than ... the COVID-19 vaccine. "The evidence described so far proves that the 'harm' of an assault rifle being used in a mass shooting is an infinitesimally rare event. More people have died from the Covid-19 vaccine than mass shootings in California."

If I were head dictator of judgeships this one would be off the bench in five seconds flat for putting the "harm" of assault-rifle-assisted mass shootings in scare quotes, but I ain't and he's not. The part that's getting more heat is that U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez appears to be flat-out lying in that second sentence, and that’s us saying it nicely.

The Washington Post fact-checks Benitez on this one, but to anyone who does not live entirely inside Tucker Carlson's inflamed colon the problem here should be obvious. The number of people who are believed to have died from the COVID-19 vaccine is, at this time, approximately zero. There has been some very public speculation as to whether some of the vaccines might cause an extremely rare form of blood clot, one that may have killed three people in this country after millions and millions of doses, but the data is not conclusive and the clots seem to appear in the unvaccinated general population at roughly similar rates.

Meanwhile, mass shootings continue to be a regular occurrence in California, just as they are elsewhere. Even if you presume all three deaths suspected of being vaccine linked were indeed caused by a vaccine, it's not even close.

All we can assume here is that this particular judge is referring to far-right conspiracy theories about the vaccine from the dark nether regions of the American political psyche. It's possible we can attribute the blatant factual error to Fox News and to Tucker Carlson's white nationalist conspiracy show, but the suggestion that lifesaving, normality-saving vaccines are killing people in greater numbers than AR-15s does feels more like something plucked more directly from the Q crowd, from frothing far-right militias, or both.

Unfortunately, there's no particular recourse for this sort of judicial conspiracy peddling. For particularly grotesque behavior on the bench, the House and Senate can remove a federal judge via impeachment, but that is reserved for only the most egregious of cases and "is factually wrong when issuing weirdly premised opinions" isn't it. This is why, in fact, the Republican-held Senate was so obsessive in filling as many judicial vacancies as possible with hard-right ideologues while blocking nominees from a Democratic administration: stuff the benches with hard-right conspiracy theorists, hard-right conspiracy theories become the stuff that governs us. The judge's ruling is absolutely certain to be appealed, but the Supreme Court is itching to undo a century of laws itself and will probably not let the unending goofiness of this written opinion stop it from writing a more dignified goofy version that scrubs out the most embarrassing parts.

So far, though, there's been no ruling from hard-right judges declaring that making fun of bad judicial opinions kills more people each year than AR-15 "freedom bringers" do, so we can at least point and shake our heads here. Maybe it's cathartic. Maybe it's whistling past the graveyard.

FNC’s Janice Dean Says It’s ‘Disgusting’ Cuomo Scored Book Deal – Thought It Was A ‘Joke’

Fox News senior meteorologist Janice Dean went on “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday morning to slam New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) after it was reported that he will receive $5.1 million from his book about the coronavirus pandemic.

Dean Thought Cuomo Book Deal Was A ‘Joke’

Dean said that she initially thought the book deal was a “joke,” as she feels Cuomo is the last person who should be writing a book about handling the COVID-19 pandemic when he allegedly covered up the number of deaths in New York nursing homes.

She added that it is “disgusting” that Cuomo is profiting off the deaths of New Yorkers, including her in-laws.

“When I first read that the governor was writing a book in the middle of the pandemic, I thought it was a joke,” Dean said. “I thought it was a headline in the Babylon Bee or The Onion.”

“How could a governor write a book about leadership when thousands of elderly are dying?” she added. “It was incredible. And I was mad at the time but seeing he got over $5 million for this, profiting off the deaths of New Yorkers, including my in-laws, it’s disgusting.”

Related: Cuomo Now Being Investigated Over $4 Million Book Deal Celebrating His Pandemic Leadership, Janice Dean Calls It ‘Disgusting’

Dean Doubles Down

“I think the book publishing company can sue him for breach of contract because it’s filled with lies,” she added.

“And if you look at the timeline — the governor covering up the nursing home issue, the tragedy over 5,000 deaths that him and his administration tried to cover up for months — the timeline corresponds with him trying to sell that $5 million book,” Dean said. “So, I wonder if we can profit off the Son of Sam law. All of that money should go to the families of our dead loved ones.”

Last month, Dean demanded that lawmakers take action and impeach Cuomo.

“Our lawmakers in Albany need to do something,” she said at the time. “This whitewash of an impeachment is ridiculous. Go in there today and get it done. There are at least four investigations into this governor. How much more do you need to get him out?”

Full Story: FNC’s Janice Dean Calls For Cuomo To Be Impeached Immediately – Says He Covered Up Nursing Home Deaths To Sell His Book

This piece was written by James Samson on May 18, 2021. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

Read more at LifeZette:
Pathetic Third Party Bid Against Trump is DOA
Parents Read Porn at School Board Meeting Straight from Books the School Board Has Approved
Biden Brings National Weakness, Says Hanson

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Bombshell Report Indicates Cuomo Aides Repeatedly Blocked Release Of Nursing Home Deaths

A bombshell report from the New York Times indicates top aides to Governor Andrew Cuomo overruled his own health experts, blocking the release of the pandemic’s true death toll numbers at nursing homes, and did so all while they were helping him write a book.

The crux of the Times column refers to the length of time aides spent in trying to cover up the number of deaths in nursing homes – five months – a particularly sore spot with the governor who had issued an executive order forcing care facilities to take in COVID-positive patients.

The order was not reversed for months.

Cuomo aides clearly sensed the fallout, doing their best to minimize the numbers by not counting seniors who were transported to hospitals and died there.

“By the time the policy was rescinded less than two months later, it had become clear that not all the deaths were being included in that tally: Those who died after being transferred to hospitals were not counted as nursing home deaths,” the Times writes.

When Cuomo’s own top health officials tried to get a more accurate count, his aides rebuffed them time and again. In fact, they fought release of the true numbers for five months, according to the report, a “far greater (effort) than previously known.”

RELATED: Cuomo Now Being Investigated Over $4 Million Book Deal Celebrating His Pandemic Leadership, Janice Dean Calls It ‘Disgusting’

Cuomo’s Unbelievable Nursing Home Scandal

While critics were noting the role of Governor Cuomo’s nursing home executive order in a large number of elderly deaths during the pandemic, the state Health Department was preparing a report on the matter in the spring of 2020.

Secretary to the Governor, Melissa DeRosa, according to an email reviewed by the New York Times, told health officials: “We are getting anxious over here on this report.”

That report was eventually published in July but contained an explicit quantifier that the order forcing the care facilities to take on COVID-positive patients was “not a driver of nursing home infections or fatalities.”

It also included a much lower number – not counting hospital deaths – in the report that the Times states was “rewritten several times by senior advisers to Mr. Cuomo.”

The department report listed just over 6,400 deaths. As of this month, more than 15,500 nursing home residents died from COVID-19.

In February, the New York Post revealed that DeRosa told leading Democrats that they tried to suppress the numbers because the administration feared the data could “be used against us” by the Justice Department saying, “basically, we froze.”

“We were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, what we start saying, was going to be used against us while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation,” she said.

The New York Times reported in January that attorney general Letitia James, a Democrat, accused Cuomo and his administration, particularly officials at the State Health Department, of undercounting COVID deaths at nursing homes by as much as 50%.

A subsequent report by the Wall Street Journal in early March accused the aides of a very explicit cover-up by the Cuomo administration in the nursing home scandal.

“Cuomo’s top advisers successfully pushed state health officials to strip a public report of data showing that more nursing-home residents had died of Covid-19 than the administration had acknowledged,” they detailed.

Much of the pressure by the Health Department to suppress the numbers on the nursing home deaths was being applied by the administration itself.

“Aides overruled state health officials on releasing the figures over the span of at least five months, The Times reports,” according to The Hill.

“The effort included halting the publication of a scientific paper, which included the true tally, and the sending of two letters drafted by the Health Department and intended for state lawmakers.”

RELATED: Cuomo Admin Accused Of ‘Criminal Conspiracy’ Following Bombshell Report They ‘Stripped’ Data From Report On Nursing Home Deaths

‘They Should All Go To Jail’

The New York Times report notes that much of the effort to halt the release of the true figures in the Cuomo nursing home scandal revolved around the Governor’s efforts to write a book celebrating his ‘leadership’ during the pandemic.

“The actions coincided with the period in which Mr. Cuomo was pitching and then writing a book on the pandemic, with the assistance of his top aide, Melissa DeRosa, and others,” the report reads.

State Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, is currently conducting an investigation of allegations that the Governor used state resources and state employees to write his book on which he received a multimillion-dollar advance.

Fox News meteorologist and author Janice Dean, a leading voice on the nursing home scandal involving Governor Cuomo, expressed her optimism that justice may finally be served.

Dean’s in-laws were the unfortunate victims of COVID-19, where nursing homes in New York played a significant part.

“I feel like all of these months, close to a year now, it feels like it finally is happening, that all of the things we’ve been yelling about and trying to shine a light on, it’s finally happening,” Dean said.

Many of the things I’ve covered here at The Political Insider as well, things that should have been revealed much earlier if not for a complicit New York media that spent more time fawning over Cuomo than reporting on him.

On May 18th, nearly one full year ago, I labeled Cuomo’s executive order on nursing homes a “scandal” and noted at the time that the Governor seemed uninterested in accountability.

He even suggested it wasn’t his fault because “older people … are going to die.”

In an interview with Fox News, Dean didn’t hold back on what she felt should happen to the governor and those in his administration complicit in the nursing home cover-up.

“I really feel like he should go to jail,” she said. “And all these people surrounding him that covered this up for so many months, they should go to jail.”

The following is a list of scandals in which Cuomo is currently embroiled, most of which have resulted in investigations, calls for his resignation, and impeachment inquiries:

  • Forcing nursing homes to take on COVID-positive patients.
  • Obstructing justice by hiding the data on those deaths and stripping numbers from DOH reports.
  • Numerous sexual misconduct allegations including a police report involving forcibly groping an aide.
  • Bullying and threatening fellow lawmakers and members of the media.
  • Under investigation for a $4 million book deal profiting off the pandemic by having aides write and edit portions using state resources.

In an incredibly cold and callous comment last May, Cuomo snapped at a reporter for asking about grieving families of nursing home patients seeking justice.

“What is justice? Who can we prosecute for those deaths? Nobody. Nobody,” he rationalized. “Mother nature? God? Where did this virus come from? People are going to die by this virus.”

It’s time somebody from the administration is prosecuted, if not the governor himself. That would be justice.

 

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Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin Announces Gubernatorial Campaign To ‘Save New York’ From Andrew Cuomo

Republican Representative Lee Zeldin announced he is running for governor of New York, saying Andrew Cuomo must be ousted in order to “save our state.”

“I’m running for governor of New York in 2022,” Zeldin declared in an interview with ‘Fox & Friends.’ “We are going to win this race.”

In an accompanying statement, Zeldin vowed to “bring the kind of relentless, fighting spirit towards helping to save our state that Andrew Cuomo only reserves for multi-million dollar self-congratulatory book deals, cover-ups, abuse and self-dealing.”

And while he pointed out Cuomo’s “long line of scandals,” the Republican focused on what he has to offer the Empire State, including beating back the impacts of poor “tax policy,” “public safety,” and “attacks on our freedoms.”

Zeldin went on to suggest the current woes in New York are due to one-party Democrat rule in New York City and Albany.

RELATED: Cuomo Now Being Investigated Over $4 Million Book Deal Celebrating His Pandemic Leadership

Lee Zeldin Wants To Save New York From Cuomo

Governor Andrew Cuomo has become vulnerable of late, currently plagued by several scandals including: 

  • Forcing nursing homes to take on COVID-positive patients.
  • Obstructing justice by hiding the data on those deaths and stripping numbers from DOH reports.
  • Numerous sexual misconduct allegations including a police report involving forcibly groping an aide.
  • Bullying and threatening fellow lawmakers and members of the media.
  • Under investigation for a $4 million book deal profiting off the pandemic by having aides write and edit portions using state resources.

“Cuomo has abused the power and trust granted to him and it is time for him to immediately exit stage left,” Lee Zeldin said.

He has actively called for Cuomo’s impeachment in the face of resistance to resigning over his many scandals.

But he smartly notes that it isn’t just the details of these salacious accusations that are the problem – it’s Cuomo’s inability to competently run the state.

“The New York that was once a magnet for the world’s best and brightest is now forcing its own to leave under the crushing weight of skyrocketing taxes, lost jobs, suffocating regulations, and rising crime resulting from dangerously liberal policies,” Zeldin accused.

“At the helm of New York’s downfall is Governor Andrew Cuomo.”

RELATED: Biden’s ATF Director Wants ‘Well Regulated’ Second Amendment

Cuomo’s Budget Includes Aid To Illegal Immigrants

Speaking of skyrocketing taxes and incentives to leave the state, the New York Times on Tuesday reported that Governor Cuomo and the New York legislature had reached an agreement on a $212 billion budget.

The budget includes “tax increases” on the wealthy – or job creators – as well as “a $2.1 billion fund to provide one-time payments for undocumented workers who did not qualify for federal stimulus checks or unemployment benefits.”

New York Republican Committee Chairman Nick Langworthy released a statement blasting the budget proposal while indicating the only thing that can save New York is a new governor.

“The only thing this budget accomplishes is the accelerated decline of our state,” Langworthy said. “It’s a $212 billion dollar tax-and-spend boondoggle that will push New York’s mass exodus to the point of no return.”

“This budget makes clear that the only way to save New York is to elect a Republican governor who will stand up to this madness and return common sense to state government,” he added.

Will Lee Zeldin be the man to do that?

 

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The admission of Republican failure that hovers beneath every racist coronavirus slur

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Republicans, encouraged by the twice-impeached, former one-term president, have persisted in using the phrase “China virus” or “Wuhan virus” to describe the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of these same Republicans have insisted, despite an overwhelming scientific consensus to the contrary, that the virus was created in a Chinese laboratory as opposed to originating in an animal host. Last April, as the pandemic spread uncontrolled throughout the U.S., the GOP sent a detailed, 57-page internal memo to its 2020 election candidates, specifically urging them to blame China at every turn when faced with questions about the administration’s efforts to combat the pandemic.

Of course, the predictable result from repeating this theme was a marked upsurge in violence directed towards Asian Americans. The link between Trump and the GOP’s anti-China rhetoric and such violence prompted President Joe Biden, in one of his first official acts upon taking office, to ban such pejorative terminology from our federal agencies and their public documents. Still, despite the well-documented consequences to Asian Americans, elected Republican officials—such as Ohio Lt. Gov. John Husted only last week—continue to trot out the racist slur.

While the connection between this rhetoric and acts of violence is obvious, it’s important for Americans to remember why Trump and the GOP made this conscious, collective decision in the first place. Blaming China  was more than a deliberate attempt to shift the blame for the pandemic itself,; as employed almost exclusively by Republicans, it was a deliberate attempt to distract from the administration’s wholly botched response.

From the very start the “Chinese virus” appellation was intentionally amplified by American right-wing media. It’s a slur which almost revels in its senselessness. To be clear, even if the virus actually had man-made origins—even if the virus been created in Xi Jinping’s basement with a vintage Gilbert chemistry set—from a practical standpoint, the precise origin of the virus, be it bat, bald eagle or Beijing lab, is essentially irrelevant.  Whether the virus originated in China, Kenya, or Wyoming is distinct from the question of how the global community has responded to it, which is what ultimately matters.

Medical staff treating COVID-19 patients in Wuhan China, February, 2020.

That distinction is what Trump’s favorite slur tries to obfuscate. The tragic reality is that the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic was atrocious compared to nearly every other developed nation in the world. It was so bad it turned this country into a pariah nation, a cautionary tale of what not to do in a public health crisis.

And that abysmal response, whose ineptitude and human cost will doubtlessly fill the history books for the next hundred years as an example of what failed, indifferent government policies can lead to, was due almost entirely to an abdication of responsibility towards the American public by one of this country’s two major political parties. Republicans were the ones responsible for electing, abetting and encouraging an Executive uniquely and pathologically unsuited to addressing the catastrophic implications of a global pandemic. Republicans  were the ones who stood by silently, while our public health infrastructure and pandemic response capabilities were being gleefully dismantled by the the Trump administration. And Republicans of every stripe must bear the ultimate responsibility for the consequences of that failure, whether they choose to admit it or not.

Only recently, as the nation finally begins to extricate itself from this calamity, is a reckoning of sorts coming forth. The most up-to-date estimates place direct blame on Donald Trump for approximately 400,000 of the deaths that have occurred to date due to COVID-19. There is literally no president in American history whose malfeasance resulted in so many deaths of U.S. citizens.

But Trump didn’t act alone. The death toll was increased exponentially due to the sycophancy of a Republican establishment lined up behind him, adopting his cues as the pandemic’s impact continued to worsen. Every Republican  at the state and federal level who acquiesced to the former administration’s malfeasance either by parroting lethal anti-masking propaganda, forcefully advocating reopening businesses in the name of “personal freedom,” or hawking phony cures and ridiculous conspiracy theories is complicit.

The August 2020 Sturgis motorcycle rally, encouraged by South Dakota’s Republican Governor, Kristi Noem, was linked to 260,000 US COVID-19 infections, according to one study.

So the appeal of the slur to Republicans, however irrelevant to the actual harm caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, is easy enough to understand, because it serves as an ready distraction from the blame they so richly deserve for allowing a public health crisis to become a calamity. The entire approach by the Trump administration was intended to abandon any leadership role of the federal government, and thereby escape blame for any failure to stop it. As pointed out by Josh Marshall, writing for Talking  Points Memo,  this exercise in blame avoidance was intentional, a key to the administration’s overall strategy when faced with its own ineptitude.

From the very start of the Pandemic in the first weeks of 2020 the Trump administration consistently sought to disclaim responsibility for things that would be genuinely difficult and could have challenging or bad outcomes. Push the tough tasks on to others and if it goes badly blame them. This frequently went to absurd lengths as when the White House insisted that states short on ventilators at the peak of the spring surge should have known to purchase them in advance of the pandemic. Over the course of the year Trump spun up an alternative reality in which the US was somehow still operating under the Articles of Confederation in which individual states were responsible for things that have been viewed as inherently federal responsibilities for decades or centuries.

But the impetus wasn’t ideological. It was mainly a means of self-protection and risk avoidance: arrange things so that the administration could take credit if things went well and blame states if they went bad. Nowhere was this more clear than in the months’ long crisis over testing capacity. Since the administration was actually hostile to testing in general and couldn’t solve the problem in any case they simply claimed it was a state responsibility.

As Marshall points out, the one constant during Trump’s entire botched handling of the COVID-19 pandemic—from the first warnings of an incipient health crisis through and including Trump’s final day in office—was “to put it off on someone else so the White House didn’t get the blame.”

Attributing the pandemic to China or Wuhan, or the rally staple “Kung flu?” That was always a calculated part of Trump’s attempt to avoid blame, one which immediately filtered down to the state level and was adopted by Republican officials equally eager to dodge blame. Even following a year of racially-motivated attacks on Asian Americans that resulted from this distraction campaign, most House Republicans still refused to condemn Trump’s rhetoric. 

As detailed by Alex Samuels, writing for FiveThirtyEight, the vilification of China had its desired effect among the Republican constituency.

Ultimately, blaming China for the pandemic didn’t help Trump win reelection in 2020, but unfavorable views of China are at a record high among Americans.1 And there are signs that Americans, especially Republicans, blame China for the spread of the coronavirus. A November Economist/YouGov poll found, for instance, that 64 percent of all registered voters and 86 percent of Republicans said it was definitely or probably true that China was responsible for the pandemic.

The key word for Republicans here was “responsible.” Republicans recognize that Donald Trump and those GOP officials that adopted his strategy throughout this crisis were ultimately responsible for the U.S. sustaining a higher death toll from this virus than any other country in the world. As Samuels notes, that fact practically compels them to find a scapegoat for their own failure, with any blowback inflicted on Asian-Americans a secondary consideration at best.

[T]he experts I’ve talked to think that if people uphold a specific worldview by delegitimizing another group, the framing of diseases will always be political — no matter how apolitical we think diseases are. That’s because racism itself is a disease, and as Roger Keil, a political scientist at York University, told me, “[I]t seems to spread sometimes like a virus.” Keil compared it to watching a video online: “For every video that links the disease to Chinese people, there will be 10 or 1,000 people watching, so it’s normalized,” he said. “It’s terrible, but that’s how racism spreads.”

The Trump administration knew the implications of COVID-19,from the outset and that it presented his prospects and those of his minions with a truly daunting, existential crisis. The China scapegoating began immediately and continued throughout the rest of Trump’s tenure, heedless of whatever harm such scapegoating would have on millions of Asian-Americans. Republican leaders willingly followed his lead and have continued to do so up to this day. But every time one of them utters the words “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan virus,” what they’re really doing is dodging their own responsibility for the worst response to a major public health crisis in this nation’s history.

Every Court Of Appeals Judge Who Would Vote In Cuomo Impeachment Trial Was Appointed By Him

Should the impeachment investigation involving Andrew Cuomo proceed to a vote, all 7 Court of Appeals judges involved will have been appointed by the New York Governor himself.

The New York state impeachment process is a bit unique in that following an impeachment vote in the Assembly, a court is formed consisting of members of the Senate as well as the seven members of the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court.

Those judges – Rowan Wilson, Jenny Rivera, Leslie Stein, Eugene Fahey, Michael Garcia, Paul Feinman and Chief Judge Janet DiFiore – were all appointed by Cuomo between 2013 and 2017.

In an interview with NewsMax, former Rep. John Faso (R-NY) said that the Cuomo appointees are “mostly liberal … very liberal” and “they are all Democrats except one.”

“The seven judges could be instrumental in determining the outcome of a potential impeachment trial as they would make up 10% of the 70-person impeachment court,” Fox News analyzes.

RELATED: Biden Says Cuomo Should Resign, Could Face Prosecution If Sexual Harassment Allegations Are True

Impeachment Judges Appointed By Cuomo

The specter of having judges appointed by Andrew Cuomo possibly deciding the outcome of an impeachment trial for the governor is raising concerns that the process may be a sham.

Speaker of the New York State Assembly Carl Heastie has said the probe would be “very broad,” possibly including more than just the numerous sexual harassment claims against Cuomo.

Heastie announced on Wednesday that the Assembly had hired one of the nation’s top-rated law firms, Davis Polk & Wardwell, to assist with the investigation.

The group includes a former Brooklyn federal prosecutor who worked as an assistant special counsel on Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

Lindsey Boylan, a former Cuomo aide who was the first to accuse Cuomo of sexual misconduct, is not impressed with the investigation thus far, calling it a “sham,” “corrupt,” and “cynical” probe.

Boylan insisted she would not take part in the state-led impeachment probe.

“Do not trust [Heastie],” she tweeted. “His impeachment investigation is not designed to be transparent or to move fast, and there’s nothing [Cuomo] wants more than time.”

“Many of us have not put our whole lives on the line for this crap,” she added. “I certainly have not and will not.”

Boylan has claimed that Cuomo forcibly kissed her on the lips and suggested “let’s play strip poker.”

RELATED: NY Assembly Takes First Step Toward Impeachment Of Cuomo, Police Report Filed Over Groping Allegations

Nursing Home Whistleblower Says Staff Were ‘Petrified’ Of Cuomo’s Executive Order

The impeachment investigation is supposed to address the nursing home scandal as well, inarguably the bigger issue at hand for Cuomo.

That scandal involves an executive order by the governor forcing nursing homes to take in COVID-positive patients and the subsequent cover-up involving the number of deaths related to that order.

Cuomo, on March 25th of last year, issued an executive order prohibiting nursing homes from requiring incoming patients “to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.”

Cuomo refused to reverse the directive for over six weeks while well over 15,000 senior citizens succumbed to the virus.

The Political Insider reported in August that what separated New York from other states with their own nursing home directives is that the staff at the facilities felt pressured by the Governor.

Politifact confirmed the notion saying Cuomo left executives at nursing homes feeling that “they had no choice but to accept these patients” despite the threat of spreading the virus.

Michael Kraus, a Staten Island nursing home administrator, has alleged he and other executives of long-term care facilities were “petrified” of the Cuomo order and that his concerns were “shot down” by state officials.

“Many facilities vocalized it,” Kraus said in an interview with Fox News.

“They were petrified, but they were more petrified of the Department of Health … once it [my concern] was shot down, I never spoke [about it] again.”

Secretary to the Governor, Melissa DeRosa, admitted on a conference call in February that the administration hid information on COVID nursing home deaths from federal investigators.

For months the administration reported around 8,500 deaths, nearly 50% less than the confirmed number.

 

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