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Bannon Backs Grimm in Comeback Bid

Comes as Grimm stages challenge for old seat

Former Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y., poses with former White House strategist Steve Bannon on Wednesday in Washington. (Michael Caputo via Twitter)
Former Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y., poses with former White House strategist Steve Bannon on Wednesday in Washington. (Michael Caputo via Twitter)

Former White House strategist Steve Bannon endorsed former New York Rep. Michael Grimm’s challenge to Republican Rep. Dan Donovan for his old congressional seat.

Former Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo, now a spokesman to Grimm, tweeted a photo of Grimm with the head of Breitbart News.

The caption said with the caption “Game on. #MAGA,” the New York Daily News reported.

Caputo told the Daily News that he and Grimm spent the afternoon strategizing about the race.

 

Grimm gave up his seat representing New York’s 11th District in 2015 and spent eight months in prison for tax fraud. He admitted he had hidden more than $900,000 in receipts at his Manhattan restaurant, Healthalicious. He was released in May 2016.

Caputo was not clear if Bannon would campaign for Grimm as he did for former Judge Roy Moore during Alabama’s Senate primary.

“Everything is on the table,” he said. “The only person more popular among Republicans in [the district] than Steve Bannon is Michael Grimm and Donald Trump.”

In particular, Caputo hit Donovan for being one of 20 Republicans who voted against repeal of the 2010 health care law.

Caputo also criticized Donovan for opposing stripping federal dollars to so-called “sanctuary cities” that provide protection to undocumented immigrants.

But Donovan’s spokeswoman Jessica Proud invoked Trump as well by saying the endorsement was a “bad day for swamp draining,” because Grimm’s “liberal record on immigration, trade and gun control must have made for some awkward conversations.”

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