A former Congressman who pleaded guilty to tax fraud has become the latest beneficiary of Donald Trump’s sweeping pardons after the president used his executive power to offer clemency.
Michael Grimm, who once threatened to throw a reporter off a balcony, served seven months in prison and one month under house arrest after pleading guilty in 2014 to aiding and assisting in the preparation of a false tax return.
The Republican was offered a full pardon on Wednesday, just one day after Trump also pardoned reality television stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, both of whom were also convicted on tax-related charges.
Grimm represented Staten Island in the US Congress from 2011 to 2015, but his political career eventually came to an end amid a series of tax crimes.
Among other things, he admitted to concealing $900,000 in receipts from a Manhattan restaurant he was involved in, called Healthalicious.
An accountant then used the false information to file false federal and state tax returns for the restaurant.
Grimm was also caught once caught on camera threatening to throw a New York television reporter off a balcony following Barack Obama’s State of the Union address in 2014.
The reporter had asked him about an investigation into his 2010 campaign finances, prompting the former FBI agent to threaten to break him “in half.”
“Let me be clear to you, you ever do that to me again, I’ll throw you off this f—— balcony,” he was heard saying.
Later that year, Grimm was paralyzed from the chest down after he was thrown from a horse during a polo tournament.
He sought re-election in his old seat three years later, but was defeated in the 2018 primaries by a Trump-backed candidate.
Trump’s latest pardon continues his second-term trend of issuing clemency for loyalists and allies, including for those convicted of white collar crimes.
While it is not uncommon for presidents to use their executive powers in this way, Trump has issued an unusually large number of pardons during his second term after years of claiming that he had also been the victim of a “weaponized” justice system.
Before becoming president, Trump was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal with porn star Stormy Daniels that could have derailed his chances of becoming president in 2016.
In a separate civil case last year, a New York judge also ordered him to pay more than $US350 million after finding he had committed fraud while building the real estate empire that helped catapult him into the White House.
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