Former Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is now running to be New York City's next mayor, stands accused of being responsible for the unnecessary deaths of thousands of elderly New Yorkers with his March 2020 order that required nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients.

The Republican-led House Oversight Committee has now submitted a criminal referral to the Justice Department that calls for Cuomo to be prosecuted for allegedly lying to Congress about his level of involvement in that lethal pandemic-era directive, the Daily Caller reported.

Some New York Democrats, who previously pushed for Cuomo's shameful 2021 resignation from the governorship amid multiple sexual harassment allegations, have now rallied to his defense, and Cuomo's spokesman asserted that the congressional referral for criminal prosecution is a politically motivated attempt to interfere in the upcoming NYC mayoral election.

Cuomo referred for prosecution for alleged lies to Congress

On Monday, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) announced that he'd resubmitted a criminal referral against former Gov. Cuomo with the Trump DOJ after a similar referral for prosecution filed last year with the Biden-Harris DOJ was ignored.

The committee claimed that evidence and witness testimony indicate that Cuomo "knowingly and willfully made false statements" to a congressional subcommittee probing the 2020 pandemic response, in what the committee described as a "deliberate, self-serving effort to dodge responsibility for the thousands of lives lost in New York’s nursing homes during the pandemic."

"Andrew Cuomo is a man with a history of corruption and deceit, now caught red-handed lying to Congress during the Select Subcommittee’s investigation into the COVID-19 nursing home tragedy in New York," Comer said in a statement. "This wasn’t a slip-up -- it was a calculated cover-up by a man seeking to shield himself from responsibility for the devastating loss of life in New York’s nursing homes."

"Let’s be clear: lying to Congress is a federal crime. Mr. Cuomo must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," the chairman added. "The House Oversight Committee is prepared to fully cooperate with the Justice Department’s investigation into Andrew Cuomo’s actions and ensure he’s held to account."

Cuomo claims no involvement, but evidence and testimony suggest otherwise

At issue here, per the committee's press release, are allegedly false claims that former Gov. Cuomo made to a congressional subcommittee during a transcribed interview that was compelled by a subpoena.

In March 2020, Cuomo issued his directive that forced New York nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients, even though the elderly were most at risk of contracting and dying from the disease. But four months later, a July 2020 report from the state's Department of Health blamed nursing home staffers, and not Cuomo's directive, for the predictable COVID-related illnesses and deaths that subsequently occurred.

Meanwhile, a January 2021 investigative report from New York Attorney General Letitia James claimed that Cuomo's administration drastically undercounted or deceptively reclassified those deaths, likely reducing the purported number of nursing home COVID deaths by as much as 50%.

During his congressional testimony last year, Cuomo insisted under oath that he'd had nothing to do with drafting or reviewing the July 2020 Health Department report, even though evidence gathered by the subcommittee and testimony from other witnesses strongly suggest that Cuomo's statements absolving himself of any involvement or responsibility were "demonstably false" and worthy of criminal prosecution.

Cuomo's spokesman says referral is "meritless" and "election interference"

The Daily Caller reported that, in response to the House Oversight Committee's criminal referral on Monday, former Gov. Cuomo's spokesman Rich Azzopardi dismissively told the NOTUS media outlet, "This is nothing more than a meritless press release that was nonsense last year and is even more so now."

"As the DOJ constantly reminds people, this kind of transparent attempt at election interference and law-fare violates their own policies," the spokesman added. "Referrals like these -- which have been also made against Planned Parenthood, Hillary Clinton, and Anthony Fauci -- don’t have to be resubmitted with a new administration, so the only point to doing this is politics."

Cuomo resigned in disgrace as the governor amid sexual harassment allegations in 2021, but he has now launched a political comeback and is running as a moderate Democrat to replace scandal-plagued and newly independent NYC Mayor Eric Adams. According to Politico, multiple polls show Cuomo enjoys a sizeable lead over the growing field of predominately Democratic candidates vying to win the ranked-choice mayoral election later this year.