Pete King to Newsmax TV: Cuomo Won't Leave Until Forced Out

As serious as the sexual harassment and misconduct claims are against Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the New York Democrat's nursing home mandate and the "faked" numbers used in its alleged cover-up are far more likely to lead to his eventual ouster, former Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y., told Newsmax TV.

"Obviously sexual harassment is a very important issue, but the nursing home scandal involved the loss of up to 15,000 innocent people," King told "John Bachman Now" on Tuesday. "Now, how many of them are attributable to Gov. Cuomo? It's difficult to estimate, because he faked the numbers."

Ultimately, Cuomo's fate will be decided by the lawmakers in New York and the investigations undertaken by, among others, Democrat state Attorney General Letitia James. King told host John Bachman to forget about Cuomo throwing in the towel before he is forced to.

"I don't think he'll resign unless he absolutely knows he's going to be removed from office, and that would involve the speaker of the Assembly and the majority of the Senate coming to him, showing they have the votes, No. 1 to impeach him, No. 2 to remove him on that," King said. "He will hang on as long as you possibly can. This is in his DNA. This is what he lives for: The exercise of power. And he will do everything he can to hang on."

King said the continued calls for his resignation and the impeachment inquiry, however, are posing a serious challenge for Cuomo's future.

"They have such a large numbers saying, 'you should resign,'" King continued. "But he should be impeached. Now it's time for them, if they are serious about putting their money where their mouth is, and go to him and say, 'Here's the votes. If you don't resign, you're going to be gone.'"

The most significant voice in the Cuomo saga may be James after her office's probe into the nursing home allegations, King said.

"The state attorney general is a Democrat; she believes up to half of them were caused by his policies of taking COVID patients from the hospitals and putting them into the nursing home," King said. "That to me, if you told me – the loss of human life, any human life is horrible, not to mention the thousands of innocent people – and then to have it falsified."

He added: "Anyone can make mistakes, especially at the start of the endemic where no one knew exactly what was the right thing to do. Then you admit it, not just for the sake of making an admission – not having any kind of contrition: That was all fate and that, to me, is the ultimate sin here."