President Donald Trump has wiped clean the felony tax conviction of former Republican Congressman Michael Grimm, adding to a growing list of controversial pardons and commutations.
Grimm, who represented Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn from 2011 to 2015, was convicted in 2014 of tax fraud related to his Manhattan restaurant business before he joined Congress. Prosecutors accused him of serious crimes: underreporting income, paying workers “off the books” in cash, filing false tax documents, and lying under oath to cover it all up. They also said he “took deliberate steps to obstruct the federal and state governments from collecting taxes he properly owed.”
The Justice Department condemned Grimm’s behavior, saying, “Though the defendant casts himself as an individual with a life ‘nothing short of extraordinary in its commitment to service to this country and those in need,’ his habit of falsely denying and minimizing his criminal conduct and impugning anyone who questions him is indicative of an individual who has not come to terms with his own crimes.”
Despite being under indictment, Grimm won reelection in 2014. He pleaded guilty shortly after and resigned from Congress in 2015, serving eight months in prison before his release in 2016. A former Marine and FBI agent, Grimm also suffered paralysis from the chest down after a horse-riding accident in 2014.
Trump’s pardon of Grimm is part of a wider clemency spree. Alongside Grimm, Trump commuted the sentence of Larry Hoover, a Chicago gang leader serving life sentences for murder and running a criminal enterprise. Hoover’s supporters sought his release under the First Step Act, a criminal justice reform Trump signed in 2018.
The president also pardoned rapper Kentrell Gaulden, known as NBA YoungBoy, former Connecticut Governor John Rowland, and others convicted of various crimes, including tax offenses and corruption.
This recent wave of pardons has sparked debate over Trump’s use of presidential clemency, as many pardoned individuals are political allies, celebrities, or controversial figures. Among others, Trump recently pardoned reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley for tax evasion and bank fraud and Paul Walczak for tax crimes—after Walczak’s mother attended a fundraiser at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
