New York attorney general threatens Trump with lawsuit if he denies state access to ‘life-saving’ vaccine
Mr Trump says state will have to ‘authorise’ delivery of drug or miss out
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Your support makes all the difference.New York’s attorney general says the state will sue Donald Trump if he tries to prevent it receiving the “life-saving” Covid vaccine.
The outgoing president announced that his administration would not deliver the drug to New York when it becomes available next year.
Mr Trump said during a press conference in the White House’s Rose Garden that governor Andrew Cuomo “will have to let us know when he’s ready for it because otherwise, we can’t be delivering it to a state that won’t be giving it to its people immediately.”
The president made the claim as he spoke for the first time publicly in the wake of his defeat to Joe Biden.
“He doesn’t trust where the vaccine is coming from,” added Mr Trump.
“These are coming from the greatest companies anywhere in the world, greatest labs in the world, but he doesn’t trust the fact that it’s this White House, this administration, so we won’t be delivering it to New York until we have authorisation to do so and that pains me to say that.”
New York Attorney general Letitia James immediately took to Twitter to threaten against against Mr Trump.
“Any attempt by Donald Trump to deny New York access to a lifesaving #Covid19 vaccine will be met with a lawsuit, plain and simple. Stop playing politics with people's lives,” she tweeted.
And she added in a statement that Mr Trump’s threats were “nothing more than vindictive behaviour by a lame-duck president trying to extract vengeance on those who oppose his politics.”
Mr Trump told his news conference that the vaccine would be widely available in the US by April.
Meanwhile daily cases of the virus hit another all-time high with 176,000 recorded on Friday.
Mr Cuomo also took a shot at Mr Trump and said on MSNBC that “none of what he said is true. Surprise, surprise.”
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