After Grimm, a Conservative Republican from Staten Island, announced his congressional run in 2009, he had to convince GOP leaders in Washington that he had the fundraising chops to merit their investment.
Grimm made his bones by gathering $500,000 from followers of celebrity Orthodox Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto, an Israeli who only speaks Hebrew and won't meet with women. At the side of Ofer Biton, a porn shop owner who was one of the rabbi's top aides, Grimm traveled throughout the New York region raising money from the rabbi's followers.
Most of these donors had never given to a federal campaign before and didn't live in the district where Grimm was running, but their money was key to Grimm's defeat of first-term Democratic incumbent Michael McMahon in 2010.
McMahon fired his assistant Jennifer Nelson mid-campaign for using the label "Jewish money" in reference to these donations.
Now Biton and Ronn Tarossian, CEO of a public relations firm, are the subjects of a federal investigation into whether they embezzled millions from the rabbi's congregation.
The New York Times, in a spinoff of its investigation into the allegations against Biton and Tarossian, questions Biton's role in the Grimm campaign (Biton reportedly said he wanted a green card out of it), and whether Grimm solicited donations from the rabbi's followers that he knew broke campaign finance rules -- because they were either too big or came from people without green cards.
Grimm has now lawyered up; the U.S. Attorney's Office and the FBI aren't talking to the press; the rabbi denies knowing what Grimm and Biton were doing; Biton's lawyer says his client never raised money for Grimm; and Tarossian's lawyer calls his client a "victim" in the case.
Few of the rabbi's followers have donated to Grimm's re-election campaign, some telling the Times that they are wary of the federal embezzlement case against Biton.
Grimm has issued the following written statement in response to the allegations:
"I have unequivocally denied the allegations made by anonymous sources in the New York Times article, but let me again be clear that I never accepted illegal cash contributions and never conspired to funnel money or to orchestrate any illegal contributions. At my instruction, my team already has communicated with appropriate personnel at the Federal Election Commission, the Department of Justice, and the House Committee on Ethics, and we look forward to working constructively with them to put these false allegations to rest. I fully expect that my political opponents will try to exploit the allegations for their political advantage by lodging complaints with those same agencies.
“As a Marine and a former FBI agent, I have always conducted myself with honor and integrity and I will continue to meet that high standard as a member of Congress. I want to thank my constituents for the outpouring of support they have offered and want them to know that I will remain focused on working hard for them every day, fighting for issues important to Staten Island and Brooklyn.”
The article from the New York Times.
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