Biz skim downs Grimm: No charge in rabbi-linked election cheat

Federal authorities indicted New York City’s only Republican member of Congress this week, charging him with 20 counts of tax, insurance, and immigration fraud in connection with a restaurant he co-owned prior to holding office.

Michael Grimm, an ex-Marine and former law-enforcement agent who represents all of Staten Island and part of Brooklyn, has been under federal investigation for allegations that his first campaign in 2010 strong-armed illegal contributions from followers of Israeli celebrity rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto, who reportedly funneled $250,000 to $300,000 to Grimm’s campaign, according to the Associated Press.

Grimm has denied these allegations, and no charges relating to his campaign financing were brought on Monday.

An Israeli businessman who was Grimm’s liaison to Pinto’s followers, Ofer Biton, pleaded guilty in August to an immigration fraud charge.

[On Friday, the Feds unsealed charges against Diana Durand, a Texas woman described by her attorney as a close social friend of Grimm, for allegedly making an illegal $10,000 contribution to Grimm’s 2010 campaign. She is charged with collecting money from straw donors and then reimbursing them.]

Regarding Monday’s charges that involve the congressman’s restaurant, U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said that “Grimm made the choice to go from upholding the law to breaking it. In so doing, he turned his back on every oath he had ever taken.”

Grimm vowed to prove his innocence — and to win re-election against his Democratic challenger, former Coney Island City Councilman Domenic Recchia.

“I am going to fight tooth and nail until I am fully exonerated,” Grimm said.

The Justice Department alleges that Grimm — who held a 45-percent share in the Upper East Side restaurant Healthalicious from 2007 until 2010 — knowingly paid employees in cash to dodge payroll taxes, under-reported the business’s revenue, failed to obtain proper worker’s compensation insurance, hired illegal immigrants, and lied under oath during the investigation.

The indictment even claims that he directed a new manager to continue the policies while he was running his successful upstart effort against then-Rep. Michael McMahon in 2010.