Mayor says Grimm should’ve fessed up sooner

Mayor Bill de Blasio told a standing-room only crowd on Wednesday, January 7 that former Congressmember Michael Grimm should have “taken responsibility a lot earlier.”

“I think we’ve all felt for a long time that we were waiting for the shoe to drop,” said the mayor from the first-floor library of Bay Ridge’s High School for Telecommunications Arts and Technology, “and sometimes where there’s smoke there is fire, and that’s what happened here.”

Grimm resigned from Congress on January 5, two months after winning election to a third term, in the wake of his guilty plea on one felony count of tax evasion. Earlier in 2014, he had been charged in federal court in a 20-count indictment related to a business he owned prior to his election.

When asked to comment, the Brooklynite said that he’d wished the former rep had fessed up sooner.

“That being said, I am a proud Democrat and I hope a Democrat wins that seat,” he said.

When asked if he’d be getting involved in the race, de Blasio said simply, “I don’t have a plan to at this moment, but I might.”