Rep. Michael Grimm stole the post-State of the Union media spotlight when he was caught on tape threatening to break a reporter “in half like a little boy” when the journalist wanted to ask about a federal probe dogging the Republican congressman.
Grimm, 43, of Staten Island, has since apologized for his behavior, but one thing he couldn’t claim: that this was an isolated case.
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Tuesday night was typical bad behavior for Grimm, who has endured a long string of controversies and confrontations the media has seized — from an investigation into his campaign finances to questions about his notorious temper.
(WATCH: Grimm clashes with reporter)
For almost two years, Grimm has been the subject of a campaign finance probe by the feds surrounding his 2010 campaign. In recent weeks, the investigation has spread to Israel, where a powerful rabbi has accused Grimm’s associates of attempted blackmail. Last week, a Texas woman who was accused of donating more than $10,000 to the campaign agreed to plea negotiations, suggesting she might implicate Grimm in a “donor swapping” charge.
And the Marine and Gulf War veteran has been a longtime stary of public altercations with the press. Tom Wrobleski, the Political Editor for the Staten Island Advance, called Grimm “a gift that keeps giving.” Having covered Grimm since before he joined congress in 2011, Wrobleski is no stranger to his temper. Though never threatened like Scotto, he said there were times covering Grimm when he “felt the anger.”
In private conversations, Hill reporters share Grimm stories as well. Marin Cogan, a former POLITICO congressional reporter, wrote an article for National Journal on Wednesday in which she recounted one episode where the congressman “repeatedly [yelled] that he ‘did not serve 10 years in the FBI!’ to have to put up with something like this.”
Tuesday night, in his most highly publicized altercation to date, he went full bore at NY1 congressional reporter Michael Scotto.
(WATCH: Grimm apologizes for threat, says was not drinking)
“Let me be clear to you, you ever do that to me again I’ll throw you off this f——-g balcony,” Grimm told Scotto, adding: “I’ll break you in half. Like a boy.”
“I’m a human being, and sometimes your emotions get the better of you,” he said in a statement on Wednesday. “The bottom line, though, is it shouldn’t happen, you shouldn’t lose your cool. That’s why I apologized. When you’re wrong, you’re wrong, and you have to admit it. It shouldn’t happen.”
But Grimm’s most notable public dust-up took place in 1999, four years after he joined the FBI, where he was tasked with investigating Wall Street corruption. At a club in Queens, N.Y., Grimm got into an argument with his date’s estranged husband and, according to Gordon Williams, an off-duty N.Y.P.D. officer who spoke to The New Yorker in 2011, pulled a gun on the husband and threatened to kill him. Grimm later returned to the bar with another F.B.I. agent and a group of N.Y.P.D. officers and, according to Williams, forced everyone of color against the wall in an apparent attempt to find the date’s husband, who was of Caribbean descent. The following morning, Williams was informed that he was being investigated for “interfering with an F.B.I. investigation,” according to The New Yorker report.
In an interview with the Staten Island Advance, Grimm called the story “ridiculous” and part of the magazine’s “fiction.” He also said the Democratic Party was “looking to do a hatchet job” on him — and that the reporter who wrote the story, Evan Ratliff, was “on a witch hunt.” Ratliff later wrote that when he went to interview Grimm, the congressman abruptly ended an interview saying, “You don’t rate to come and question me on it, quite frankly.”
(Also on POLITICO: Van Hollen thanks Grimm for GOP response)
Grimm has provided more fodder for the media since he came on the political scene: In 2012, he was one of many congressmen who went swimming in the Sea of Galilee during a trip to Israel. More significantly, he failed to report a stop-off to Cyprus as part of the trip for nearly a year. (The organizer of that trip was later arrested for bribery.) In 2013, Brooklyn Magazine alleged that Grimm enjoyed a tryst the night before the government shutdown with a female companion in the bathroom of a Brooklyn bar. Grimm called the story a “Democrat-led smear campaign.” (Some reports say the woman was upset and Grimm was comforting her.)
The most serious charges concern the ongoing federal investigation into Grimm’s campaign finances.
In 2010, Grimm collected more than $500,000 for his campaign from the followers of the famous Orthodox rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto. Ofer Biton, a top aide to the powerful rabbi who helped Grimm secure these donations, was subsequently accused of embezzling millions of dollars from Pinto’s congregation. An investigation by The New York Times found that Grimm and Biton told the rabbi’s followers that the campaign “would find a way to accept donations that were over the legal limit.” (In August, Biton, an Israeli citizen, pleaded guilty to lying on a visa application.)
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