Fox News hired former Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa as a podcast co-host after she admitted hiding nursing home COVID death numbers to avoid political fallout.
Fox News Media said in a Monday press release that Melissa DeRosa will join the network as a contributor and co-host of a new podcast, “The Girls,” debuting Oct. 1.
The move places a former top adviser to Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Fox’s platform years after she described how the administration handled nursing home coronavirus death figures during the pandemic.
Daily Caller reporting detailed the hire alongside DeRosa’s earlier remarks on why key death totals stayed out of public view when scrutiny rose.
DeRosa served in Cuomo’s administration until she resigned in August 2021 amid allegations that the governor sexually harassed government employees.
That exit came after months of controversy over how New York counted COVID deaths among nursing home residents and people from adult care facilities.
On a conference call with Democratic lawmakers, DeRosa admitted the Cuomo team held back nursing home death numbers because it feared the scandal would be politicized.
Just The News likewise noted her account that the administration hid those figures to keep opponents from turning them into a political weapon.
She pointed straight at then-President Donald Trump and the risk of a Justice Department investigation.
DeRosa told the lawmakers:
"He starts tweeting that we killed everyone in nursing homes,"
She continued:
"He starts going after [then-New Jersey Gov. Phil] Murphy, starts going after [California Gov. Gavin] Newsom, starts going after [Michigan Gov.] Gretchen Whitmer."
The concern, in her own words, was that anything shared with federal investigators or with the lawmakers themselves could be used against the administration while an investigation remained possible.
DeRosa said:
"We were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, what we start saying, was going to be used against us while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation,"
She also apologized to the lawmakers for the political bind.
DeRosa added:
"I do understand the position that you were put in. I know that it is not fair. It was not our intention to put you in that political position with the Republicans,"
Those remarks framed the undercount as a calculated response to pressure, not a simple data error.
A 2021 New York State Assembly report found Cuomo personally edited the Department of Health’s numbers to undercount nursing home coronavirus deaths by thousands.
Officials knew deaths among nursing home residents stood at around 10,000. The government’s report stated the figure was only 6,500.
That gap landed after earlier reporting already flagged problems in the state’s tallies.
In 2020, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported that New York omitted an unknown number of coronavirus deaths in its reports on residents of nursing homes and adult care facilities.
Families watching those daily briefings never saw the fuller picture the Assembly later described.
Fox has made other high-profile talent moves in recent seasons, including when Emily Compagno became a permanent cohost of “The Five.”
DeRosa’s new role sits inside that same pattern of lineup changes, even as her New York record remains part of the public file.
Since leaving Albany, DeRosa has criticized Democratic Socialists of America-aligned candidates she says cannot win on their own.
In June she argued they latch onto the Democratic Party to take it over.
DeRosa said:
"They cannot win on their own by creating their own party, so they are going to latch onto the Democratic Party and feed off of it, with the overall goal of taking it over and killing it,"
In January she tore into New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani after he condemned an antisemitic attack on a synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi.
On X she wrote that he still would not denounce the phrase “globalize the intifada” and that it took him more than 24 hours to denounce Hamas, which she called a terrorist organization funded by Iran.
She closed that post by saying the mask was off and that he would never be the future of the Democratic Party.
Network chair-shuffling has stayed busy on other fronts too, such as when Fox named Larry Kudlow interim host of “Sunday Morning Futures.”
DeRosa’s hire adds another familiar Albany name to the mix while the nursing home numbers fight is still a live reference point for critics of Cuomo-era governance.
Fox’s recent staffing story has included sharp exits and disputes as well as new faces.
Coverage of the network has tracked everything from Maria Bartiromo’s firing after leaked texts to follow-on legal pushback from her side.
Separate pressure has even surfaced over guest booking, including when Navarro urged a rethink of Fox News guest access.
Against that backdrop, bringing on a former Cuomo senior aide who openly described withholding death data for political reasons is not a quiet paperwork change.
It pairs a major cable brand with a figure tied to one of the clearest accountability fights of the COVID period in New York.
The podcast is scheduled to launch Oct. 1. Daily Caller asked Fox News for comment on the hire.
Viewers can judge the booking for themselves. The conference-call record and the Assembly’s undercount findings are already on paper, and no press release erases either one.