New York Post Assemblyman Ron Kim — whose uncle died of the coronavirus in a nursing home — said Wednesday that he got a phone call from the fellow-Democrat governor on the night of Feb. 11 that quickly turned dark, with Cuomo ultimately warning, “You have not seen my wrath.”
The call came shortly after The Post exclusively reported how Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa admitted on a conference call with lawmakers that Cuomo’s administration withheld the true death toll among nursing home residents for fear it would be “used against us” by federal prosecutors.
“At first, there was a silence on the phone,” Kim said.
“Then the governor says, ‘Mr. Kim, are you an honorable man?’”
Kim, who had taken part in the Feb. 10 conference call with DeRosa and who lashed out at Cuomo over the cover-up in The Post article, said he was “in the middle of bathing my kids” when Cuomo called.
Cuomo, he said, asked him to draft a statement “to say that Melissa DeRosa said there was a federal investigation and they had to deal with that first.”
The conversation quickly turned medieval, Kim said, with Cuomo warning him, “You have not seen my wrath. I have been biting my tongue for months.”
“I can tell the whole world what a bad person you are and you will be finished,” Kim recalled Cuomo saying.
“You will be destroyed.”
Cuomo was so angry, Kim said, that “my wife could hear the governor yelling into the phone.”
At one point, Cuomo — a former state attorney general — also asked Kim if he was a lawyer, which he is not.
“After that call, we were devastated. My wife didn’t sleep at all,” Kim said.
Later, Cuomo “called me four or five times on Saturday” but he didn’t pick up, Kim said.
Kim has been among Cuomo’s most outspoken critics since his uncle, Son Kim, died in a nursing home in April after suffering symptoms of COVID-19.
On Tuesday, he introduced legislation to strip Cuomo of his pandemic-related emergency powers, and he also sent a letter — co-signed by eight Assembly Democrats — that accused Cuomo of violating the federal law against obstruction of justice.
Cuomo’s spokesman, Rich Azzopardi, issued a nearly 800-word, prepared statement in which he accused Kim of “lying about his conversation with Governor Cuomo Thursday night.”
“ I know because I was one of three other people in the room when the phone call occurred,” Azzopardi said.
“At no time did anyone threaten to ‘destroy’ anyone with their ‘wrath’ nor engage in a ‘coverup.’”
He added: “That’s beyond the pale and is unfortunately part of a years-long pattern of lies by Mr. Kim against this administration.”
