Governor Cuomo’s top aide privately apologized to Democratic lawmakers for withholding the state’s nursing-home death toll from COVID-19 -- telling them “we froze” out of fear the true numbers would “be used against us” by federal prosecutors . The Cuomo administration had rebuffed a legislative request for the tally in August because "Donald Trump starts tweeting that we killed everyone in nursing homes,” DeRosa said. "He told the Department of Justice to do an investigation into us. And basically, we froze,” she said.