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Rep. Grimm Dismisses Sketchy Donation Allegations: "I've Had People Try To Kill Me"
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Feb 19, 2012
Modified Feb 19, 2012
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By
Christopher Robbins
Published Feb 19, 2012
Modified Feb 19, 2012
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After reports that he strong-armed $500K in mystical donations from the followers of Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto, Staten Island Congressman Michael Grimm has had to distance himself from his duties as a Mitt Romney surrogate. But yesterday he told supporters that this whole "impropriety" stink isn't so bad, compared to his other gigs as a Marine and FBI agent. "I’ve had people try to kill me. I’m going to dust myself off and I’m going to keep fighting for the people of Staten Island and Brooklyn.”
But remember when Grimm allegedly threatened other people with murder, brandished a firearm in a crowded nightclub, then ordered all the "white people" to leave? It's a classic. The New Yorker's Evan Ratliff reports:
Not long ago, I finally found information about the night-club altercation...It involved a lawsuit filed in the summer of 2000 against Grimm by a Guyanese-American former N.Y.P.D. officer named Gordon Williams. This winter, I spoke with Williams about the incident. “It was one of those days that I will never forget,” he said. “You lose a loved one and you remember the day. It was like that.” When I spoke with Grimm later, however, he declared that Williams’s account is a fabrication, that he had acted with professional probity, and that he had been cleared of any wrongdoing.
On July 10, 1999, Williams said, he was working off duty at Caribbean Tropics. Shortly after midnight, Michael Grimm walked in with a woman of Caribbean descent. The woman’s estranged husband, who is also of Caribbean descent, was at the club and confronted Grimm. The two men began to argue. Williams escorted Grimm away. Williams recalled, “He said to me, ‘Thanks a lot man, he don’t know who he’s fucking with.’ Then he said something frightening. ‘I’ll fuckin’ make him disappear where nobody will find him.’ ” (Grimm calls this allegation “insane.”) After that, Williams said, Grimm and the woman left, as did the husband.
Around 2:30 A.M., there was a commotion on the dance floor. According to Williams, somebody was shouting, “He’s got a gun!” Following a crowd into the club’s garage, Williams discovered that Grimm and the husband had returned, and Grimm was holding a weapon. Grimm was “carrying on like a madman,” Williams said. “He’s screaming, ‘I’m gonna fuckin’ kill him.’ So I said to him, ‘Who are you?’ He put the gun back in his waist and said, ‘I’m a fucking F.B.I. agent, ain’t nobody gonna threaten me.’ ” (Grimm said he only moved his gun from an ankle holster to his waistband.) The bouncer at the front door told Williams that, when he patted Grimm down and found his gun, Grimm had showed his F.B.I. identification. The bouncer then let him pass through the club’s metal detector.
Grimm left the club, but at 4 A.M., just before the club closed, he returned again, according to Williams, this time with another F.B.I. agent and a group of N.Y.P.D. officers...Williams said that Grimm took command of the scene, and refused to let the remaining patrons and employees leave. “Everybody get up against the fucking wall,” Williams recalled him saying. “The F.B.I. is in control.” Then Grimm, who apparently wanted to find the man with whom he’d had the original altercation, said something that Williams said he’ll never forget: “All the white people get out of here.”
Nirmilla Jitta, a retired N.Y.P.D. officer who was at Caribbean Tropics that night, confirmed that Grimm “left and then he came back.” Grimm, she said, “forced everyone to stay in the club, saying that he was an F.B.I. agent. He was using his authority when he shouldn’t have been.” An employee of the club who was working that night remembers Grimm telling the white people to leave. Grimm “was really aggressive and really violent. You know, you put on a badge and you really think you are above everybody else,” the employee, who is white and who was allowed to depart, said.
Tagged
fbi
gop
GTL
michael grimm
republicans
sketchy donations
staten island
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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