Peter and Danny Arbeeny’s 88-year-old father died at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020 after contracting coronavirus while in a nursing home. 

"He was vivacious, strong, sharped-minded," Danny Arbeeny told Capital Tonight reporter Nick Reisman in an interview last year. "He was actually working, an 88-year-old man. He was always sitting on the stoop, always had a big smile, always helping people. They called him mayor of the block, president of the block. He was beloved."

Over the last year and half, the Arbeenys became what they called “voices for the voiceless."

They joined Capital Tonight from the Brooklyn home where their dad grew up.

“We had at least 15,000 of our beloved and cherished ones die in nursing homes as a direct result of the virus at the time, and we think the bulk of that was from the March 25 order,” Peter Arbeeny said.

It became clear in the Assembly Judiciary Committee's report released Monday that the March 25, 2020 directive to readmit COVID-positive nursing home residents back into nursing homes was a product of the executive chamber and not the Department of Health as was originally thought.

Peter Arbeeny said that he and his brother had FOILed the DOH, and after seven months, finally received a response.

“Hochul finally released the information to us,” Arbeeny said. “But what we now realize is that the answers weren’t really good, because we were FOILing the wrong place."

The brothers aren’t giving up. The Arbeeny’s plan to FOIL the executive chamber next.

“Not to really understand this means that it will happen again,” Peter Arbeeny said. “We need answers.”