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Allies race to defend embattled Michael Grimm

WASHINGTON – Embattled Rep. Michael Grimm’s closest allies are waving the flag as they try to mount a PR defense — a day after the Staten Island Republican got slapped with a 20-count indictment for fraud, perjury and obstruction charges related to his operation of a restaurant.

His mentor, former Staten Island borough president, insisted Grimm was a patriot, not a criminal.

“He’s like my son. I love this man. He’s at my house all the time. I know him backwards and forwards. He’s clean he’s honest and he loves his country,” Guy Molinari said on Geraldo Rivera’s call-in radio show on WABC Tuesday.

“He loves his country and joined the Marine Corps. I also was in the Marine Corps,” said Molinari, who took the Staten Island Republican under his wing and helped wrap up the GOP nomination for him in 2010.

“He got a battlefield promotion I got a battlefield promotion.”

“Isn’t it a shame that in the United States of America this kind of thing could happen?” he asked.

Molinari also repeated his charge that New York’s senior senator, Charles Schumer, was behind the indictment, without offering evidence.

Grimm’s fellow Republican lawmakers in D.C. have been more circumspect. It’s nearly impossible to remove Grimm from the ballot, so the party has a strong interest in maintaining his viability.

“I think all members should be held to the highest ethical standards,” House Speaker John Boehner told reporters Tuesday “Mr. Grimm is under indictment. He resigned from his committee assignment and I think he made the right decision.”

Grimm told reporters Tuesday Boehner had not told him to resign. His office said he would participate in votes this afternoon.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, which provides critical funding for GOP candidates, said it would “continue to assess Congressman Grimm’s re-election campaign” during his legal proceedings.

On Monday, Grimm asked to temporarily give up his seat on the powerful Financial Services Committee so that the panel’s work wouldn’t be “distracted” by charges he called “trumped up.”

Rivera, who called Grimm a friend, teed off on the indictment during his radio show.

“For Michael Grimm to be indicted for hiring undocumented immigrants in New York City, the sanctuary city of sanctuary cities, is a pathetic politically motivated witch hunt,” he said.

Calling Grimm a “hero agent” and a combat vet, Rivera continued: “If you live on the upper East side of New York or the Upper West Side of New York and you order a pizza — that pizza is going to be delivered by an undocumented immigrant … Are you kidding me?”

The feds charge that Grimm hid more than $1 million in profits while running the Second Avenue restaurant Healthalicious between 2007 and 2010.