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The U.S. Capitol Police said Friday that Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y., will not be charged over an incident earlier this week in which he verbally threatened a reporter.
“Consistent with our law enforcement responsibilities, we looked into the event, determined there isn’t a complainant and have closed the matter,” Shennell Antrobus, a spokesman for the U.S. Capitol Police, said in a statement.
The confrontation occurred on a balcony in the U.S. Capitol following the president’s State of the Union address Tuesday night.
Grimm, who represents Staten Island and part of Brooklyn, walked out of an interview with cable news station NY1 when reporter Michael Scotto tried to throw in a last question about a long-running FBI investigation into his campaign finances.
After Scotto finished his report, Grimm stormed back, leaned into Scotto and said, “Let me be clear to you. If you ever do that to me again, I’ll throw you off this (expletive) balcony.”
Scotto protested, saying he was asking “a valid question.”
Grimm glanced at the camera, leaned in again and said, “No. No. You’re not man enough. You’re not man enough. I’ll break you in half. Like a boy.”
When the possibility of criminal charges first arose in reports, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is also a former federal prosecutor, called that “laughable.”
“He lost his temper. I was the United States Attorney and if someone came to me with a case like this they wanted to investigate I’d throw them out of my office,” Giuliani said. “First off all, he didn’t touch him… Federal crimes are killing people, selling drugs, organized crime, massive frauds. To use the resources of the federal government for this kind of stuff gives it the suggestion, the appearance that it’s being politically motivated. The Attorney General should be careful not to have that appearance out there.”
Asked about the incident soon afterward, Grimm was defiant. In a statement, he said he felt Scotto had been disrespectful and unprofessional.
But after a morning of heavy public criticism, he phoned Scotto to apologize.
“He said he overreacted,” Scotto told The Associated Press. “He said that the behavior that he showed wasn’t him. So I accepted the apology.”
Later Wednesday, Grimm told a group of reporters that he would probably be getting an earful from his mother.
“The bottom line is, sometimes I wear my emotions on my sleeve,” he said. “I was wrong. It shouldn’t have happened.”
Agencies/Canadajournal
