Watchdog Finds Signs Politics Drove Trump Doj’s Probes Of Pandemic Nursing Home Deaths

A Justice Department watchdog report into leaks to the media about the agency’s investigations into pandemic-related nursing home deaths in New York and New Jersey uncovered evidence that the disclosures were aimed at influencing the 2020 election.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded that the leaks were orchestrated by senior DOJ officials and violated department policies governing interactions with the press about ongoing investigations. DOJ’s investigations, which proved politically embarrassing for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, came as then-President Donald Trump attacked Democratic governors over their handling of the pandemic as his own poll numbers plummeted.

“Emails among senior officials expressing urgency about the Department’s actions from June through October 2020 and related direction from those officials to career personnel…suggest that the then upcoming 2020 election may have been a factor in the timing and manner of these actions and announcing them to the public,” the inspector general report issued last month found. A redacted version of the report was made public Tuesday.

In one message discovered by investigators, sent on Oct. 17, 2020, a DOJ official wrote: “I’m trying to get [the Civil Rights Division] and [Civil Division] to do letters to [New York/New Jersey] respectively on nursing homes. Would like to package them together and let [New York Post] break it. Will be our last play on them before election but it’s a big one.”

Investigators found that DOJ informed the New York Post about the demands for information on nursing home deaths before officials in New York or New Jersey were aware of the requests. Justice Department officials emailed the request to Murphy’s office a half hour after the Post story published online. And the report says DOJ sent their request to the New York Department of Health “by regular mail.” New York officials saw press accounts and reached out to DOJ two days later, receiving their letter by email, according to the report.

Horowitz said DOJ actions that appeared intended to impact the election may have violated the Hatch Act and he referred the issue to a separate agency that investigates such violations.

Names of many of the DOJ officials involved were deleted from the version of the report made public Tuesday by Horowitz’s office, but Attorney General William Barr and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Eric Drieband are named as involved in discussions around the investigations.

Aides to Cuomo said the report vindicated their claims that DOJ targeted the then-governor for political reasons.

“This blockbuster report confirms what we’ve said all along: The federal government corrupted and misused the Department of Justice to influence the 2020 presidential election – and in the process weaponized the real pain of those who lost loved ones to COVID in a nursing home,,” Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said in a statement, pointing to parts of the report indicating that nursing home deaths occurred at similar levels in states that DOJ did not investigate.

The report also points to social media posts on an official DOJ account that appeared to confirm reports in the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal about the investigations. The public version of the report doesn’t say exactly which account issued the posts in question, but they appeared on an account of the head of DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs at the time, Kerri Kupec.

The report laid bare internal tensions at the Justice Department over how to handle the nursing home-related investigations. Dreiband was impatient with officials at the Civil Division, headed up on an acting basis by Jeffrey Clark, the report says.

Dreiband “complained that the ‘tone’ of the draft letter [to New York officials] was ‘too deferential’ and that [the Civil Division] seemed ‘embarrassed’ by the request,” Horowitz’s team wrote.

Barr, Dreiband, Kupec and a spokesperson for Clark did not respond to requests for comment for this article. Barr and Dreiband also declined to be interviewed by Horowitz’s team, according to the report. Some former officials offered to answer written questions from investigators, but the IG turned down those offers.

Murphy’s office declined to comment Tuesday, but previously suggested that the disclosure of the DOJ inquiry before the 2020 election was politically motivated.

While neither Cuomo nor Murphy were up for election in 2020, Trump was sharply critical of Cuomo’s handling of the pandemic and repeatedly blamed him for nursing home deaths.

“Governors [sic] Andrew Cuomo of New York has the worst record on death and China Virus. 11,000 people alone died in Nursing Homes because of his incompetence!” Trump wrote in a post in September 2020.

“Governor Cuomo has shown tremendously poor leadership skills in running N.Y.” Trump added the following month. “So many unnecessary deaths.”

Cuomo’s televised briefings turned the former governor into a national political celebrity during the initial weeks of the pandemic, but the nursing home controversy has long dogged him and helped sour his political fortunes.

Cuomo came under criticism for a March 2020 order that required nursing homes and long-term care facilities to not turn away Covid-positive patients. The requirement was issued as New York officials worried hospitals would be quickly overrun by sick patients.

The Cuomo administration faced further scrutiny after a state attorney general’s report found state officials undercounted the number of people who died in New York nursing homes.

Cuomo resigned in 2021, following sexual harassment allegations that he has denied. As the former governor weighs a political comeback, potentially through a bid for New York City mayor, the Republican-led House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic last year concluded that Cuomo lied about his role in editing a report on Covid deaths. The former governor has insisted — both to House investigators and through his attorneys — he did not recall reviewing the report.

The operation of state-run veterans homes in neighboring New Jersey has been a low point for the Murphy administration. In October 2024, DOJ and the Garden State announced a consent decree that would include federal monitors at two of the state’s three veterans homes to ensure the quality of care improves at the troubled facilities.

A scathing investigation by DOJ in 2023 found “reasonable cause” that the quality of care at the two state-run homes in North and Central New Jersey was so poor that they violated the veterans’ conditional rights. That report found that the quality of care at the state-run facilities were poor in the early days of the pandemic and continued after Covid-19’s peak. That report quoted a veterans home staffer calling one of the facilities “pure hell” while another called a separate facility a “battlefield.”

A spokesperson for the Office of Special Counsel, which received one of the referrals from Horowitz, said Tuesday that the matter has been sent to the office’s Hatch Act unit for review.

The inspector general report also found that the Justice Department issued a misleading press release that indicated an investigation was underway into deaths at a home for elderly servicemembers in Holyoke, Mass, when Barr had actually suspended that investigation months earlier.

Horowitz’s office released a summary of the report last week and sent a redacted copy of the report Tuesday to news outlets that requested it through the Freedom of Information Act.