The 107-page referral by the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic — which contains emails and closed-door testimony demonstrating Cuomo’s role in editing a report that undercounted nursing home residents’ deaths in the initial months of the crisis — has given his critics on the left and right an opening. Democratic candidates for mayor and his GOP rivals alike piled on.

“Andrew Cuomo lied not only to Congress, but also grieving families after sending their loved ones to Covid-filled nursing homes against CDC guidelines, to protect his $5 million book deal. He should face accountability for all of it,” said mayoral candidate Brad Lander, New York City’s comptroller.

It is also helping Republicans in their quest to erode any policy success Democrats had in handling the pandemic.

“Andrew Cuomo will never hold public office again and must be held criminally responsible,” Republic Rep. Elise Stefanik said.

Cuomo, the son of a dynastic Democratic family, catapulted to national fame at the onset of the pandemic — his daily televised briefings providing an anxious nation with a pastoral presence, earning him a flurry of fans and even an Emmy. But his management of the pandemic — meant to show a stark contrast with then-President Donald Trump — has been beset by critiques that peaked Wednesday night with this dramatic development.

Cuomo’s team on Thursday downplayed the significance of the referral, while blasting the investigation.

“There’s no there there: This is a political document with the legal weight of a Denny’s placemat and the only people actually feigning taking this seriously are those who railroaded him from office in the first place, or the pandering politicians who are desperately trying to raise their sub-basement poll numbers by punching up,” Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said. “It’s as dumb as it is craven and New Yorkers see right through it.”

The hard-charging former governor asserted to investigators in June that he did not review the report — later clarifying that he does “not recall” editing it or seeing it — statements that are at odds with testimony from ex-staffers and internal documents.

Those claims undercut his reputation for being an efficient and effective manager, three Democratic operatives and former staffers to the governor said.

Cuomo’s team has decried how Republicans have treated the investigation and earlier this month pressed for access to documents they believe could have jogged his memory — including an email sent in June 2020 discussing edits Cuomo made to the nursing home report — a note he did not know about when speaking with investigators earlier this year.

“We request that the Select Subcommittee provide Governor Cuomo with the documents in question and afford him the opportunity to refresh his recollection,” Cuomo attorney Rita Glavin wrote in an Oct. 18 letter to Ohio Rep. Brad Wenstrup, the Republican subcommittee chair.

But the subcommittee never sent it.

The House panel’s referral, seemingly anticipating the criticism over document access, dismissed any bid for Cuomo to correct his statement.

“An attempted recantation or correction does not make the original statement any less false,” the referral stated.

And a spokesperson for the subcommittee on Thursday said lawmakers had “presented strong evidence” in the referral.

Cuomo has responded in pugilistic fashion — an aggressive posture in keeping with a strategy deployed frequently by the ex-governor to remain on offense when being attacked.

His spokesperson has called claims the former governor lied to the panel “a joke.”

“The governor said he didn’t recall because he didn’t recall,” Azzopardi said. “The committee lied in their referral just as they have been lying to the public and the press.”

He called the Republican-led subcommittee has been a “farce” and accused GOP lawmakers of trying to score “cheap political points” with the investigation.

The criminal referral came less than a week before Election Day and House Democrats on the panel criticized the timing in a statement, while notably not defending the former governor.

The Department of Justice declined to comment.

Previous investigations into Cuomo’s Covid policies at the local level, as well as a civil rights probe by the Department of Justice that began under the Trump administration, have not led to charges or sanctions.

The aggressive pushback by Cuomo and his remaining advisers to the House referral underscores how politically damaging the allegations could be for him.

Cuomo has long claimed criticism of his administration’s nursing home policies are rooted in a partisan attack designed to undercut a prominent Democrat who was spoken of as a future presidential candidate.

But weeks into the crisis questions emerged over a March 2020 state Department of Health order that required nursing homes not turn away Covid-positive patients as concerns mounted that hospitals would be overwhelmed.

As the death toll grew that spring, the Cuomo administration was under pressure to provide statistics on the number of nursing home residents who had died in New York facilities.

In July 2020, state health officials unveiled a report that was immediately under scrutiny for how residents’ deaths were counted. Six months later, an assessment released by Attorney General Letitia James’ office found the state sharply low-balled the number of people who died.

Cuomo resigned in August 2021 after James’ office determined he sexually harassed 11 women, which the former governor has denied.

But questions over his nursing home policies have not abated.

Family members of people who died in nursing homes have pressed for independent investigations at the state and federal level. They have also sued Cuomo; a civil lawsuit filed by several families was dismissed last month.

Cuomo, meanwhile, has filed his own criminal referral to the Department of Justice that alleged subcommittee Republicans misused government resources when investigating Cuomo and that GOP lawmakers “colluded” with Fox News meteorologist Janice Dean, whose in-laws perished from Covid. Dean’s husband was among those whose suit against Cuomo was dismissed.

“He’s always been a bully,” Dean said Thursday in an interview. “He’d rather blame everyone else, including the grieving families who lost loved ones, than actually tell the truth.”