Huge response to fundraiser for former congressman paralyzed in accident

A fundraiser for a Republican former congressman who was reportedly paralyzed in a fall from a horse during a polo event in September has raised more than a quarter of a million dollars in two days.

Michael Grimm, also a former US marine and FBI agent who served seven months in prison for financial fraud before being released in 2016, is receiving treatment at the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in New Jersey, according to the New York Post.

Ongoing care and treatment to help him walk again will cost millions of dollars, a statement accompanying the fundraiser said.

Grimm, 54, represented Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn before resigning in 2015 after he was indicted on federal tax and financial fraud charges relating to practices at a New York restaurant he co-owned. He pleaded guilty to a single count of tax evasion.

“Your moral compass, Mr Grimm, needs some reorientation,” US district court judge Pamela Chen told him at his sentencing.

He attempted a political comeback after his release from prison in 2016 but lost a Republican primary to regain his old seat. An avid equestrian who frequently posted to social media photographs of himself with horses at polo events, Grimm has worked more recently as a pundit for the rightwing network Newsmax.

“Our friend and former congressman Michael Grimm suffered a tragic accident that has rendered him paralyzed. He needs help to cover the substantial costs that insurance doesn’t cover on his long road to recovery,” his friend Vincent Ignizio, a former Republican New York City council member, told the Post.

“I hate to even say it,” said Ignizio, also a former New York state lawmaker. “Mike is paralyzed from the chest down. He’s currently immobilized and is currently being treated to try to give him the function that he can obtain. A lot of prayers are needed.”

The GoFundMe page gave few details of the accident other than Grimm was thrown from a horse during a polo tournament in September. Newsmax cited its own host, Greg Kelly, in saying that Grimm “sustained a neck injury that required surgery, and that the former congressman was in an unidentified Westchester hospital”.

Kelly was the first to break the news of Grimm’s accident on his radio show in September.

Ignizio told the Post that Grimm had been moved last week to the rehabilitation center, where the late Superman actor Christopher Reeve was treated after a similar life-changing accident in 1995 during an equestrian event in Virginia.

The Democratic former New York council member Domenic Recchia, who lost to Grimm in a 2014 congressional contest, told the Post he had contributed to the fundraiser for his old political rival and friend.

“This isn’t a Democratic or Republican issue. It’s a human issue. Michael Grimm gave his life for our country in the armed services. We have to unite together,” he said.

“It was a tragic accident. Hopefully one day he’ll walk again.”

Since leaving politics, Grimm reinvented himself as a foreign correspondent, traveling to Ukraine in 2022 for Newsmax and sharing his experiences on his website grimmreporting.com.

A vocal supporter of Donald Trump, who won a second presidency on 5 November, Grimm has posted to his X account messages about climate denial and a conspiracy theory that the actor Mel Gibson had exposed a pedophile ring operating in Hollywood.