President Donald Trump has issued a full pardon to anti-LGBTQ+ former U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY), who pleaded guilty to felony tax fraud in December 2014 and served eight months in prison. In addition to smearing LGBTQ+ people and allies as pedophiles and child mutilators, he also threatened on live TV to kill a news reporter who asked him about alleged campaign finance allegations.
The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York and the FBI began investigating Grimm in 2012 and 2014, respectively, over allegations that he had false federal and state tax filings that under-reported income from a Manhattan restaurant called Healthalicious. He would later admit to concealing at least $900,000 from the restaurant.
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He called Trump’s inner circle “a bunch of guard dogs” who have told him to “go f—” himself.
On January 28, 2014, Grimm threatened to kill NY1-TV political reporter Michael Scotto on live TV after Scotto tried to ask him questions about an investigation into Grimm’s campaign finances while speaking with him in a balcony hallway of the U.S. Capitol building. In response, Grimm said that he would “break [Scotto] in half, like a boy” and threatened to throw him over the balcony.
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In a statement defending his actions, Grimm said Scotto had taken “a disrespectful and cheap shot” by asking him the “off-topic” question during a rushed interview that had initially focused on a recent State of the Union address. Grimm later apologized to Scotto, saying, “[I] allowed my emotions to get the better of me and lose my cool.”
After pleading guilty to fraud, Grimm resigned from Congress on January 5, 2015. He unsuccessfully tried to re-run for Congress in 2018. He began serving as a political commentator for the right-wing media outlet Newsmax in 2022, and he was paralyzed in a horse-riding accident in 2024.
In the recent past, Grimm has published social media posts praising Trump for signing an executive order banning trans female athletes from playing women’s sports, accusing supporters of gender-affirming care of mutilating children and “normalizing pedophilia,” accusing drag queens of sexualizing children, slamming President Joe Biden for acknolwedging the Trans Day of Visibility when it happened to fall on the same day as Easter, and supporting the banning of Pride Flags from classrooms.
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