Congressional photo via Wikimedia Commons
Read: The latest from VICE News’s Jason Leopold about Hillary Clinton’s strange secrecy.
Michael Grimm, a former Republican congressman from Staten Island, was sentenced to eight months in prison for tax evasion Friday. Though he was initially arrested for fraud and perjury after a probe into his campaign finances in April 2014, Grimm’s actual conviction was for underreporting receipts at a restaurant he owned to the tune of about $900,000.
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Grimm pleaded guilty in December of last year, and at the time, prosecutors were hoping for a sentence of up to 30 months.
Grimm is probably best known for the above video, in which a reporter for NYC cable outlet NY1 questioned him in the Capitol Rotunda in January 2014. When the line of questioning turned to allegations of campaign finance against the congressman, he stormed off, then came back, and—apparently not realizing the audio and video feeds were still on—gave the reporter some really solid advice:
Let me be clear to you, you ever do that to me again, I’ll throw you off this fucking balcony. If you ever do that to me again… No, no, you’re not man enough. You are not man enough. I’ll break you in half. Like a boy.
The remark in turn led to numerous unanswered questions about just how many boys Grimm had, in fact, broken in half. (At the time of publication, the former congressman has not been charged with any crimes related to boy-breaking or assault.)
The case is also notable because Grimm, a former Marine, was also once an FBI agent… who went after fraud. During his time in the bureau, he posed as a corrupt Wall Street trader for an operation called “Wooden Nickel,” in which he busted white-collar criminals. It was actually his former colleagues at the FBI who arrested him. George Venizelos, the FBI’s assistant director, had choice words for Grimm at the time, saying, “As a former FBI agent, Representative Grimm should understand the motto: Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity. Yet he broke our credo at nearly every turn.”
Healthalicious in 2013 (center left), via Google Street View
This investigation primarily concerned the way funds were moved through a Brooklyn restaurant Grimm owned from 2007 until 2010 called Healthalicious. It was a lunch joint with an extensive selection of vegetarian options. (Yelp says Healthalicious is now closed.)
But don’t worry too much: Healthalicious only had three Yelp stars, and according to MSNBC, it had a problem with “mice and flying insects.”
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