Cuomo Told a House Panel His Memory Was Hazy. Is That a Perjury Defense?

House Republicans referred the former New York governor for prosecution. His insistence on a faulty memory makes that outcome unlikely.

When former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York was pressed by congressional investigators whether he had any role in an official report deflecting blame for thousands of Covid-related deaths in state nursing homes, he fell back on one of Washington’s oldest defenses.

“I do not recall reviewing,” Mr. Cuomo said in closed-door testimony this summer, after initially flatly denying that he had seen the report at the time.

This week, a Republican House chairman investigating the matter concluded that those comments had been part of a “conscious, calculated effort” to dodge accountability and urged the Justice Department to prosecute the former governor for lying to Congress. As evidence, the committee cited emails showing that Mr. Cuomo had not only seen the report, but had written parts of early drafts.

The criminal referral could scarcely come at a worse time for Mr. Cuomo politically. It threatens to remind voters of the scandals that plagued the end of his governorship at the very moment he is contemplating a run for mayor of New York City, handing his opponents fresh ammunition.

But former federal prosecutors, congressional investigators and defense lawyers said on Thursday that Mr. Cuomo was unlikely to face prosecution.

The Justice Department has no obligation to take up a case like the one referred by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Wednesday. Legally speaking, the referral requests are akin to news releases.