LIAR

I am telling you as I sit here — I have told you the facts on COVID from Day One. Whether they were easy, whether they were hard, I told you the truth. CUOMO HAS NO SHAME:

Gov. Cuomo tried to rewrite history Monday by portraying himself as having never fudged the facts about the COVID-19 pandemic and its devastating, deadly impact on New York.

During a Yankee Stadium news conference at which he outlined plans to boost vaccination rates in various communities, Cuomo insisted that he has never lied to New Yorkers on the subject of the coronavirus. “I am telling you as I sit here, I have told you the facts on COVID from Day One.” he said. “Whether they were easy, whether they were hard — I told you the truth.”

But Cuomo’s version of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth hasn’t always precisely aligned with reality: Cuomo’s “truth”: “The Department of Justice dismissed it.”

On Monday, Cuomo said his administration was off the hook for its handling of nursing homes amid the pandemic due to Friappear day’s revelation that the Department of Justice had decided not to investigate potential violations of the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act. “It was an outrageous allegation,” Cuomo said. “And it did a lot of harm and a lot of damage and then went on too long. I mean, this went on for like a year, until finally, the Department of Justice dismissed it.” THE REALITY: Friday’s move only covered about 30 government-run nursing homes out of more than 600 senior-care facilities across the state, and it doesn’t

to have affected a potentially broader investigation into cases of COVID-19 among residents, employees and other staffers at New York’s privately run nursing homes. That inquiry involves the possibility that “grossly substandard care” was provided to beneficiaries of the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs. Cuomo and his administration are also the focus of a criminal probe by the FBI and the Brooklyn US Attorney’s Office into their coverup of the total nursing-home death toll from COVID-19 and the governor’s $5.1 million book deal for his pandemic memoir.

Cuomo’s “truth”: “Our number is actual death.”

Cuomo on Monday defended the state’s lower COVID-19 death toll when compared to the data compiled by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevenactual tion. “CDC asks for deaths and presumed deaths of COVID,” Cuomo said. “What does that mean, ‘presumed death?’ That means the nursing-home operaoperator tor or the hospital wasn’t really sure . . . Our number is actual death.”

THE REALITY: According

to the CDC Web site, “A COVID-19 case is an individual who has been determined to have COVID-19 using a set of criteria known as a case definition. Cases can be classified as suspect, probable or confirmed. CDC counts include probable and confirmed cases and deaths. Suspect cases and deaths are excluded.” Cuomo’s “truth”: “That has no basis in fact.”

THE REALITY: On July 6, 2020, Cuomo claimed a study by the state Health Department that blamed infected but asymptomatic workers for the spread of the coronavirus in nursing homes had disproved critics who faulted the state mandate for the facilities to accept COVID-19 patients discharged from hospitals. “That has no basis in fact,” he said of the criticism. “It was pure politics. It was ugly politics. Now the report has the facts, and the facts tell the exact opposite story.”

But a subsequent study, released in February by the nonprofit Empire Center for Public Policy and reported exclusively by The Post, tied “several hundred and possibly more than 1,000” fatalities to the since-rescinded March 25, 2020, order. The analysis also suggested the controversial mandate was “associated

I have told you the facts on COVID from Day One . . . I told you the truth. — Gov. Cuomo on Monday

with” more than one in six of 5,780 nursing deaths statewide between late March and early May, when Cuomo rescinded it. Cuomo’s “truth”: “Nothing was hidden from anyone.”

THE REALITY: On Feb. 15, days after The Post exclusively revealed that top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa privately told Democratic lawmakers that his administration stonewalled their requests for complete data on nursinghome deaths from COVID-19, Cuomo denied that any numbers had ever been withheld.

“To be clear, all the deaths in the nursing homes and in the hospitals were always fully, publicly and accurately reported,” he said. “Total death counts were always accurate. Nothing was hidden from anyone.” But weeks earlier, state Attorney General Letitia James released a report that suggested the nursing-home death toll may have been more than 50 percent higher than publicly acknowledged because Cuomo’s administration wasn’t including the number of residents who died in hospitals. The bombshell report led Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker to update the number of nursinghome deaths to 12,743, up from 8,711 a day earlier.