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Scandal-Scarred Rep. Michael Grimm Struggles to Find Staffers, Report Says

By Nicholas Rizzi | July 17, 2014 3:42pm
 Rep. Michael Grimm has had troubling finding a health and education legislative assistant willing to "live on the edge" and work for the embattled congressman.
Rep. Michael Grimm has had troubling finding a health and education legislative assistant willing to "live on the edge" and work for the embattled congressman.
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DNAinfo/Nicholas Rizzi

STATEN ISLAND — Wanted: Staffers eager to "live on the edge."

Scandal-scarred Rep. Michael Grimm is finding it difficult to get employees up to the task of working for him, Politico first reported Wednesday.

Grimm's deputy chief of staff Blaire Bartlett sent an email to Capitol Hill contacts to help her find a new health and education legislative assistant for the Republican congressman, a former FBI agent who's facing a 20-count indictment for tax fraud.

“As you can imagine it hasn’t been easy to find a qualified candidate who wants to live on the edge and take a chance working for Rep. Grimm,” Bartlett wrote in the email, according to Politico.

“Ideally this person would have legislative experience. Hill experience would be great and NYC experience would be amazing, but beggars can’t be choosers, right?”

A spokesman for Grimm, who represents Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.

Aside from the recent staffing issues, it's been a rough year for Grimm.

In April, he was hit with a federal indictment for underreporting more than $1 million from his Upper East Side restaurant, Healthalicious. It also came out that he has been barred from the FBI's New York field office that he worked out of until eight years ago.

In January, Grimm also made headlines after he threatened to throw a NY1 reporter off a balcony and break him half after the journalist asked a question about federal probes into his 2010 campaign fundraising.

He faces a race against former Brooklyn Councilman Dominic Recchia Jr. to keep his congressional seat and fundraising so far has been slow, the New York Daily News reported. Grimm only raised $23,430 from June 5 through June 30, while Recchia raised $262,009, the paper reported.