Grimm Fundraising Investigation Remains Open

It’s been a while since there’s been an update into the federal investigation of Congressman Michael Grimm’s fundraising. In fact, the whole case has been pretty mum since we wrote last November that the House Ethics Committee halted their own investigation, deferring to officials at the Department of Justice that were looking into the same matters.

Last week, though, the Daily News hit the House committee for an update, and discovered that the investigation still remains open.

The Ethics Committee continues to defer to the feds. Both are looking at whether Grimm solicited and accepted contributions illegally from foreign donors and documented them improperly.

“The baseless allegations … remain without merit,” a Grimm spokeswoman told the Daily News.

The case centers around contributions sought with the help of Ofer Biton, an Israeli man who allegedly raised $500,000 for Grimm’s 2010 campaign in exchange for help obtaining a green card.

Biton pleaded guilty to visa fraud in August. He is a former aide to Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto, a prominent Israeli rabbi with a large following in New York, and allegedly used his connections with the rabbi’s flock to raise the funds for Grimm.