Why did Alan Grayson call a reporter a “shitting robot” yesterday? Because that reporter learned the liberal populist hero Florida congressman, worth somewhere south of $100 million, keeps as much as a quarter of his wealth in “hedge funds in the Cayman Islands” where foreign investors can dodge U.S. taxes.

Tampa Bay Times politics editor Adam Smith got a “potty mouthed” earful after asking the congressman, who’s considering a run for Senate, about those investments, and Grayson’s implied political hypocrisy, yesterday:

Grayson Fund Ltd. and Grayson Master Fund were incorporated in 2011 in the Cayman Islands, a well known tax Haven that [Mitt] Romney used as well, records show. That was the same year [Grayson] wrote in the Huffington Post that the IRS should audit every Fortune 500 company because so many appear to be “evading taxes through transfer pricing and offshore tax havens”...

Grayson’s financial disclosure statements indicate he has between $5-million and $25-million invested in the Grayson fund, and he lists no income from it.

Grayson has made two fortunes as a trial lawyer and president of a discount calling-card company (which, he notes, is in the Fortune 1000, not the top 500 firms he thinks should be audited by the government). The congressman told Smith that some lawyer told him to set up the offshore funds, and anyway, no foreigners had invested in them yet, so what’s the big deal?

“When I set up my investment funds I set it up like everyone else,” Grayson said, complaining about theTampa Bay Times looking for “some stupid, bull—— story. ... You want to write sh— about it, and you can’t because not a single dollar of taxes has been avoided,” he snapped...

Asked whether it was appropriate for a member of congress and potential U.S. Senator to set up an investment fund with an eye toward soliciting foreign investments in the future, Grayson scoffed.

“Are you f———- kidding? I set up a fund that might solicit foreign investors....I have no present intention of soliciting foreign investors,” he said. “Your perception issue is bull——.”

“This is even worse than Grayson’s girlfriend might run for congress 18 months from now,” referring to a recent Politico story attributed to no named sources. “This is a whole nother level of bull——....Are are you some kind of sh——-g robot? You go around sh——g on on people?”

For more information on how offshore investments work, go here. And for more information on Gawker’s offshore investments, go here, you shitting robots.

[Photo credit: AP Images]

Contact the author at adam@gawker.com.
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