You can’t envy New York Democrat primary voters who are going to the polls on June 24 to select their candidate for the next mayor of New York City. The two front-runners are Zohran Mamdani, a socialist with an affinity for radical Islam, who is surging in the polls and knocked Cuomo's lead down to 10 point, and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who faced a Covid nursing home scandal while in office. For Democrats, it seems like a choice between two kinds of cancers, you don't want either of them. And these are just two of the miserable selection on offer, including Brad Lander, who got himself arrested aiding an illegal immigration in avoiding ICE.
Of the two who lead the crowded Democrat candidate pack, Cuomo may be the more familiar villain — and his record deserves fresh scrutiny as he seeks a political comeback. No one has ever held Mr. Cuomo to account for the way he lied during the Covid-19 pandemic, but at least the Department of Justice is trying. Cuomo wants you to believe he’s the latest victim of “lawfare” — a politically motivated witch hunt by the Justice Department. But the truth is far simpler: Cuomo is a disgraced former governor desperately trying to dodge accountability for deadly lies that cost thousands of lives.
Yes, lawfare is real. Under Joe Biden, it became disturbingly common. Cuomo is trying to capitalize on that and align himself, at least in atmosphere, with those who were unjustly targeted, like Donald Trump. The Mar-a-Lago raid, Alvin Bragg’s circus trial, Letitia James’ politically charged fraud case, and the coordinated multi-jurisdictional legal blitz were all designed to kneecap Trump’s presidential campaign. That’s textbook lawfare — the weaponization of the justice system to score political points.
Biden’s DOJ didn’t stop there. It also went after parents protesting COVID mandates and radical gender ideology at school board meetings. It sent SWAT-style raids against pro-life protesters, all while seemingly turning a blind eye to attacks on churches and crisis pregnancy centers. Even on the economic front, Biden’s team used lawfare as a distraction from inflationary failures — suing Visa over standard debit card fees that it claimed raised the price of “nearly everything” and launching an antitrust assault on rent-pricing software maker RealPage, scapegoating a technology firm for soaring housing costs.
Those are all a far cry from the criminal investigation into Cuomo, focusing on whether he lied to Congress in 2024 about his infamous nursing home directive, which forced elder care facilities to accept COVID-positive patients without proper safeguards. That directive contributed to the deaths of over 15,000 vulnerable New Yorkers, many of whom had no chance to fight back.
When reporters and lawmakers started asking questions, Cuomo didn’t come clean. He covered it up. New York Attorney General Letitia James uncovered that a State Department of Health report drastically undercounted nursing home deaths by as much as 50 percent. In sworn testimony, Cuomo denied any involvement in drafting or reviewing the report.
But emails and handwritten notes reviewed and reported by Congress’ Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic tell a different story — one where Cuomo personally reviewed, edited, and even helped draft the report. These findings led the Subcommittee to refer Cuomo to the Department of Justice, which launched its investigation.
If that sounds like political theater, it’s only because Cuomo has turned every accountability effort into a performance piece. Look, everyone deserves their day in court. But to call the DOJ opening an investigation after receiving this much evidence “lawfare” is insulting to the families who lost loved ones.
Speaking of accountability, Cuomo’s troubles aren’t limited to the nursing home scandal. His lucrative Covid-era book deal is also drawing renewed scrutiny.
In 2021, New York’s ethics commission ordered Cuomo to forfeit $5.1 million in profits from his memoir, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic, alleging he used state resources to write and promote the book while in office. Cuomo fought back, but in February, New York’s highest court rejected his attempt to dismantle the ethics commission.
The families of those lost to Cuomo’s COVID policies feel that they never got the truth. In their view, they never got justice. Thanks to Trump’s Justice Department, they may finally get both. Cuomo’s cries of “lawfare” are nothing more than a desperate attempt to rewrite his legacy and avoid consequences. Justice isn’t political theater. It’s overdue — and it’s coming.
Mamdani may not be beleagured by those scandals, but his platform is a scandal in itself. He promises to "freeze the rent for all stabilized tenants, and use every available resource to build the housing New Yorkers need and bring down the rent," and "triple the City’s production of permanently affordable, union-built, rent-stabilized homes – constructing 200,000 new units over the next 10 years."
He plans to do that while "cracking down on bad landlords," which leads one to wonder why landlords would take on the challenge of renting to tenants in NYC, and further plans to help "immigrant communities and Black and Latino" people retain home ownership.
As for crime, he looks to create the Department of Public Safety, a community policing group that doesn't focus on crime or law enforcement. City-run grocery stores will also be implemented under Mamdani's leadership, with "centralized distribution," which is a very communist concept. Free buses, "fighting corporate exploitation" while raising corporate taxes, free childcare, community schools, green schools, protecting sex changes and making the city a "sanctuary" for child sex changes, raising the minimum wage—and these are just a few of his insane ideas.
New York has an awful choice between a socialist intent on ruining the city and a corrupt former governor who disenfranchised New Yorkers during Covid and is determined to get back into public office. We need to pray for New York given these awful choices, because they are likely to elect one of two men that may be worse than Bill de Blasio.
Bruce LeVell is a longtime Senior Advisor to President Donald J. Trump who previously served as Small Business Advocate in the Trump White House. He is a Fox News and Newsmax contributor.
