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In The News | June 14, 2021

Judicial Watch Files Lawsuit to Uncover How Many Seniors Andrew Cuomo’s Order Killed

Judicial Watch today announced it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The legal group is searching for info that could help uncover and expose the actual number of nursing home residents killed when New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued his order putting COVID positive patients in the homes.

The legal group is seeking communications between Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director Robert Redfield and New York State and federal government officials regarding COVID-19 deaths reported by New York (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 1:21-cv-01210)).

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after HHS failed to respond adequately to a March 11, 2021, FOIA request for:

All emails sent to and from CDC Director Robert Redfield regarding the numbers of deaths reported by New York State government officials due to Covid 19 (also known as SARS-Cov-2 or the novel coronavirus); and
[A]ll emails between CDC Director Robert Redfield and other federal and state government officials with accounts ending in @cdc.gov and/or @exec.ny.gov, regarding the veracity of official numbers of deaths reported by New York State government officials due to Covid 19/SARS-Cov-2.

In January 2020 New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration was reported to have “confirmed thousands more nursing home residents died of COVID-19 than the state’s official tallies had previously acknowledged,” and according to New York Attorney General Letitia James, “the nursing home death count could be off by about 50%.”