Rep. Michael Grimm to plead guilty to felony count of tax evasion, sources say

[brooklynite]

Source: New York Daily News

Rep. Michael Grimm will plead guilty on Tuesday to a felony charge of cheating on his taxes at a Manhattan restuarant he co-owned before entering Congress, the Daily News has learned.

The Staten Island Republican will enter the plea in Brooklyn federal court. A 1 p.m. hearing in the case has been scheduled, a court official said.

Grimm was charged in a 20-count federal indictment in April with hiding more than $1 million in sales and wages at the restaurant, and with hiring undocumented immigrants.

He had pleaded not guility to all the charges, and his trial was to begin in February.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/grimm-plead-guilty-felony-count-tax-evasion-article-1.2053630

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I hope DCCC has identified a candidate more competent than Domenic Recchia

[hrmjustin]

1. Special election in my district coming up but i doubt we will win it.

[DuckBurp]

2. Isn't he the Congressman who threatened the TV reporter?

... that he would throw him off the balcony at the Capitol for asking him the wrong questions?

[vkkv]

5. Yes.

[mikeysnot]

10. It will beinteresting to see how the media reacts to this...

Will they demand he resign like the did with Anthony Wiener. Same state for crying out loud.

[Nye Bevan]

12. He actually spun this as a positive in his campaign, believe it or not.

"I was a US Marine.... I am tenacious".

[rurallib]

3. the judge really needs to throw his ass in the slammer

When an elected official is convicted, they should get the full extent of the consequences.
To let him go with a slap on the wrist sends yet one more really bad signal to the public on how laws are enforced differently for them and then for us.

[calimary]

4. Hey, watch 'em move Alex Sink up to New York. Or hey - Martha Coakley from MA!!!

Two STELLAR examples of stupid-ass useless Democratic LOSERS. But they sure keep picking them to run for office - and get their asses handed back to them by their GOP opponent.

NEITHER ONE of those women should EVER be allowed to run for office AGAIN!!!!!! Martha Coakley should consider early retirement. Because of her that idiot scott brown was able to gain a foothold. Not that he could keep it once he gained it, but still - she in her arrogance and her OWN idiocy handed him the keys to the Senate that he had NO BUSINESS even getting near to, unless as a Capitol Hill TOURIST. And Alex Sink - going around her Florida district mewling about how "Obamacare" was bad but... but... but... we'll fix it... SHIT!!!! You DO NOT CONCEDE DEFEAT BEFORE YOU EVEN GET TO THE FINISH LINE!!! DO NOT give the enemy a leg up! You do NOT do that!!!! She shoulda showed guts and stood tall and strong and said "I'M DAMN PROUD of the ACA! And how many people it's helped. And how many people who couldn't get insurance now can afford it. And how the rest of us save so much more money! And how it did away with pre-existing conditions so you can have insurance TOO. And how it allows you to keep your kid covered til he or she turns 26 and has a chance to get on their feet..." and so on and so on. But no. She couldn't possibly show backbone like that...

[vkkv]

7. Maybe it's just me

but I find it dizzying to try to read with so many animations going on next to the text that I'm trying to read. In fact I could not finish reading your post..

[24601]

14. So I live a district and a half away from Alex Sink. She is, like all of us, flawed, but on the

whole, a good person. She's far better than Charlie Christ ever came close to being. Florida's 13th District is complex and competitive. It's almost everything between Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico with a little piece of St. Pete chopped into Kathy Castor's district (Florida 14th).

Yeah, agree that Alex Sink lost two very close elections - and that one of them was the 2010 Governor's race against Rick Scott. Like Charlie Christ, Alex lost by about one percentage point.

2010 was an anomaly. If that election were in 2008, Sink would have won in a landslide. If it had been in 2012, she would have won with plenty of breathing room, But you get the electoral environment that exists at the time and not the one you would like to have had. 2010 was hard for Democrats lots of places, not just Florida and you can't lay that just on Sink. Touting ACA would not have helped her in Florida's 13th. It would have turned a reasonably close race into a bloodbath. Have you seen Sen Schumer's comments on ACA? Sink was more supportive that he was.

Look, she won statewide before losing these two races. She took her lumps and has effectively retired from electoral politics. We don't need to gang up on her and don't need a pound of flesh. Thanks for your service Alex.

[calimary]

21. Fair enough. But to me, she was the poster child for what's been wrong with the Democratic Party's

Last edited Tue Dec 23, 2014, 02:03 PM - Edit history (1)

"approach". Her campaign which seemed awfully flaccid to me, making excuses for the ACA when she should have been out there with teeth showing and the proverbial boxing gloves laced on and ready to fight for what she believed rather than embracing the enemy talking points and thereby reinforcing them (oh, okay then. I get it. I guess those guys across the aisle are right about "Obamacare." I guess the "Obamacare" thing really IS sucky then) and not asserting - "I'm DAMN PROUD..." of it and spelling out WHY, then all that's accomplished is to verify the lies and distortions of the GOP.

Our poor pathetic party has to STOP doing that!!! She didn't. She was guilty of reinforcing what's come to be perceived as truth about our Dems:

That they don't stand for anything,

That there's no difference between the two parties,

So why vote for the wishy-washy when you at least know where the other team stands and what you're gonna get. Even if it's a hose job. I think that's what happened to Mary Landrieu. A shame we lost a "D". But, really, how reliable a "D" was she? Could she be counted on to stand with what we believe? Most of the time she was problematic. I hate to relinquish a "D" seat to an "R". But in many cases we would have gotten the equivalent of more "R"-slanted voting out of her than reliable "D" votes. At least with an "R" in there, we know what we've got, without a doubt. And it can be counted on to be reliably that way. And it won't be wishy-washy. A solid reliable "R" will always beat a DINO. With both sides. Even the bad guys' side - because they'd rather go with a sure thing every time, too.

Anybody remember the campaign in 2004 - when dubya went around saying "you may not agree with me, but you know where I stand"? Anybody? That was VERY powerful, VERY shrewd, and VERY effective. People go for certitude. That telegraphs as "strength" and "guts" and "power." Why do you think he kept being hailed as a "decisive leader" over and over and over and over again - even when he was as wrong as sin? It worked. It resonated with the public - enough of 'em anyway. It telegraphed "strong" and "decisive." Even when it was just totally wrong and frankly more than a little fucked up. It got the bad guys close enough to steal it - AGAIN. Which, in my opinion, is exactly what they did.

And they'll do it again in two years if we stay wishy-washy and mealy-mouthed and we don't learn a damn thing from what got us to this point.

[24601]

23. Tampa and St Pete. (& Clearwater, etc) are one television market. When there is a Special Election

anywhere in the area, we all get blanketed with the ad buys. It was very clear where Sink and Jolly stood. The national media may have minimized the differences, but the differences were never in doubt. We all knew that Sink was going to stand with the President and that Jolly was going to be in opposition.

My observation on the campaign was that in our Tampa Bay region, what probably hurt Sink far more than the ACA (which she never voted for and which everyone knows isn't going to be repealed) was the unpopularity of the Congressional Democratic leadership - even though Reid doesn't have influence over the House of Representatives. Tying Alex to Nancy Pelosi and knowing that she would cast a vote to make her Speaker was more damaging than knowing she would vote for legislation favored by President Obama. I don't recall seeing an ad where it wasn't stressed that Sink would be supporting the Obama, Reid, Pelosi team, not just the Obama Administration. That was just too much to overcome in the absence of Jolly self-destructing with some campaign-imploding mistakes - and he really didn't make any, running a technically smooth campaign.

[vkkv]

6. Felony conviction means he cannot vote, so

How is he suipposed to represent his constituents?

He can still VOTE in CONGRESS???

[24601]

24. Yes he could still vote in Congress. There are only a few ways to remove a member of Congress. One

is to die on office. In the absence of death, there is resignation. Then there is the most common method of removing a member - by voting him/her out of office.

Finally, there is the least common method - a vote of 2/3 of the sitting members can expel a member.

The Constitution is pretty clear on the requirements for holding office and there are no provisions for recalling a member or for term limits.

It's less clear if a previous impeachment & conviction can bar someone from serving as a member of congress. For example, Alcee Hastings (D-Florida, 20th District) was a federal judge who was impeached by the House and Convicted by the Senate in 1989. As a result, he was removed from his judiciary position. The Constitution says that the consequences of impeachment are limited to removal from office (which he was) and a bar from holding future office (which the Senate did not specifically vote on, so he was not prohibited from being elected to/serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcee_Hastings

From the Wiki Article: "In 1988, the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives took up the case, and Hastings was impeached for bribery and perjury by a vote of 413-3. He was then convicted in 1989 by the United States Senate (also controlled by the Democrats), becoming the sixth federal judge in the history of the United States to be removed from office by the Senate. The Senate, in two hours of roll calls, voted on 11 of the 17 articles of impeachment. It convicted Hastings of eight of the 11 articles. The vote on the first article was 69 for and 26 opposed,[3] providing five votes more than the two-thirds of those present that were needed to convict. The first article accused the judge of conspiracy. Conviction on any single article was enough to remove the judge from office."

[iscooterliberally]

8. Great. He doesn't pay his taxes.

So the tax payers get screwed. Then the tax payers have to pay for a special election because he refused to step down. This jerk is a big part of the reason that we the people fucking hate congress. What an asshole. I hope the judge tosses him over a balcony and right into prison.

[mikeysnot]

9. And the republicans will still vote for him...

sigh....

[UpInArms]

11. for emphasis: The Staten Island Republican will enter the plea of guilty

Guilty/GOP

[Ryan Fitzomething]

13. A Grimm Future?

Hey, you knew SOMEBODY was going to pun it!

[marble falls]

15. The little weasle pled out. I wished he'd had fought it out and got a real sentence.

[Ruby the Liberal]

16. Details?

[marble falls]

17. He pled guilty to one charge.

[Ruby the Liberal]

18. Jail? Out of office now?

1 charge - he got off really easy...

[marble falls]

19. He's trying to stay out of jail and in office. I bet he does at least some time and loses his office

[donnasgirl]

20. It is my hope

That everyone keeps in mind that a very high profile individual ( Al Sharpton ) Owes somewhere in the vicinity of 5 million in back taxes.
All tax Cheats need to be put in Jail no matter what side of the isle they are from.

[William Seger]

22. It is my hope

... that DUer's, at least, can avoid the right-wing false equivalence, "look over there!" trick by keeping in mind the difference between owing back taxes and being a "tax cheat" -- Grimm is charged with deliberately hiding income -- and the utter irrelevance of Sharpton to Grimm's case, anyway.

[donnasgirl]

25. To my knowledge

He has been owing taxes since 2005 or 2006, in my opinion he is no better than the person who knowingly cheats.

[hrmjustin]

26. Has he been convicted?

[donnasgirl]

27. Not yet

But i do believe he owes the money and it should be settled asap so he can quiet down the Republican side of the isle. I will put my feelings down in simple terms, I will not be a Hypocrite and stand up for people who do not pay their taxes, i and my spouse are expected to pay our taxes on our salaries no matter what, and just because people can hire high priced tax lawyers to fight what they owe does not excuse the fact they owe the money.

[hrmjustin]

28. And your thoughts on Grimm?

[donnasgirl]

29. I believe

He is a vile man who is a thief and a Republican who got caught with his fingers in the Governments cookie Jar.

[hrmjustin]

30. Thanks for answering.