

Another one. On Monday, the New York Times ran a story headlined, “
G.O.P. Leader Asks Attorney General Pam Bondi to Prosecute Andrew Cuomo.”
There are so
many things New York’s former “Luv Gov” Andrew Cuomo could be guilty of. But House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky) sent
a one-page letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking her to prosecute Cuomo for
perjury. Last year, Comer’s Committee questioned Cuomo about his pandemic nursing home scandal, and the former governor experienced a convenient bit of selective amnesia, probably induced by general low morals and a keen sense of self-survival.
Specifically, when asked under oath whether he’d seen a misleading 2020 report on the nursing home deaths that covered up the real numbers, Cuomo first denied ever having seen it, then later backed up and said
as far as he could remember, he never saw it.
I don’t recall! But
the Committee later found a New York Times article revealing that Cuomo had
actually written most of the report himself.
Don’t overreact; these things happen. Memory can be a very tricky thing. But Chairman Comer seems in no mood for being understanding; he called Cuomo “a man with a history of corruption and deceit, now caught red-handed lying to Congress.” Comer has a point.
The Times obscured one of the most important facts in the story, which is that Comer’s letter was a repeat, a polite reminder, of an October 2024 letter he’d sent to Biden’s Attorney General with the exact same request. But Merrick Garland filed Comer’s letter in the drawer with Hunter’s laptop, so the Chairman decided to try
again. In other words, contrary to the Times’ plain implication, Republicans
aren’t “targeting” Cuomo because he just announced a run for New York City’s Mayor, as much as the Times would prefer that narrative.
This makes April’s second criminal referral of a New York official. The first, appearing in last week’s news, was New York’s current Attorney General Letitia James, who was
referred for falsifying her business records and for mortgage fraud.
During the 1950’s, in the end, the House Un-American Activities Committee finally nailed top State Department Official Alger Hiss not for spying for the Soviets, since the statute of limitations had run, but for lying about it—classic Al Capone takedown style. The House couldn’t charge him for handing over secrets to the Soviets, but they
could prove he lied about knowing Whittaker Chambers, the rumpled ex-communist who strolled into Congress with microfilm stashed in a hollowed-out pumpkin.
Hiss had claimed he barely knew the guy; under oath, no less. But Chambers had receipts—literally. Typewritten documents, matching Hiss’s old typewriter, sealed his fate. It wasn’t treason, but it was perjury, and it was enough. In the war for America’s soul during the Red Scare, Hiss became a trophy on the mantle— proof the Soviets
had infiltrated top tiers of U.S. government, and that Washington’s elite were looking the other way.
In the Hiss case, the House and the DOJ worked together. The big question now is, what will Pam Bondi’s DOJ do about these cases? The Times cited “historical precedent” protecting public officials like Cuomo and James from accountability, out of
deference and
tradition. In other words, without realizing it, the Times described a two-tiered justice system, one for well-connected Democrats, and another for the rest of us.