Rep. Michael Grimm pleads guilty to felony tax evasion

When Michael Grimm walks into Brooklyn federal court today, he will not be placing his hand on a bible and swearing an oath. Instead, the Staten Island Republican who once vowed to fight “tooth and nail” against his 20-count criminal indictment will plead guilty to one felony charge of tax evasion.

Grimm had been charged with hiding more than $1 million in sales and wages and with hiring undocumented immigrants at a New York City health food restaurant he opened soon after he quit his job as an FBI agent.

The hand-on-the-bible stuff is currently scheduled for January, when the then-to-be admitted felon would be sworn in to his second term as a member of the United States House of Representatives.

Despite the indictments — which were filed by federal prosecutor Loretta Lynch, now President Obama’s nominee to be his next Attorney General — Grimm won reelection in November, handily beating Democrat Domenic Recchia. But in a campaign debate, Recchia directly asked Grimm if he would resign if found guilty. Grimm replied “Certainly, if I was not able to serve, then of course I would step aside and there would be a special election.”

Forgiving his failure to use the subjunctive (though it pains me to do so), Grimm’s answer still contains that built in wiggle room: If he says out of prison, Grim would technically be “able to serve.”

Grimm faces up to three years in prison, but the judge has discretion to sentence the first-time offender to other penalties without requiring incarceration.

Congressional bylaws do not prohibit an admitted felon from taking the oath of office, but House ethics rules do suggest that any member convicted of crimes that carry a sentence of more than two years “should refrain” from voting on legislation until he or she is “reelected after the date of conviction.”

That would leave the good people of Staten Island (and parts of Brooklyn) with a shadow representative for a full two years — and it would leave House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, with an annoying dollop of political dead weight to start what many think will be his last term with the gavel.

Sources tell the New York Daily News that Boehner isn’t up for carrying Grimm around during his victory lap. The speaker is “merciless on discipline,” a “Boehner confidant” told the News.

At least that was the case with Indiana Rep. Mark Souder, who had to resign in 2010, when Boehner was minority leader, for an affair with a female staffer. And it was true for Chris Lee, R-N.Y., who was told to quit after he was caught emailing a shirtless photo of himself to a woman contacted through Craigslist.

But those were just lapses of, for lack of a better word, morality. Grimm, though he will be a felon, has no photographic record of sexual impropriety. “I know I’m a moral man,” he said in reaction to his April indictment.

That was just a few months after Grimm threatened to throw a local TV reporter off the balcony in the Capitol rotunda. “I’ll break you in half,” Grimm told Michael Scotto of NY1, who tried to question the physically much larger Representative after Obama’s 2014 State of the Union Address.

That public display was caught on camera.

Back to you, John.