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Andrew Cuomo schmoozes with NY celebs including De Niro, Goldberg before facing GOP-led pandemic grilling
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo schmoozed with New York celebs on Friday night, days before facing a likely less hospitable Republican-led Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Spies told Page Six that Cuomo was spotted at a dinner at the hip and glamourous Chelsea Hotel on Friday night at an annual private VIP dinner for the Tribeca Festival — along with attendees including fest co-founder Robert De Niro, “The View” host Whoopi Goldberg, “Ripley” star Dakota Fanning and former “Dawson’s Creek” star Katie Holmes.
Also at the power gathering was MTV co-founder John Sykes and other business bigwigs. The group dined on “dined on “fillet mignon and roasted chicken,” we hear.
The Tribeca fest this year includes documentaries on Roger Federer, Diane von Furstenberg, Elizabeth Taylor, “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker and the famous 1980s “Brat Pack,” as well as movies starring Michael Cera and Kristen Stewart, Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn, and a big De Niro retrospective called “De Niro Con.”
A spy told us that Tribeca Festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal, “addressed the assembled glitterati speaking passionately about Tribeca’s roots, how it was founded in the wake of the horrific terror attacks of 9/11 [and] is going strong 20-plus years later.”
The producer of hit De Niro films including “Meet the Parents” and “Analyze This” also told the crowd about the “ongoing imperative of the arts in storytelling and recovery.”
De Niro has previously said he’d want to play Cuomo in a movie about the pandemic, and Cuomo attended the star’s 80th birthday party last year at the star’s Greenwich Hotel, we reported.
Goldberg has been a Cuomo supporter, and appeared at a 2020 fundraiser for the former New York pol in 2020, with De Niro’s “Meet the Parents” co-star Ben Stiller and Rosie Perez.
There has been buzz that Cuomo could launch a political comeback, including a potential run for New York Mayor. We’ve reported that he has spoken at a power women’s gathering at the home of a hedge funder, as well at a prominent Brooklyn Democratic club meeting, and events in the Hamptons. He’d also met with the former president of the Hotel Trades Council.
He resigned as governor under threat of impeachment in 2021 after a number of women accused him of sexual misconduct, and he denied the accusations. He also later said he regretted stepping down.
Cuomo on Tuesday will be questioned behind closed doors by a GOP-led COVID-19 panel whose members include Staten Island Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn), Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) and House COVID Select Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), among others.
The panel also includes Democrats such as House COVID Subcommittee Ranking Member Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) and Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.).
The Post previously reported how members of congressional COVID-19 panel met with relatives of New York nursing home residents who died during the shutdown as the panel prepared to grill Cuomo on his handling of the pandemic in New York.
Malliotakis has said, “For nearly four years, Governor Cuomo has stonewalled our Committee as we seek to prevent the next pandemic, improve government’s preparedness and response plans and gather answers for families who lost elderly loved ones because of his order forcing nursing homes to positive accept positive patients even if they could not care for them… We look forward to finally getting answers, transparency and accountability for New Yorkers.”
But Cuomo’s spokesman has fired back about the hearings, “The Department of Justice has looked at this issue three times, as have the Manhattan District Attorney, the [state] Attorney General and the New York State Assembly, all determining that the actual facts and evidence did not support any claim of wrongdoing, and no MAGA farce of a congressional hearing is going to change that.”
The rep also called the allegations, “MAGA conspiracy theories that there was an attempt to undercount nursing home deaths.”
The House panel already interviewed Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director, last week.
