4 days ago
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The latest undercover video released by the O’Keefe Media Group features a senior New York Health Department lawyer, who revealed that Andrew Cuomo, when he was governor of the state, was "forced" into signing a nursing home bill into law due to "blackmail." The video was released on the eve of New York City’s Democratic Mayoral Primary, in which Cuomo is neck and neck with socialist Zohran Mamdani.
Jacob Wilkonson, Senior Counsel for the New York State Health Department, told the undercover OMG reporter, "So there’s a new law that Governor Cuomo signed when he was at the end of his term. When Cuomo was getting that investigation, he didn’t have a lot of political power. His political power went down, right? And so, he was pushed to sign this group of legislation. So it’s like several pieces of legislation that are like, all together regarding nursing homes."
Wilkinson said that this "nursing home reform" package was "written so poorly. We can’t implement it. Like, our Department of Health, we’re trying to implement it. It’s just we can’t do it." When pressed by the reporter as to who wrote it, he replied, "The Nurses Association wrote it."
The reporter asked if Cuomo had been "forced to sign it," to which he replied, "yeah, pretty much." This package included a requirement that nursing homes spend 70 percent of their revenue on direct resident care, with 40 percent going towards "resident-facing care."
He further questioned some of the sexual misconduct allegations leveled against Cuomo at the time, saying, "Some of the allegations are 100 percent fake, because those girls who are like, in the allegations, were sitting on his lap, taking selfies with him."
The reporter asked, "So he was being blackmailed?"
Wilkinson replied, "He kind of was."
English (US) ·