Cuomo aide admits they hid nursing home data so feds wouldn’t find out

Governor Cuomo’s top aide privately apologized to Democratic lawmakers for withholding the state’s nursing-home death toll from COVID-19 — telling them “we froze” out of fear the true numbers would “be used against us” by federal prosecutors, The Post has learned.

The stunning admission of a cover-up was made by Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa during a video conference call with state Democratic leaders in which she said the Cuomo administration had rebuffed a legislative request for the tally in August because “right around the same time, [then-President Donald Trump] turns this into a giant political football,” according to an audio recording of the two-hour-plus meeting.

“He starts tweeting that we killed everyone in nursing homes,” DeRosa said. “He starts going after [New Jersey Gov. Phil] Murphy, starts going after [California Gov. Gavin] Newsom, starts going after [Michigan Gov.] Gretchen Whitmer.”

In addition to attacking Cuomo’s fellow Democratic governors, DeRosa said, Trump “directs the Department of Justice to do an investigation into us.”

“And basically, we froze,” she told the lawmakers on the call.

“Because then we were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, what we start saying, was going to be used against us while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation.”

DeRosa added: “That played a very large role into this.”

After dropping the bombshell, DeRosa asked for “a little bit of appreciation of the context” and offered what appears to be the Cuomo administration’s first apology for its handling of nursing homes amid the pandemic.

But instead of a mea culpa to the grieving family members of more than 13,000 dead seniors or the critics who say the Health Department spread COVID-19 in the care facilities with a March 25 state Health Department directive that nursing homes admit infected patients, DeRosa tried to make amends with the fellow Democrats for the political inconvenience it caused them.

see also

COVID-19 deaths in NY nursing homes were 50 percent higher than claimed: probe

“So we do apologize,” she said. “I do understand the position that you were put in. I know that it is not fair. It was not our intention to put you in that political position with the Republicans.”

Assembly Health Committee Chairman Richard Gottfried (D-Manhattan) immediately rejected DeRosa’s expression of remorse, according to the recording.

“I don’t have enough time today to explain all the reasons why I don’t give that any credit at all,” said Gottfried, one of the lawmakers who demanded the death-toll data in August.

State Senate Aging Committee Chairwoman Rachel May (D-Syracuse) — who was battered during her re-election bid last year over the issue of nursing-home deaths — also ripped into DeRosa, saying her former opponent had launched another broadside earlier in the day.

“And the issue for me, the biggest issue of all is feeling like I needed to defend — or at least not attack — an administration that was appearing to be covering something up,” she said.

“And in a, in a pandemic, when you want the public to trust the public-health officials, and there is this clear feeling that they’re not coming, being forthcoming with you, that is really hard and it remains difficult.”

https://nypost.com/2021/02/11/cuomo-aide-admits-they-hid-nursing-home-data-from-feds/

John Brennan: Only Dishonest, Self-Serving Senators Will Vote to Acquit ‘Lawless Thug’ Trump

Former Obama-era CIA Director John Brennan declared Wednesday that only “dishonest” and “self-serving” senators will vote to acquit Donald Trump in the U.S. Senate’s second impeachment of the former president.

“House impeachment managers providing compelling evidence that Donald Trump provoked, encouraged, & abetted the deadly insurrection at the Capitol. Trump acted as a lawless thug, inciting his fellow lawless thugs,” Brennan wrote on Twitter. “Only dishonest & self-serving Senators will vote to acquit.”

In a separate tweet, Brennan slammed Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) criticism of House Impeachment Managers’ argument in favor of Trump’s impeachment over last month’s riot at the U.S. Capitol, which left five people dead, including one U.S. Capitol Police officer.

“These are the words of a man with no conscience, no integrity, & no interest in doing the right thing,” the former intelligence chief tweeted of the South Carolina Republican’s remarks. “Lindsey Graham & other Senators who hold this view are unworthy of public trust. History will judge them as it should—political cowards who betrayed their oath of office.”

House impeachment managers rested their case Thursday in former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial by showing more video evidence from the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attack.

In their third day of presentations, the Democrats presented video clips, tweet, and other evidence showing participants saying they attacked the Capitol at the behest of Trump.

In finalizing the case, they called on senators — particularly Republicans — to vote in favor of Trump’s guilt.

“We humbly, humbly, ask you to convict President Trump for the crime for which he is overwhelmingly guilty of,” Sen. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., said.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/02/11/jjohn-brennan-only-dishonest-self-serving-senators-will-vote-to-acquit-lawless-thug-trump/

Loudmouth Daughter of Infamous War-Monger Compares Capitol Riots to 9-11 Terror Attacks that Killed 3,000 Americans

Meghan McCain is the loudmouth daughter of Trump-hater John McCain.

John McCain was an infamous warmonger.

Here is a map of the many countries John McCain called for US military intervention.

John McCain did not see a potential military operation he did not promote.

On Thursday, John’s daughter Meghan McCain compared the January 6th Capitol Hill riot to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

McCain said that the two events were “really comparable,” arguing that both were the type of event that forced a shift in paradigms for many who lived through the experience.

** 3,000 Americans died in the 9-11 attacks on America.

** 4 Trump supporters were killed and one police officer perished after the US Capitol riots.

This is they type of garbage the left is pumping out these days.

Meghan McCain is dumb enough to join in the awfulness.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/loudmouth-daughter-infamous-war-monger-compares-capitol-riots-9-11-terror-attacks-killed-3000-americans/

Heilemann: Trump Is the ‘Textbook Definition of a Monster’ — GOP Senators Who Acquit Are ‘Morons’

MSNBC national affairs analyst John Heilemann said on Thursday’s broadcast of “Deadline” said that former President Donald Trump is a “monster” who encouraged the mob at the deadly Capitol riot to hunt former Vice President Mike Pence.

Anchor Nicolle Wallace said, “What is this Republican Party if they are not for holding accountable he who incites an insurrection against them?”

Heilemann said, “They care only about their political futures and how they perceive it. But I’ll tell you what else they are in addition to being cowardly or being actual autocrats on the side of the insurrection, in addition to that, they’re idiots because the reality is, what they learned, if they learn nothing else from yesterday, is that loyalty to Donald Trump is of no use to you whatsoever. What happened yesterday, as we saw vividly, and I think this is another thing that many of the senators got clocked yesterday, watching how close they came to Mike Pence in this video, is that there has never been a human being on earth more loyal to Donald Trump than Mike Pence. And what he got in repayment for being that loyal to Donald Trump for four-plus years was Donald Trump tried to feed him to the lions.”

He continued, “He sat there on that day when he could see clearly he’s on the phone with Tommy Tuberville. Tommy Tuberville saying they just rushed the vice president out of here with his family. Donald Trump put out a tweet further inciting the rioters. He was happy, perfectly content to see his vice president, his devoted, pathetic, totally loyal vice president killed on that day. He is the textbook definition of a monster. I mean a monster. If you think about that, through that prism, it makes vivid just the degree of Donald Trump’s monstrousness and moral depravity.”

He added, “It also makes clear that all these Republicans who will now try to be loyal to Donald Trump because they think that’s the way their political futures will go because they think what Donald Trump’s going to repay them, how? Donald Trump would throw any of them to the mob if he thought it was in his interest. He would let any of them be killed. I mean, literally, if he would let Mike Pence be killed. In fact, not just let it happen, but stoke it, encourage it, the killing of his vice president. Who of these Republicans is ever going to get repaid by Donald Trump in any way politically that they can count on in the future? So they are craven, and they are morally bankrupt. They are zombies at this point. They exist as a party, but they have no moral, ideological, political conviction whatsoever. They’re all that, but they’re also morons, every single one of them.”

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2021/02/11/heilemann-trump-is-the-textbook-definition-of-a-monster-gop-senators-who-acquit-are-morons/

Crackdown Begins As SEC Suspends Trading In Pennystock

It appears that there's such a thing as pumping a worthless stock too far.

Today the SEC made it clear that it won't sit idly by as millions of daytraders gang up and pump pennystocks to the moon after it announced it would bar trading in SpectraScience , a Minnesota healthcare company, the FT reported. The suspension comes as new and inexperienced retail traders have flooded into the market drawing scrutiny from policymakers in Washington.

In addition to launching a probe in "market manipulation" by Reddit raiders and Robinhood earlier today, the SEC said social media accounts may have been used in a coordinated attempt to “artificially influence” the share price of the company, which does not have a working phone line or website and has not filed quarterly financial results since 2017.

Lack of actual business notwithstanding, trading of the company’s stock exploded in December and has continued at elevated levels. On January 28, the day a retail-fuelled rally sent the stock of retailer GameStop to a record high, more than 3bn shares of SpectraScience changed hands.

"The commission is of the opinion that the public interest and the protection of investors require a suspension of trading in the securities,” Vanessa Countryman, the secretary of the SEC, wrote in the commission’s order, in which she said that the suspension in SpectraScience shares would last to February 25, although expect another immediate re-suspension if the stock does not drop.

While much of the original coordination took place on reddit, some activity appears to have been orchestrated via Twitter, where the FT notes that clusters of day trader accounts tagging the SCIE ticker "spoke in bombastic terms about the stock and their recent investments as they discussed so-called penny plays."

One account under the name Alexander Delarge, which had amassed around 50,000 followers, tweeted a post encouraging users in late January to buy the stock, adding that it was likely to go to $1.

“Ill be buying a million shares at a Dollar showing my buy order to keep it going! As we all should!” the user wrote.

Among later tweets by the same account, one showed a screenshot of a portfolio of 5.5m SpectraScience shares saying it had gained 50 per cent in one day, adding: “Let the haters watch when this blasts off!”

Another popular day trader "Canadian Jennifer", also joined the chorus in early February saying “Yes I bought more! I’m not telling you to buy it. I’m just posting what I SEE and that I’m holding. When my instincts kick in I listen.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/crackdown-begins-sec-suspends-trading-pennystock

Army's Revamped ACFT Would Create 'Gender-Specific' Promotion Evaluation Categories

The U.S. Army is evaluating a new version of its gender-neutral Army Combat Fitness Test, one that would likely create "gender-specific" evaluation categories for men and women when it comes time for promotion.

The move would back away from the Army's original plan to have the new six-event test be gender-neutral in all aspects. It's in recognition of data showing that physiological differences between men and women cause individual scores to differ by 100 points on average by gender, according to an Army official familiar with the effort.

The new approach to the ACFT, comes after lawmakers, concerned about fairness, directed the service to conduct an independent review of the test, set to replace the current Army Physical Fitness Test.

Task and Purpose first reported this story.

The ACFT 3.0 will likely eliminate the three separate scoring categories for military occupational specialties and move to a single scoring standard for all soldiers, the Army official said.

"To serve in the Army, every soldier will have to meet the same standard," the Army official said.

But instead of judging men and women's raw scores against the same rubric, the Army is proposing separate percentile bands for men and women that would be gender-blind when soldiers go before a promotion board.

"We are not going to artificially inflate the raw score for women, but we have to figure out a way to make it fair to both genders," the Army official said. "We need a fair way that accounts for physiological differences."

The proposed solution involves the creation of "gender-specific" percentile bands broken into levels such as Top 1%, Top 10%, Top 25% and Top 50%, according to an Army briefing slide circulating on social media.

To maintain fairness, promotion boards would only see a gender-blind percentile band rating, the Army official said.

"All they are going to see for evaluation is which percentile the soldier falls into," the Army official said. "The gender identity will not be included in that information. If anything, it's a more gender-neutral assessment process because it doesn't show the raw scores."

All soldiers in the active-duty, National Guard and Reserve force have been authorized to take the six-event ACFT since Oct. 1, 2020, but test scores will not count against soldiers until March 2022.

Army leaders announced in January that the service would conduct an independent review of the ACFT as directed by the Fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act.

Congress called for the review after lawmakers and advocacy groups began to question the fairness of the ACFT for specific groups.

Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., raised concerns in mid-October about whether the test was fair to both men and women, and whether it sets unrealistic requirements for those serving in fields with few physical demands, such as medical personnel, judge advocates or cyber specialists.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/02/11/armys-revamped-acft-would-create-gender-specific-promotion-evaluation-categories.html

Ohio teacher’s aide had ‘sexual relationship’ with her 15-year-old student, cops say

MILFORD, Ohio — An teacher’s aide at Milford High School in Ohio is facing serious charges after police say she was sexually battering a teenager.

Miami Township Police arrested Denise L. Nagle, 44, of Milford, Ohio after the investigation revealed she had an inappropriate, sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boy.

Nagle was charged with ‘Unlawful Sexual Conduct with a Minor’ and ‘Sexual Battery.’

The Milford Exempted Village School District said in a statement, “Ms. Nagle was immediately placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation. The alleged misconduct did not occur on school property.”

Police also said it is not believed that there was any inappropriate conduct at any school or on any school property.

A press conference is scheduled for Friday, the Miami Township Police Department said.

https://breaking911.com/police-say-ohio-teachers-aide-had-sexual-relationship-with-her-15-year-old-student/

Man Sentenced for Operating Multi-Million Dollar International Money Laundering Scheme

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/man-sentenced-operating-multi-million-dollar-international-money-laundering-scheme

Schumer leaves door open to 14th Amendment measure to bar Trump from office

Virginia's Sen. Tim Kaine has been at the forefront of the 14th Amendment push

Schumer leaves door open to 14th Amendment measure to bar Trump from office

Virginia's Sen. Tim Kaine has been at the forefront of the 14th Amendment push

He'd also praised the case made by the House impeachment managers Wednesday and that he is "hopeful it will change minds. It's hard to look at that and not see the gravity of what happened."

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., has been on the forefront of the 14th Amendment push among Democrats, and Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., late last month called it "intriguing."

"What Senator Kaine is talking about is a censure resolution that would also specifically include the elements of the 14th Amendment that lead to disqualification from future office," Coons said. "That's intriguing to me and something I'm willing to look at the bottom line here is we have to deliver accountability for the events of January 6."

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution says that Congress can bar people who "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the U.S. from holding office. It was originally meant to prevent former Confederates from serving in the government after the Civil War.

"No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof," the amendment says.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/schumer-leaves-door-open-to-14th-amendment-measure-to-bar-trump-from-office

https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1360042317961457668

>>12896629

case sealed in 2016