Former Congressman Michael Grimm, who left office after pleading guilty to tax evasion, will be spending eight months in prison. The former FBI agent and Marine said at his sentencing, "A Marine is taught, you don't fail. It's unacceptable. I didn't want to fail, and I made bad decisions that I'll regret for the rest of my life. I couldn't be more sorry or more remorseful. It's the reason why I gave up my seat."
Grimm had owned an Upper East Side health food restaurant, Healthalicious, before becoming Staten Island's Republican in the House. Feds accused of him of hiding over a million in revenues and hundreds of thousands in employees wages—and not paying taxing on either. Today, he said, "The harsh reality is that if you open a restaurant in Manhattan, where you have delivery boys you are going to have people off the books, or you're going to close. ... That's a fact. But the truth is, I should have closed."
Prosecutors had originally wanted 24-30 months, while Grimm's lawyer asked for a lenient sentence of no time. Grimm, a noted jerk, said, "Give me the opportunity to redeem myself."
Judge Pamela Chan was unimpressed with Grimm's remorse, "What the defendant and his partners did quite frankly was steal from the government and from the public ... That this type of crime is common does not make it any less serious in my mind. If anything, the commonness argues in favor of a stronger message of deterrence," adding, "The defendant had just completed his service as an FBI agent who investigated, as I said earlier, white collar crimes."
The Staten Island Advance reports, "Judge Chen gave Grimm until Sept. 10 to get his affairs in order and surrender."
