Michigan Prosecutor Says He’s Willing to Hold the Governor Accountable for Nursing Home Deaths

The mere existence of Democratic Govs. Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom is likely the only thing preventing a third Democrat, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, from being recognized as America’s worst state-level chief executive.

Of course, there were Whitmer’s lockdown rules that were as stringent as they were asinine – such as when she prevented people from mowing their own lawns or boating on lakes in powerboats, although canoes were acceptable.

Yet believe it or not, as horribly as Cuomo handled protecting his elderly constituents, such as by sending COVID-positive seniors back into nursing homes, Whitmer was worse.

AARP reported last month that Cuomo’s New York had a nursing home death rate of 1.54 per 100 residents.

Whitmer’s rate: 2.12 – 38 percent worse.

To illustrate how awful they both were, Florida, under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, has a nursing home fatality rate of 0.72, according to AARP.

In short, Whitmer sports a death rate in nursing homes that triples that of the guy who presides over the largest elderly population in America.

Last week, Republicans in the Michigan Legislature, likely seeing the trouble brewing around Cuomo, sent the Justice Department a letter requesting a probe of Whitmer’s policies that, like Cuomo’s, placed older COVID-positive people in nursing homes.

As the ABC News affiliate in Lansing noted, “Whitmer’s executive order 50 of 2020 required some long-term care facilities to admit residents who tested positive for COVID-19 regardless of whether they were contagious.”

In the letter to federal prosecutors, eight Republicans, led by state Rep. Phil Green, wrote, “The governor employed a misguided policy that placed positive patients in the same facility as healthy residents, increasing the spread of the virus and ultimately having fatal consequences.”

“The people deserve to know the reasoning behind the governor’s decisions that put Michigan seniors needlessly at risk.”

Republicans argue that Whitmer, like Cuomo, has refused to release exact numbers. One estimate by local media indicates perhaps 5,500 elderly Michiganders died because of her policy.

In New York, an ambitious Democratic attorney general can smell Cuomo’s blood in the political water and is willing to investigate his potential malfeasance.

In Michigan, not so much.

“If you can give us some evidence that there’s been violations of the law, and you can give us some evidence that there was not just conduct that, again, is bad policy, but conduct that violates state or federal statutes, let us know about it for certain” Michigan’s Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel said recently, according to The Blaze.

“But if not, I get weary of the constant calls for our department to investigate things that are not crimes.”

One person who will answer those calls, at least within his jurisdiction, is Peter Lucido, a Republican and the top prosecutor over Macomb County, an area just north of Detroit.

Lucido recently told local media, “If we find there’s been willful neglect of office, if we find there’s been reckless endangerment of a person’s life by bringing them in, then we would move forward with charges against the Governor. Of course, we would. Nobody’s above the law in this state.”

He also suggested that constituents who lost loved ones to COVID “as residents or staff inside nursing homes should go back to get the vital information about the circumstances of their death and take that to local police and make a complaint as a wrongful death.”