(NEW YORK) — The Manhattan District Attorney’s office will not file criminal charges in connection with the handling of coronavirus deaths in New York nursing homes during the tenure of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, his representative said Monday.
“I was contacted today by the head of the Elder Care Unit from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office who informed me they have closed its investigation involving the Executive Chamber and nursing homes,” said Elkan Abromowitz, an attorney who represented the governor’s office. “I was told that after a thorough investigation – as we have said all along – there was no evidence to suggest that any laws were broken.”
The DA’s office had no comment.
Cuomo had come under fire for a policy early in the pandemic that returned nursing home residents to their facilities upon discharge from the hospital, even if they hadn’t tested negative.
He came under additional scrutiny when the New York attorney general found his office undercounted nursing home deaths.
Cuomo said last February that nearly all nursing homes that accepted recovering patients already had COVID cases.
And he said at that time that his handling of the fatality data created a “void” filled by misinformation and conspiracies.
“The void we created by not providing information was filled with skepticism and cynicism and conspiracy theories which fueled the confusion,” Cuomo said then. “The void we created disinformation and that caused more anxiety for loved ones.”
The state assembly considered whether it could be grounds for Cuomo’s impeachment before deciding to take no action.
(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wy., the top Republican on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, said former President Donald Trump is “clearly unfit for future office [and] clearly can never be anywhere near the Oval Office ever again.”
“He crossed lines no American president has ever crossed before,” she said in an interview with “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. “When a president refuses to tell the mob to stop, when he refuses to defend any of the coordinate branches of government, he cannot be trusted.”
The Wyoming Republican said her party has a “particular duty” to not only reject the events of Jan. 6, but “to make sure that Donald Trump is not our nominee, and that he’s never anywhere close to the reins of power ever again.”
As Trump publicly weighs whether to seek the White House again in 2024, Cheney said she agreed with Trump’s former Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, who said recently that a Trump victory in the next presidential election “could be the end of our democracy.”
“Do you share that fear?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“I do,” she said.
As the one-year anniversary of the Capitol siege nears, the House select committee’s sprawling probe is in full swing. In the past six months, the panel has interviewed more than 300 people, issued more than 50 subpoenas and obtained tens of thousands of records.
Cheney said the panel’s substantial efforts have already garnered important findings regarding Trump’s actions that day.
“The committee has firsthand testimony now that [Trump] was sitting in the dining room next to the Oval Office watching the attack on television,” she said.
She went on to add, “We have firsthand testimony that his daughter Ivanka went in at least twice to ask him to please stop this violence.”
“He could have told them to stand down. He could have told them to go home – and he failed to do so,” Cheney continued. “It’s hard to imagine a more significant and more serious dereliction of duty than that.”
“Is his failure to make that statement criminal negligence?” Stephanopoulos asked.
Cheney replied that there are several “potential criminal statutes at issue here.”
“But I think that there’s absolutely no question that it was a dereliction of duty, and I think one of the things the committee needs to look at is we’re looking at a legislative purpose is whether we need enhanced penalties for that kind of dereliction of duty,” she said.
Cheney, one of two Republicans on the congressional panel probing Jan. 6, said Sunday that “the Republican Party has to make a choice. We can either be loyal to our Constitution or loyal to Donald Trump, but we cannot be both.”
Despite her pessimism about the state of her party, Cheney said she remains in high spirits about the work her committee has done.
“This committee gives me hope,” she said. “It is very much one that brings together a group of us who have very different policy views, but who come together when the issues have to do with the defense of the Constitution. So, that does give me hope.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — While the Biden administration has once again extended the pause on student loan repayments, some progressives said that unless more is done, it could cost Democrats in the midterms in 2022.
The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is sounding the alarm over potentially losing voters and subsequent races due if the campaign promise from the Biden-Harris administration go unfulfilled.
Before the pause was extended, several prominent Democrats voiced their concerns about payments starting again and how it could cost them the midterms.
Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., tweeted, that “forcing millions to start paying student loans again” will cost Democrats the midterms.
The total amount of student loan debt in the U.S. currently stands at $1.75 trillion.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said it would be “delusional” to believe that Democrats can get reelected without taking action on student debt.
It is actually delusional to believe Dems can get re-elected without acting on filibuster or student debt, Biden breaking his BBB promise, letting CTC lapse, 0 path to citizenship, etc
Esp when they run from convos abt race+culture (which is what 1/6 was abt)
Natalia Abrams, president of the Student Debt Crisis Center, a nonprofit focused on ending the student debt crisis, told ABC News that “Democrats and lawmakers need to be careful because this is something the public has said they want.”
“If you can afford to pause student loan payments over and over again, you can afford to cancel it,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson tweeted after President Joe Biden announced his administration would extend the federal pause on student loan repayment for the third time in December.
Vice President Kamala Harris responded to Ocasio-Cortez’s comment in a recent interview with CBS News, saying that Secretary of Education Cardona is looking into what the Biden administration can do to alleviate the pressure that borrowers are enduring from student loan debt. However, Harris also acknowledged the impact student debt is having on individuals across the country.
“Graduates and former students across our country are literally making decisions about whether they can have a family, whether they can buy a home,” she said.
Harris was then asked if the Biden administration needs to deliver on its promise of forgiving student loan debt before the 2022 midterms in which Harris agreed.
“Well, I think that we have to continue to do what we’re doing and figure out how we can creatively relieve the pressure that students are feeling because of their student loan debt. Yes.”
During the 2020 election, Biden promised to forgive a minimum of $10,000 of federal student loans per borrower.
Additionally, we should forgive a minimum of $10,000/person of federal student loans, as proposed by Senator Warren and colleagues. Young people and other student debt holders bore the brunt of the last crisis. It shouldn’t happen again.
There are two major issues standing in the way of Democrats tackling student debt. First, there’s no agreement within the Democratic Party on who has the power to cancel student debt.
Several Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Warren, have pushed the Biden admin to use executive authority to cancel federal student loans. Still, the Biden administration has pushed back, saying they do not know if Biden has the authority to do so.
When asked about Biden’s campaign promise to cancel $10,000 of federal student loan debt in mid-December, Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that if Congress sent Biden a bill to cancel student debt, he would be “happy to sign it.”
Back in July, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a press conference that President Biden does not have the legal authority to use executive action to cancel federal student loan debt.
“People think that the president of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness; he does not,” said Pelosi. “He can postpone, he can delay, but he does not have that power, that has to be an act of Congress.”
Another issue that stands in the way of Democrats making any headway on student debt is that there seems to be no consensus on how much to cancel.
Several Democrats, including Schumer and Rep. Ayanna Pressley D-Mass., have urged canceling $50,000 of federal student loan debt, which Biden said he would “not make happen” when asked about it during a CNN town hall in February.
In that same town hall, Biden reiterated his support for canceling $10,000 dollars in student loan debt.
Democrats have about five months before the pause on federal student loans repayment expiries.
“I think one of the best things that Democrats can do to secure midterms would be to cancel student debt,” Abrams told ABC News. “At the very least keep loans on pause.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to hear arguments on ending the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy.
The program — formally called the Migrant Protection Protocol — bars asylum seekers from entering the U.S. while immigration courts review their claims. Biden campaigned against the policy, but his administration has hit several legal roadblocks trying to do away with it. Humanitarian organizations have documented high rates of murder, kidnapping and extortion on top of squalid conditions facing those subjected to “Remain in Mexico.”
The program was suspended at the start of the Biden administration, but in August, a federal judge in Texas ordered the administration to resume the protocols after finding the policy change “arbitrary and capricious.”
The Biden administration appealed the ruling, but the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals this month upheld the ruling.
“DHS failed to reasonably consider its own factual findings regarding the benefits of MPP,” the court wrote.
“DHS lacks the resources to detain every alien seeking admission to the United States. That means DHS can’t detain everyone [it] says it “shall” detain. So it’s left with a class of people: aliens it apprehended at the border but whom it lacks the capacity to detain,” they continued.
The Biden administration has acknowledged “Remain in Mexico” likely deterred migrants from coming to the U.S., a concession to Republicans who have cited the temporary repeal of the policy as the driving force behind the record number of arrests at the border. But officials argue the humanitarian consequences outweigh any potential benefits.
In its filing Wednesday, the Biden administration asked for an expedited briefing to allow for arguments in the case in the court’s April sitting.
ABC News’ Quinn Owen and Luke Barr contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defended the latest guidelines shortening the isolation period for certain people who test positive for COVID amid criticism from public health experts who believe a negative test should also be included in the recommendation.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said that the new guidelines of five days isolation for asymptomatic people or people who have seen their symptoms largely resolve stemmed from “two years of understanding transmissibility,” and that the period was shortened from 10 days to reduce staffing shortages in hospitals. The guidance recommends an additional five days of masking after the isolation period.
“Let me make clear that we are standing on the shoulders of two years of science, two years of understanding transmissibility, and a lot of information that we have gleaned from the wild type virus, as well as the alpha and delta variants and more that we continue to learn every single day about omicron,” Walensky said on Wednesday at a White House briefing on the virus.
She also said the CDC did not recommend getting a negative test before leaving isolation because scientists aren’t confident that rapid tests provide a good indication of contagiousness and PCR tests can show a positive result for months. But, she said, data shows people are largely less infectious after five days.
“We do know the vast majority of viral transmission happens in those first five days, somewhere in the 85 to 90% range. So if a person can isolate for the first five days they absolutely should,” she said.
“We also don’t know that antigen tests give a good indication of transmissibility at this stage of infection. On the other hand, we know that after five days people are much less likely to transmit the virus and that masking further reduces that risk. And this is why people need to mask for five days after the five days of isolation,” she said.
Some infectious disease experts expressed frustration with the new guidlines on social media, with Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, saying rapid antigen tests are a good additional layer of assurance before leaving isolation.
“The CDC should have included a negative antigen tests to end isolation,” Jha wrote, and rapid tests are “great when used properly.”
Dr. Jerome Adams, the U.S. surgeon general under former President Donald Trump, also slammed the CDC in a Twitter thread, criticizing the agency’s decision to omit the recommendation for COVID-19-positive individuals to take a test prior to ending isolation.
The current guidelines are that a person with a positive COVID-19 test should isolate for five days, regardless of their vaccination status. If a person never had or no longer has symptoms after five days, they can leave isolation. They should then wear a mask for the next five days, even at home, according to the guidance.
“After five days, if you’re asymptomatic or if your symptoms have largely resolved, you may leave isolation as long as you continue to wear a mask around others, even in the home for an additional five days,” Walensky said.
Rapid tests, which are a faster and often more convenient option for testing, have always been slightly less accurate than PCR tests, which can take days to get back.
Most major test makers, such as Abbott, say their rapid tests still work to detect the omicron variant. But without naming specific tests, the Food and Drug Administration said preliminary research indicates some of these tests could be less sensitive.
The FDA says rapid tests still work, and the agency is now studying how much of an impact the omicron variant might make on accuracy. Walensky and other members of the White House COVID team said Wednesday that the FDA did not intend to dissuade Americans from taking the tests but wanted to be “transparent.”
“What the FDA was saying was that when they were looking at the sensitivity with regard to omicron in some of the tests, there appears to be somewhat of a diminution, not a disappearance, but a diminution of the sensitivity,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to the White House, said at the briefing.
“The fact that the sensitivity is diminished somewhat does not obviate the importance of the still advantage and usefulness of these tests under different circumstances,” Fauci said.
“That was the message of the FDA. They wanted to make sure they were totally transparent in saying the sensitivity might come down a bit, but they did emphasize there still is an important use of these tests,” Fauci said.
Walensky added that “another important use is where we use them for serial testing in places like tests to stay, to keep children in school, in higher ed to keep our college campuses safe” — all situations in which the quantity of tests being used can make them more useful.
Fauci also presented some data from around the world about the apparent lessened severity of omicron.
In the U.K., a study has found the risk of hospitalization admission with omicron was 40% of that for delta, and in Scotland, preliminary data suggested a two-thirds reduction in the risk of COVID-19 hospitalization with omicron, Fauci said.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., data from the last 14 days shows “the spike in cases is out of proportion to the increase in hospitalization,” he said.
There has been a 126% increase in cases and an 11% increase in hospitalizations, and while deaths and hospitalizations tend to lag weeks behind cases, “the pattern and disparity between cases and hospitalization strongly suggest that there will be a lower hospitalization to case ratio when the situation becomes more clear,” he said.
“So in conclusion, the data are encouraging, but still, in many respects, preliminary, yet they are getting stronger and stronger as additional data are accumulated,” he said.
“All indications point to a lesser severity of omicron versus delta.”
Still, Fauci warned that severity on its own is good news, but it is paired with higher transmissibility.
“Increased transmissibility of omicron resulting in an extremely high volume of cases may override some of the impact of the lower disease severity,” he said.
“And so we should not become complacent since our hospital system could still be stressed in certain areas of the country.”
ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos conributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the chairman of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, invited House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., on Wednesday to sit for an interview with investigators.
“If he has information he wants to share with us, and is willing to voluntarily come in, I’m not taking the invitation off the table,” Thompson said in a phone interview with ABC News.
Earlier this week, McCarthy, who spoke to then-President Donald Trump during the riot, was asked in a local television interview whether he would cooperate with the committee’s investigation.
“I don’t have anything to add. I have been very public, but I wouldn’t hide from anything, other,” he said in an interview with KBAK.
“If Leader McCarthy has nothing to hide, he can voluntarily come before the committee,” Thompson told ABC News, adding that he would consider sending McCarthy a formal request to appear.
A McCarthy spokesman did not respond to a message seeking comment on Thompson’s remarks.
The select committee has formally requested interviews with Reps. Scott Perry, R-Pa., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. Jordan is of interest to investigators for his conversations with Trump on Jan. 6, while Perry has been linked to unsuccessful efforts to get the Trump Justice Department to investigate claims of election fraud in late 2020.
Both have rejected the committee’s requests.
The Mississippi Democrat also told ABC News that the panel could formally invite other GOP lawmakers — House members or senators — to appear before the committee in the coming weeks.
McCarthy told at least one colleague that Trump dismissed his request to help stop the riot, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash., said in a statement during Trump’s second impeachment trial.
In an interview with Fox News in April, McCarthy said Trump “didn’t see” the riot was unfolding until they spoke.
“What he ended the call with saying was telling me he’ll put something out to make sure to stop this. And that’s what he did. He put a video out later,” McCarthy said.
While committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., has said the committee could subpoena McCarthy or other lawmakers who don’t voluntarily cooperate with their inquiry, Thompson expressed reservations about doing so.
“If we subpoena them and they choose not to come, I’m not aware of a real vehicle that we can force compliance,” Thompson said of lawmakers.
A committee aide subsequently told ABC News the committee has not ruled out issuing subpoenas to sitting lawmakers.
Stan Brand, an ethics expert who served as House general counsel under Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neal, said such a move could be a “precedential danger” that future GOP-led committees could similarly attempt.
He also argued that lawmakers, unlike other witnesses, could argue that their actions around Jan. 6 were related to legislative activity, and protected under the speech and debate clause of the Constitution.
Jan. 6 committee enters new, public phase
Ahead of the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, Thompson also expanded on the committee’s plans for public hearings in the new year.
He said the committee would hear from state and local election officials about the 2020 election, to debunk Trump’s unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud and the dozens of unsuccessful lawsuits he launched to reverse the results after the presidential race was called.
“We have to look at that to dispel, or at least put before the public for their consumption, the people tasked with the responsibility of running those elections and whether or not they were legitimate or not,” Thompson said.
The select committee also plans to explore “the role of right-wing organizations” on Jan. 6, Thompson said, noting that some members of the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keeper groups have been linked to the Capitol riot.
The committee will also publicly explore “whether or not we were prepared from an intelligence gathering position,” he said.
The panel aims to issue an interim report on its inquiry next summer, ahead of a final report in fall 2022.
“Part of what we will show is what went on to stoke the flames that ultimately led to Jan. 6.,” Thompson said. “What we will do in our hearings is put the pieces of the puzzle together, so the average man and woman on the street will understand how close we came to losing our democracy.”
(NEW YORK) — Westchester District Attorney Mimi Rocah has declined to pursue criminal charges against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for allegations made by two women that he kissed them on the cheek.
While her investigators found “credible evidence” that the alleged conduct had occurred, Rocah said the actions did not meet the requirement to be prosecuted as a criminal act.
“Our investigation found credible evidence to conclude that the alleged conduct in both instances did occur,” Rocah wrote in a statement. “However, in both instances, my Office has determined that, although the allegations and witnesses were credible, and conduct concerning, we cannot pursue criminal charges due to the statutory requirements of the criminal laws of New York.”
Rocah’s investigation, which began after the release of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ report on Cuomo, examined the accusations made by a state trooper on Cuomo’s security detail and by a woman who alleged Cuomo gave her an unwanted kiss during an event at White Plains High School.
The trooper alleged that she was on duty at the governor’s home in Mount Kisco when he asked if he could kiss her. She said that she said “sure” because she was afraid of the ramifications of saying no. He allegedly kissed her on the cheek and “then said something to the effect of, ‘oh, I’m not supposed to do that’ or ‘unless that’s against the rules,'” according to the attorney general’s report.
The second woman alleged in the report that Cuomo grabbed her arm and pulled her toward him to kiss her on the cheek.
Rocah is the second prosecutor in recent weeks, after Nassau County District Attorney Joyce Smith, to decline to prosecute Cuomo based on his actions not meeting the statutory requirements for a criminal act. Smith made similar comments as Rocah, saying she found the allegations “credible, deeply troubling, but not criminal under New York law.”
Editor’s Note: This story originally said charges were not pressed because they were outside the statute of limitations. It has been updated to say that charges were not pressed against Cuomo because they did not meet the statutory requirements of the law, not because they were outside the statute of limitations.
(WASHINGTON) — Harry Mason Reid, the former five-term U.S. senator from Nevada who led Senate Democrats for a decade spanning the Bush and Obama presidencies, died Tuesday, his wife, Landra Reid, confirmed in a statement. He was 82.
“I am heartbroken to announce the passing of my husband, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He died peacefully this afternoon, surrounded by our family, following a courageous, four-year battle with pancreatic cancer. Harry was 82 years old. We were married for 62 years,” she said. “We are so proud of the legacy he leaves behind both on the national stage and his beloved Nevada. Harry was deeply touched to see his decades of service to Nevada honored in recent weeks with the re-naming of Las Vegas’ airport in his honor. Harry was a devout family man and deeply loyal friend.”
Landra Reid thanked the doctors and nurses that cared for her husband over the past several years and said funeral arrangements will be announced in the coming days.
Reid’s more than half a century of public service tracked the arc of American opportunity. From a hardscrabble upbringing in Searchlight, Nevada, Reid rose to become one of the most powerful politicians in the country.
He got an early taste of politics working as a U.S. Capitol Police officer to put himself through law school. He started out as a trial lawyer and city attorney before seeking elected office to advance his belief that government had a responsibility to improve lives.
“Harry Reid was one of the most amazing individuals I’ve ever met,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a Twitter statement Tuesday night. “He was tough-as-nails strong, but caring and compassionate, and always went out f his way quietly to help people who needed help. He was a boxer who came from humble origins, but he never forgot where he came from and used those boxing instincts to fearlessly fight those who were hurting the poor and middle class.”
“He was my leader, my mentor, one of my dearest friends. He’s gone but will walk by the sides of many of us in the Senate every day,” Schumer added.
Reid was elected state assemblyman, lieutenant governor and gaming commission chairman. In 1986, Nevadans sent him to Washington as a member of the U.S. Senate.
“He and his family benefited from Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and he never forgot it,” said Jim Manley, Reid’s former senior communications adviser and spokesman. “He always was looking out for the little guy after seeing firsthand how beneficial government could be.”
As Senate Democratic leader, Reid championed the $787 billion Recovery Act economic stimulus program to blunt the impact of the Great Recession in 2009 and fought to enact the landmark Affordable Care Act of 2013 — two bills he considered among his greatest legislative achievements.
Former President Barack Obama said in a statement Tuesday that when Reid was nearing the end, his wife asked some of his friends to share letters that she could read to him.
“Here’s what I wrote to my friend,” Obama said. “Harry, I got the news that the health situation has taken a rough turn, and that it’s hard to talk on the phone. Which, let’s face it, is not that big of a change cause you never liked to talk on the phone anyway! Here’s what I want you to know. You were a great leader in the Senate, and early on you were more generous to me than I had any right to expect. I wouldn’t have been president had it not been for your encouragement and support, and I wouldn’t have got most of what I got done without your skill and determination.”
“Most of all, you’ve been a good friend. As different as we are, I think we both saw something of ourselves in each other – a couple of outsiders who had defied the odds and knew how to take a punch and cared about the little guy. And you know what, we made for a pretty good team,” Obama continued in his letter. “Enjoy your family, and know you are loved by a lot of people, including me. The world is better cause of what you’ve done. Not bad for a skinny, poor kid from Searchlight.”
President Joe Biden also praised the life and legacy of Reid in a statement late Tuesday, calling him one of the greatest Senate majority leaders in history.
“I’ve had the honor of serving with some of the all-time great Senate Majority Leaders in our history. Harry Reid was one of them. And for Harry, it wasn’t about power for power’s sake. It was about the power to do right for the people,” Biden said of his former Senate colleague.
While the two men grew up on opposite sides of the country, Biden said they “came from the same place where certain values run deep.” Biden ticked through many of Reid’s legislative accomplishments, including the Recovery Act, the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform, as well as his role in ending “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and ratifying the New START Treaty.
But despite Reid’s lengthy professional achievements, Biden noted it was his family what was most important to Reid.
“But above all, Harry was first and foremost the devoted husband to his dear Landra. Over six decades together, they built a remarkable family with their children — Lana, Rory, Leif, Josh, and Key — and all of their grandchildren and great-grandchild. Jill and I send our love and prayers to Landra and the entire Reid family,” Biden wrote. “A son of Searchlight, Nevada, Harry never forgot his humble roots. A boxer, he never gave up a fight — whether in politics or even against cancer. A great American, Harry looked at the challenges of the world and believed it was within our capacity to do good, to do right, and to do our part of perfecting the Union we all love.”
Reid worked to stymie Republican efforts to privatize Social Security, and famously invoked the “nuclear option” in Senate rules to eliminate the filibuster for executive branch appointments and judicial nominations. That change meant confirmation by a simple majority vote, a drastically lower threshold which in 2018 benefitted former President Donald Trump and his controversial pick for the Supreme Court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“If there’s one thing we know about Harry, he doesn’t give up easily,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said of Reid in a farewell tribute in 2016.
Reid was a liberal firebrand but not always in lockstep with the Democratic mainstream. He vacillated on abortion rights over his career and had a mixed view of gun control, twice opposing the assault weapons ban. In 2003, he voted in favor of the Iraq War which he later called a “horrible mistake” that “tainted my heart.”
“My biggest regret is having voted for the Iraq War,” Reid said in a speech from the Senate floor in 2016. “I was misled, as a number of people were, but it didn’t take me long to figure that one out. So I became convinced that it was a mistake, and I spoke out loud and clear.”
As the longest-serving senator from Nevada, Reid was also a fierce defender of the state’s gaming and hospitality industries and advocate for the burgeoning renewable-energy sector.
On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell released a statement on Reid’s passing, calling Reid’s rise to power “quintessentially American” and praising their “cordial” relationship.
“Nevada and our nation are mourning a dedicated public servant and a truly one-of-a-kind U.S. Senator, my former colleague Harry Reid,” McConnell wrote. “The nature of Harry’s and my jobs brought us into frequent and sometimes intense conflict over politics and policy. But I never doubted that Harry was always doing what he earnestly, deeply felt was right for Nevada and our country. He will rightly go down in history as a crucial, pivotal figure in the development and history of his beloved home state.”
Vice President Kamala Harris also praised Reid in a statement, calling him an “honorable public servant,” who “got things done.”
“Whenever we had a chance to speak, Leader Reid was kind, generous, and always to the point,” Harris said. “Tonight, Landra and the entire Reid family are in our thoughts.”
Despite a taciturn and soft-spoken demeanor, Reid’s high profile in party leadership made him a political lightning rod. And he often kindled controversy with his willingness to sling insults and personal attacks against rivals, most recently drawing comparisons to Trump.
He famously blasted President George W. Bush as both a “liar” and a “loser,” only later apologizing for the “loser” remark. On the Senate floor, Reid called Trump a “human leech” and attacked McConnell as a “poster boy for Republican spinelessness.”
Reid was known for being frank and blunt, never one to worry about political correctness. He once suggested that no one of Hispanic heritage “could be a Republican,” lashed out at sweaty and smelly tourists in the nation’s capital, and called Bush’s dog “fat” — on a visit to the Oval Office.
In 2010, Reid was forced to apologize for disparaging Obama as “a light-skinned” Black man “with no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one” during a 2008 campaign trail interview.
During the 2012 campaign, Reid attacked GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney as a tax cheat — without evidence. Fact checkers debunked the claim, but Reid remained unapologetic.
Republican leaders admonished Reid as he headed for retirement in 2016. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas accused him of being a “cancerous leader” whose “ramblings” were “bitter, vulgar and incoherent.” Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming characterized Reid’s tenure as “failure, obstruction and gridlock.”
“He was a plainspoken individual,” said Manley, “and when he said something he meant it. Sometimes it got him in trouble, but I always found it refreshing.”
For his part, Reid — an amateur boxer — never apologized for the fight.
“I don’t have any regrets whatsoever about my efforts to push forward a Democratic agenda,” he said at his final press conference on Capitol Hill in late 2016.
Reid retired to Nevada with his health in decline. He had suffered broken ribs, facial bones and loss of vision in his right eye after an exercising accident in 2015 when a rubber resistance band snapped, hurling Reid into some gym cabinets.
In 2018, doctors discovered a tumor on Reid’s pancreas and performed surgery to remove it.
“As soon as you discover you have something on your pancreas, you’re dead,” Reid bluntly told the New York Times in an interview in January.
Reid often spoke of finding comfort in his Mormon faith and marriage of 60 years to wife Landra.
“Hand in hand, sweat on the brow, they’ve always moved forward together through it all,” McConnell said in his 2016 tribute. The couple had five children and 19 grandchildren.
Friends and former associates say Reid was content with his retreat from the limelight — surrounding himself with family — but never surrendering a passion to be plugged in to politics.
Reid told longtime Nevada political reporter Jon Ralston, in one of his final interviews, that he had been offering advice to Democratic presidential hopefuls for 2020.
“I had one of the presidential wannabes call me, and she said, ‘You know, I’ve heard so much about you and we’ve met, but it was very brief. Tell me, why do you think you’ve been successful?’ I said, I’ve been successful because I’ve always been willing to take a chance,” Reid told Ralston.
The senator from Searchlight could be a case study in taking a chance and defying the odds.
As Reid liked to tell it, the tiny Nevada mining town had “no mines and 13 brothels” when he was born in 1939 in the shadow of the Great Depression. His miner father committed suicide; his mother did laundry for the brothels in town. His childhood home has been described as a shack, with no toilet, running water or telephone.
The lack of health care facilities and schools in Searchlight forced the young Reid to seek an escape to a better life.
“He knows there are Searchlights all across the country,” President Obama told a Nevada radio station of Reid in 2015. “There are kids just like he was, and he was fighting for them.”
ABC News’ Roey Hadar, Kelsey Walsh, Chris Donato and Trish Turner contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Westchester District Attorney Mimi Rocah has declined to pursue criminal charges against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for allegations made by two women that he kissed them on the cheek.
While her investigators found “credible evidence” that the alleged conduct had occurred, Rocah said the actions did not meet the requirement to be prosecuted as a criminal act.
“Our investigation found credible evidence to conclude that the alleged conduct in both instances did occur,” Rocah wrote in a statement. “However, in both instances, my Office has determined that, although the allegations and witnesses were credible, and conduct concerning, we cannot pursue criminal charges due to the statutory requirements of the criminal laws of New York.”
Rocah’s investigation, which began after the release of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ report on Cuomo, examined the accusations made by a state trooper on Cuomo’s security detail and by a woman who alleged Cuomo gave her an unwanted kiss during an event at White Plains High School.
The trooper alleged that she was on duty at the governor’s home in Mount Kisco when he asked if he could kiss her. She said that she said “sure” because she was afraid of the ramifications of saying no. He allegedly kissed her on the cheek and “then said something to the effect of, ‘oh, I’m not supposed to do that’ or ‘unless that’s against the rules,'” according to the attorney general’s report.
The second woman alleged in the report that Cuomo grabbed her arm and pulled her toward him to kiss her on the cheek.
Rocah is the second prosecutor in recent weeks, after Nassau County District Attorney Joyce Smith, to decline to prosecute Cuomo based on his actions not meeting the statutory requirements for a criminal act. Smith made similar comments as Rocah, saying she found the allegations “credible, deeply troubling, but not criminal under New York law.”
Editor’s Note: This story originally said charges were not pressed because they were outside the statute of limitations. It has been updated to say that charges were not pressed against Cuomo because they did not meet the statutory requirements of the law, not because they were outside the statute of limitations.
(NEW YORK) — Westchester District Attorney Mimi Rocah has declined to pursue criminal charges against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
While her investigators found “credible evidence” the alleged conduct had occurred, Rocah said it fell outside the statute of limitations.
Rocah’s investigation, which began after the release of the New York Attorney General’s report on Cuomo, examined the accusations made by a state trooper on Cuomo’s security detail and by a woman who alleged Cuomo gave her an unwanted kiss during an event at White Plains High School.
Rocah is the second prosecutor in recent weeks, after Nassau County’s, to decline to prosecute Cuomo based on the statute of limitations.
