In case you missed Chris Hayes' jaw-dropping interview with double (or triple) agent Felix Sater Friday night, MSNBC has actually posted it in embeddable form. That's it above. Sater is the kind of instinctual career criminal who will work for the Mob one day, the FBI or CIA the next day and the Russians the day after-- at the time, of course-- working for no one but Felix Sater. They don't come lower. But they do come as low. Remember Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm? Like Sater, he likes to immunize himself from criticism by screaming how he served in the military. But, like Sater, Grimm has flitted from one thuggish outfit after another, betraying each in turn and always looking out for Number One.And, like Sater, Grimm is currently out of prison and trying to rehabilitate his image-- except he's going about it by running for his old Staten Island/South Brooklyn congressional seat-- the most Mafia-oriented House seat in the country. Staten Island is the last redoubt of the Italian Mafia and south Brooklyn is America's top Russian Mafia territory. Both areas voted for Trump in 2016. The district as a whole gave Trump 53.6% of the vote to Hillary's 43.8%. The current congressman, Dan Donovan is a conventional mainstream conservative, a Republican whose voting record is pretty much identical to what Grimm's was like before he got hauled away to prison. He's a former district attorney, fighting for his political life in a district that is evenly split between the cops and robbers.Grimm was Steve Bannon's first House recruit, just before Bannon was unceremoniously banished from Trumpville-- his project to destroy the Republican Party establishment shelved. Grimm, who spent a couple months with his head up Bannon's ass, now routinely denounces him. Long before Grimm ever imagined he would run for Congress, he was an undercover agent for the FBI. And an undercover agent for the Mafia-- a double agent. I started following Mikey Suits before he got into politics, when he was just the lowlife bag man who took the Duke Cunningham long-disappeared and unaccounted for $400,000 bribe from Thomas Kontogiannis to George W. Bush. Funny how Grimm, Cunningham and Kontogiannis all went to prison but the "missing" $400K has never been recovered. So much water under the bridge in the last decade and a half!And last night, while many of us were watching slime bucket Felix Sater spinning his lies on MSNBC, Grimm-- remember, an ex-FBI agent-- released a statement about Andrew McCabe's firing.
"The firing of Andrew McCabe is the first time I've seen true justice on the federal level since the corrupt witch hunt I personally endured. Don't be shocked when Peter Strzok, Loretta Lynch and James Comey are the next to be revealed for the corrupt partisans that they are. As a former FBI agent that was investigated and fully exonerated by Office of Professional Responsibility and the Office of the Inspector General, I can attest to the integrity of that team of watchdogs. The FBI and DOJ's highest echelon of political appointees needs to be cleaned out and this was a necessary step in preserving the faith we all have in the nation's premier law enforcement agency and its brave rank and file."
Interesting perspective from the former Gambino Crime family operative! During the Romney campaign, when Grimm was already in Congress, enough Mikey Suits dirty laundry started leaking out that Romney staffers made the Staten Island congressman a persona non-grata and removed him from his campaign position and took his name off the official Romney website. The specific impetus was when Grimm snuck off from the the GOP frat party at the Sea of Galilee to visit some organized crime connections in Cyprus. The FBI was in hot pursuit and one of Grimm's Cyprus connections, Panayiotis "Peter" Papanicolaou, currently in prison. At the time, both the NY Times and the NY Post ran stories they'd been working on for a very long time... about Grimm's connection to the Mafia here at home, specifically he Gambino connection. Ironically, Grimm's first conversation with then Speaker John Boehner was to demand that Members of Congress be allowed to pack heat on the House floor. Instead Boehner had him banned from his office. The Post got excited about Grimm's Gambino connection.
Staten Island Rep. Michael Grimm investigated the Gambino crime family as an FBI agent-- before opening a restaurant with a business partner so close to one of the mob clan’s capos, he considers him an “uncle,” according to sources and court documents.The first-term Republican’s ex-business partner, Bennett Orfaly, regularly travels to the federal lockup in Fort Dix, NJ, to visit his pal Anthony "Fat Tony" Morelli, Brooklyn federal prosecutors said.Morelli’s mob assignments included overseeing the family’s investments in pornography, labor racketeering and illegal dumping, law-enforcement sources said.Late Gambino boss John Gotti put him in charge of the family’s Florida rackets, one source said.Morelli, who is serving time on several convictions, is “like an uncle” to Orfaly, another source said.Asked about his Gambino connections, Orfaly declined to comment. Grimm is under investigation for alleged fund-raising irregularities in his 2010 campaign.As an FBI agent, Grimm was responsible for keeping tabs on John Gotti’s brother Peter. He also worked undercover on a case that resulted in the arrest of Gambino soldier Greg DePalma....An Israeli named Ofer Biton, who until recently was jailed on an a charge of immigration fraud.He was released to house arrest on a $1.5 million bond after Orfaly posted his stake in several restaurants co-owned with Biton, according to court papers.Biton’s lawyer, John Meringolo, says the feds are threatening his client with more serious charges unless he testifies against Grimm in the fund-raising probe....Before his election to Congress in 2010, Grimm and Orfaly had been partners in an Upper East Side eatery, Healthalicious.McGinley [Grimm's lawyer] says that prior to making his run, Grimm sold his share of that business to Orfaly.But three sources familiar with the ongoing probe, told The Post the purchaser was Biton. Either way, Biton now owns Healthalicious outright, sources said-- and he is partners with Orfaly in several Manhattan pita restaurants.As far as Biton goes, prosecutors claim that a decade ago, he was a member of an ecstasy ring in California and was wiretapped talking to a senior Israeli organized-crime associate. Biton was never charged with any drug crime.In addition to his problems with the feds, Grimm also faces a civil lawsuit by Healthalicious workers, alleging wage violations when he was part-owner.A lawyer for the workers, Michael Faillace, said they settled with Orfaly, but Grimm asked that an agreement with him be postponed until after the election.
Now keep in mind that before Grimm ran for Congress, he had been kicked out of the FBI, mostly for taking payoffs from Kontogiannis. Kontogiannis' story would be the biggest political blockbuster of our lifetimes. He's been told he'd be found dead in his cell if he ever tries to tell it though-- and it involves Saudis, Greeks, a $400,000 cash bribe to George Bush and... Grimm. In August, 2013, Grimm's fundraiser Ofer Biton plead guilty in a sweet deal that saved Grimm a lot of trouble.
A former fund-raiser for Representative Michael G. Grimm, whose campaign finances are under investigation by federal prosecutors, pleaded guilty on Friday to visa fraud.The former fund-raiser, Ofer Biton, an Israeli immigrant who helped direct hundreds of thousands of dollars from supporters of a revered rabbi to Mr. Grimm’s campaign before his election to Congress in 2010, was arrested last August and charged with lying on his visa application.Followers of the rabbi, Yoshiyahu Pinto, have said in interviews that Mr. Grimm or Mr. Biton told them that the campaign would find a way to accept donations that were over the legal limit, were given in cash or were given by foreigners who did not have permanent resident status.
Is it any wonder Grimm hates the FBI today. Too bad they don't talk about what he was up to when he was a double agent. It would make the Bureau look too bad.
