Select Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland Wednesday obtained by Washington Examiner calling for Cuomo to be investigated by Department of Justice for concealing his involvement in the New York State Department of Health report on the number of seniors who died because of the state’s requirements for nursing homes for the admission of COVID-positive patients.

“Mr. Cuomo provided false statements to the Select Subcommittee in what appears to be a conscious and calculated effort to insulate himself from accountability,” Wenstrup wrote to Garland.

The subcommittee confirmed for Washington Examiner that their referral to the Department of Justice was unrelated to the original drafting of the directive dated March 25, 2020, which stated that nursing homes could not refuse admission based on a diagnosis of COVID-19.

But in its filing with the DOJ, the subcommittee presented more than 100 pages of documentation showing that Cuomo made “criminally false statements” to Congress about his role in the policy-related death toll report , published on July 6, 2020.

Initial drafts of the July 6 NYSDOH report on the nursing home directive estimated the number of nursing home-related deaths at less than 10,000, but evidence from multiple investigations indicates there may have been as many as 15,000 deaths as a result of the compulsory admission policy.

Cuomo repeatedly told the subcommittee during his June transcribed interview and his public hearing in July that he was not involved in crafting the mandatory nursing home admissions policy or the July 6 report that undercounted the number of deaths .

Rich Azzopardi, Cuomo’s publicist, said for Washington Examiner that the whistleblower is nothing more than a “taxpayer-funded hoax” and an “illegal use of Congress.”

“This is a joke — the governor said he didn’t remember because he didn’t remember,” Azzopardi said. “The commission lied in their report, as did the public and the press.”

But testimony from New York Executive Chamber staff, including Senior Counsel Jim Malatras and Executive Assistant Farrah Kennedyindicates that Cuomo was closely involved in the July 6 report, revising significant sections of the report to downplay the severity of the number of deaths caused by the nursing home policy.

More than 20 pages of the document provided to Garland contain scanned pages of initial drafts of the July 6 report with handwritten notes that Kennedy identified as Cuomo’s handwriting.

Kennedy told the subcommittee during a voluntarily transcribed interview on Oct. 8 that executive aides were often asked to decipher Cuomo’s handwriting because Cuomo preferred to make changes to documents by hand rather than electronically.

Azzopardi told him Washington Examiner that Cuomo’s attorney sent a letter to Wenstrup and subcommittee counsel on Oct. 18 indicating that Cuomo had not been presented with the hand-redacted documents that the subcommittee used as the basis for its DOJ referral.

On Wednesday afternoon, Cuomo’s attorney filed his own criminal complaint against the select subcommittee.

“Commission advisers Mr. (Mitchell) Benzine and Mr. (Jack) Emmer know there is no basis for this Maga pre-election exercise and have affirmatively chosen to act unethically to help their masters score cheap political points,” a said Azzopardi. Washington Examiner. “We look forward to holding Rep. Stefanik and Malliotakis and committee counsel accountable for their conduct before the DoJ.”

Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) were two of the most vocal representatives from New York during the subcommittee’s investigation into Cuomo.

Wenstrup’s referral to Garland also referenced an email sent by Stephanie Benton, another executive assistant, on June 7 about the nursing home’s death report, which was still in the draft stage at the time.

The email said the mandatory admissions policy “will go down in the history books” and asked “Don’t you see how bad this is? Or do we admit the mistake and give up?”

According to Kennedy, Cuomo often stands over the shoulder of executive assistants in the governor’s office as he dictates what to write.

Cuomo’s secretary, Melissa DeRosa, confirmed to the subcommittee that multiple Executive House staffers who received the email understood the message to be directly from Cuomo, who DeRosa said would “often dictate emails to Stephanie” and other assistants.

Recipients of the June email included Malatras, State Legal Counsel Gareth Rhodes and NYSDOH Commissioner Howard Zucker.

Cuomo’s spokesman did not return calls Washington Examinerhis request for comment.

Last month, the select subcommittee accused Cuomo of intimidating Malatras, who at that point in the investigation was the only witness to contradict Cuomo’s denials of involvement in the report.

Malatras told the subcommittee that Cuomo contacted him several times during the subcommittee’s investigation after the two had not spoken for several years. Malatras said the communications from Cuomo made him “uncomfortable.”

The subcommittee’s report to Garland notes that the DOJ has in the past prosecuted witnesses for making false statements to congressional committees, citing prosecution to Roger Stone in 2019 regarding Russian influence in the 2016 election.

At this point, it’s unclear how the relationship between Cuomo and Garland could affect the likelihood of a DOJ investigation into the former governor’s cover-up.

Cuomo, who steps down from office in 2021, requested a meeting with Garland in February to discuss a settlement agreement between the DOJ and New York state regarding the investigation into Cuomo’s alleged sexual harassment of at least 13 women.

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In the filing to Garland, Cuomo’s legal team pointed out that there was “apparently no real investigation” into the sexual harassment case against Cuomo, saying the former governor had not been interviewed by a DOJ representative. The DOJ did not respond to Washington Examiner as to whether or not the meeting between Garland and Cuomo took place.