TRENTON, N.J. (1010 WINS) -- The U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation into New Jersey's state-owned and operated veterans nursing homes on Tuesday, citing concerns that they failed to provide adequate care as COVID-19 spread through the state.
In a letter addressed to Gov. Phil Murphy, the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, Craig Carpentino, and the Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, Eric Dreiband, said the number of people who died at some New Jersey veterans homes may have been "understated."
The letter singled out two veterans homes, the Menlo Park Veterans Memorial Home in Edison and the Paramus Veterans Memorial Home in Paramus, as facilities that gave the department "cause for concern" about the quality of their medical care.
Investigators will work to determine whether the veterans homes violated their residents' constitutional rights by "failing to provide them adequate medical care generally, and during the coronavirus pandemic in particular," Carpentino and Dreiband wrote.
If the investigation does not find any violations, it will be closed, they wrote. If it does, the department will lay out a set of measures the state will need to enact to fix them.
"We encourage the state to cooperate with our investigation, and we can assure you that we will seek to minimize any potential disruption our investigation may cause," the letter added.
The Wall Street Journal earlier this month reported that the Menlo Park Veterans Memorial Home in Edison "botched" its COVID-19 response in April by failing to alert residents' families that there was an outbreak in the building for more than a week, not enforcing mask use and undercounting coronavirus-related deaths.
In a statement provided to the Journal, a spokesman for Murphy said the state does "not comment on the substance of investigative inquiries and will respond through the appropriate channels in due course."
"The fact that this request from the Department of Justice was announced a week before Election Day speaks volumes about the nature of the review," the spokesman added. "From the beginning of the pandemic, the State of New Jersey has relied on CDC guidance from the federal government to protect the residents of our veterans homes."
Murphy fired the heads of both the Edison facility and the Paramus facility, as well as their boss and the head of the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, on Oct. 16, the Journal reported.
