Power Up: Inside the story behind Cuomo’s vaccine czar

And the latest from my colleagues at The Post is likely to make matters much worse for the embattled governor. A Democratic county executive filed an ethics complaint against Cuomo’s “vaccine czar” with the public integrity unit of the New York attorney general for gauging loyalty to the embattled governor in calls to county officials, our colleagues Amy Brittain and Josh Dawsey reported yesterday,

The political outreach from a key official helming New York’s vaccine distribution further underscored questions of how long Cuomo can hang onto his job.

• “There was a lot going through my mind,” the executive recounted of the call from Larry Schwartz, head of the state’s vaccine rollout and longtime Cuomo adviser and friend, to Amy and Josh. “This is putting me in an impossible position where I potentially have to choose between like a weird political loyalty to a governor who controls a lot of things, not just vaccine, and is known to be vindictive, and on the other side, doses of lifesaving vaccine every week for my residents who are literally desperate for them.”
• “[Schwartz] has always been the hatchet man,” Rob Astorino, a former Westchester county executive and 2014 Republican gubernatorial contender against Cuomo, told Power Up. “He put the fear of God into fellow Democrats to make sure they stayed in line — he’s always been that guy.”

How the story happened: The Post received the tip last week about calls being placed by Schwartz, who has been friends with Cuomo for 30 years, “and actually moved into the governor’s mansion for a period of time at the start of the pandemic,” Amy told Power Up.  

• “It’s important to note that Schwartz has denied doing anything wrong in making these calls. He has said he was not making them in his role as the vaccine czar, but rather, just calling around as a close friend of Cuomo’s.  I can say at least one official didn’t really see the distinction there,” Amy noted in an email. 
• “You allegedly have the individual in charge of a scarce and literally lifesaving resource engaging in these political fealty discussions with officials who depend on him for the vaccine allotment.”
• “It’s been fascinating to observe the dam breaking around Cuomo and the stories that continue to emerge about not only the allegations of his own conduct, but allegations related to the conduct of his top aides,” Amy told us. “What makes it even more intriguing is his steadfast refusal to resign. When I was watching the countless members of the New York congressional allegation call for his resignation within minutes apart on Friday, it became clear it was coordinated to give them some type of cover and protection from retribution. My colleague Josh Dawsey spoke to an aide to one of those individuals who said the strategy was designed that way so, ‘He can’t kill us all at the same time.’” 
• “But that type of coordinated strategy seems to have led Cuomo to dig in his heels even more. He’s called it ‘cancel culture’ and said it is ‘reckless and dangerous.’” 

Jessica Bakeman became the seventh woman to publicly accuse Cuomo of some form of sexual harassment or inappropriate touching — shedding more light on the toxic and hostile work environment alleged to have taken place under Cuomo.  

• “It’s not that Cuomo spares men in his orbit from his trademark bullying and demeaning behavior,” Bakeman wrote in New York Magazine. “But the way he bullies and demeans women is different.”

Cuomo has urged New Yorkers to wait for the results of an outside investigation by Attorney General Letitia James. Citing Minnesota Sen. Al Franken’s (D) 2018 resignation, Westchester County Executive George Latimer (D) told Power Up he’s waiting on the outcome of the independent investigation to decide what to do.

• “You can’t weaponize the accusation and assume that it’s automatically proof — that can’t be the standard,” Latimer told us last night.
• “There were some lessons learned for Democrats from Franken,” Shaunna Thomas, a founder of UltraViolet, a women’s rights advocacy group, told the New York Times’s Lisa Lerer. “You can’t reach a conclusion about what needs to happen ahead of the process or investigation.”
• “I think the investigation is underway and we should see what it brings us,” President Biden told reporters Sunday.
• “What the President said is that there’s a process. These charges are very serious charges. They ought to be investigated and that process ought to run its course,” White House chief of staff Ron Klain said.

The New York State Assembly took the first step toward potentially impeaching Cuomo after authorizing a probe by its Judiciary Committee into the sexual harassment allegations.

• “The reports of accusations concerning the governor are serious,” Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie (D) said in a statement authorizing the investigation. “The committee will have the authority to interview witnesses, subpoena documents and evaluate evidence, as is allowed by the New York State Constitution.”

And on Friday, prominent members of New York’s congressional delegation joined the calls for him to resign, citing both the allegations of sexual assault and harassment and the Cuomo administration’s “extraordinary intervention” to rewrite the count of how many nursing home residents died during the pandemic in a report by state health officials. 

• “After two accounts of sexual assault, four accounts of harassment, the Attorney General’s investigation finding the Governor’s admin. hid nursing home data from the legislature & public, we agree with the 55+ members of the New York State legislature that the Governor must resign,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wrote on Twitter.
• “Due to the multiple, credible sexual harassment and misconduct allegations, it is clear that Gov. Cuomo has lost the confidence of his governing partners and the people of New York. Gov. Cuomo should resign,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Kirstin Gillibrand (D-N.Y.). 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) stopped short of calling on Cuomo to resign, saying Cuomo “should look inside his heart — he loves New York — to see if he can govern effectively.” 

• “Pelosi reiterated her initial statement from two weeks ago that there should be an independent investigation into the ‘credible and serious’ charges against Cuomo, and voiced confidence” in New York AG James, our colleague Amy B Wang reports. 
• “She has called for, I think, an expeditious investigation,” Pelosi added. “And again, with all the respect in the world for what these women have come forth and said. This is a subject very near and dear to my heart. There is no tolerance for sexual harassment.”

‘VICTORY TOUR’ KICKS OFF TODAY: President Biden, First Lady Biden, Vice President Harris, and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff are hitting the road as part of what the White House is calling the “Help is Here Tour” to pitch the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. 

“I promised the American people, and I guess it’s becoming an overused phrase, that help was on the way,” Biden said of his first legislative win at the White House on Friday. “We’ve delivered on that promise.”

• “Harris is scheduled to visit the coronavirus vaccine clinic at [the University of Nevada, Las Vegas]. Then she will visit the Culinary Academy of Las Vegas,” the Las Vegas Review — Journal’s Steve Sebelius reports. 
• “Emhoff is slated to visit a local food relief organization, where he will tour the facility and participate in a listening session with community partners.”
• Meanwhile, first lady Jill Biden will be in Burlington, N.J. today.
• Reminder: “The White House has said it does not believe President Barack Obama’s administration, in which Biden served as vice president, did enough to promote its more than $800 billion 2009 economic rescue program. Democrats went on to lose control of the House to Republicans the next year,” per Reuters’s Trevor Hunnicutt. 

More stimulus news: “President Biden has tapped Gene Sperling, a longtime Democratic economic policy expert, to oversee the implementation of his $1.9 trillion stimulus package, according to people familiar with the matter,” The Post’s Tyler Pager reports.

• “Biden himself served a similar role under President Barack Obama, overseeing the implementation of Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package as the nation was recovering from the economic collapse of 2008. The president often cites that experience when discussing the importance of accountability when stimulus funds are spent,” per Pager. 

From a White House communications official:

NEXT UP, INFRASTRUCTURE: “Following an almost party-line passage of Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package last week, Democrats are staring down the odds of winning Republican support on a host of administration priorities, including infrastructure and immigration,” Politico’s Jesse Naranjo reports. “The fact that the American Rescue Plan passed without Republican support underscores the tricky legislative hurdles Democrats will have to navigate with slim majorities in both chambers.”

• However, “Pelosi on Sunday signaled hopefulness that Republicans would get on board with major infrastructure and jobs legislation but was unsure whether her GOP colleagues would accept or obstruct Biden’s agenda.”
• “Building roads and bridges and water supply systems and the rest has always been bipartisan — except when [Republicans] opposed it with President Obama, and we had to shrink the package,” Pelosi told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.”
• Pelosi has directed Democrats to “craft a big, bold and transformational infrastructure package” that would include “policy changes — on green energy and immigration — and even try to make permanent some of the just-passed covid-19 assistance such as child tax credits,” AP News’s Hope Yen reports. But “cost will be a major hurdle.”

• “The group’s propensity for violence and extremism was no secret. But the F.B.I. and other agencies had often seen the Proud Boys as they chose to portray themselves: mere street brawlers who lacked the organization or ambition of typical bureau targets like neo-Nazis, international terrorists and Mexican drug cartels.”
• “Yet the Proud Boys’s belligerence fit the definition of terrorism: unlawful violence and intimidation for political aims. Members raised money to travel across state lines to dozens of rallies with the intent of fighting, at least once explicitly targeting a Muslim community in Upstate New York — activities that could have justified the scrutiny of federal law enforcement.”
• “We tried to bring attention to the Proud Boys’s violence back then. Nobody listened,” Megan Squire, a computer scientist at Elon University told Kirkpatrick and Feuer. 

BORDER COMMUNITY, ICE AT ODDS OVER CORONAVIRUS: “In a border area that has suffered from ongoing covid-19 outbreaks, advocates for immigrants and [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] are at odds over the agency’s treatment of infected detainees,” our colleagues Jon Gerberg and Maria Sacchetti report. “Advocates and county officials say they had no idea ICE was dropping detainees with covid off at the bus stop, while ICE says it is the agency’s protocol to notify local authorities ahead of time.” 

• “Nearly 10,000 detainees have been infected with the virus and nine have died. More than 420 detainees have active cases, up from 370 a few days ago.”
• “While the advocates agree that detainees diagnosed with covid-19 should be released from detention so they can seek better medical care, failing to coordinate those transfers with health officials and nonprofits is a danger to public health.”
• “It’s reprehensible. It’s a threat to public safety. It’s a threat to our asylum seekers. It’s a threat to the people on the ground helping. It’s absolutely unforgivable,” Jules Kramer, chief of operations at the Minority Humanitarian Foundation, a nonprofit that aids migrants and refugees on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, told our colleagues.

IS TRUMP THE CURE FOR VACCINE HESITANCY?: “Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, said in interviews Sunday that former president Donald Trump should be enlisted to encourage his supporters to get the coronavirus vaccine,” our colleague Amy B Wang reports. “Recent polling showed Republican men and Trump supporters have the highest rates of vaccine hesitancy.”

• “How such a large proportion of a certain group of people would not want to get vaccinated merely because of political consideration makes absolutely no sense,” Fauci, director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We’ve got to dissociate political persuasion from what’s common sense, no-brainer public health things.”
• “If he came out and said, ‘Go and get vaccinated. It’s really important for your health, the health of your family and the health of the country,’ it seems absolutely inevitable that the vast majority of people who are his close followers would listen to him,” Fauci told “Fox News Sunday.”

U.K. WOMEN SEEK ANSWERS: Demonstrators took to the streets Sunday following the kidnapping and killing of Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old marketing executive from south London. “Several hundred gathered outside London police headquarters before marching to Parliament Square to hold a ‘lie in.’ Some said they were planning another protest [for today],” our colleague Karla Adam reports. 

• Everard’s death has “set off a social movement that feels different from those that have come before: women from all walks of life demanding safety from male violence — and demanding that the police, the government and men collectively be the ones to bear the burden of ensuring it,” the New York Times’s Amanda Taub writes. 

Billie Eilish took home record of the year.

Taylor Swift became the first female artist to win album of the year three times.

Beyoncé made history by breaking the record for most-ever Grammys won by an artist.

And 9-year-old Blue Ivy Carter picked up her first Grammy.