Andrew Cuomo, running to be mayor of New York City, hit out at the Trump administration following a New York Times report that the Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation over testimony he gave relating to his actions as governor of the Empire State during the coronavirus pandemic.
“This is lawfare and election interference plain and simple — something President Trump and his top Department of Justice officials say they are against,” Cuomo’s spokesman Rich Azzopardi said in a statement.
A DOJ spokesman declined to comment.
Cuomo, who was New York’s governor during the pandemic, stepped down in 2021 under a cloud of sexual harassment allegations that he’s denied. The Democrat announced in March that he was running for mayor and is currently leading all the candidates in polling, including incumbent Eric Adams.
The New York Times, citing people with knowledge of the matter, said the probe started about a month ago out of the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington after Republican lawmakers accused Cuomo of lying to Congress. Cuomo was forced to defend how he handled the spread of coronavirus in nursing homes in 2020 at a politically charged hearing last year.
“Governor Cuomo testified truthfully to the best of his recollection about events from four years earlier, and he offered to address any follow-up questions from the subcommittee — but from the beginning this was all transparently political,” Azzopardi said.
The reported investigation into Cuomo comes in the wake of the Trump administration ordering federal prosecutors to drop a corruption case against Adams, sparking concern among Democrats that the president is using the judicial system for political purposes. Adams has since opted to run for reelection as an independent in the November general contest, avoiding the June 24 Democratic primary that he was all but certain to lose.
Melissa DeRosa, a former top aide to Cuomo, predicted in a post on X that an investigation would bolster Cuomo’s support among Democratic voters.
The New York Times reported that the probe started while Ed Martin, a Conservative activist, was overseeing the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington. His nomination was pulled amid congressional opposition, with Trump then turning to Jeanine Pirro, a former prosecutor and Fox News host, to oversee the office. Pirro, who was also a judge from Westchester County, New York, lost a bid to become New York state attorney general to Cuomo in 2006.
