Grimmgate was just child’s play

THE WATERGATE-STYLE burglary turned out to be a Grimm fairy tale.

Staten Island Rep. Michael Grimm retreated Tuesday from claims he was the victim of a politically motivated breakin after cops charged two eighth-graders with vandalizing his campaign office.

“It is unfortunate that these young kids would commit such an act of vandalism, yet we are very relieved to know this is not politically motivated,” Grimm said in a statement after the arrest.

Grimm also conceded that a campaign worker — not politically motivated operatives — may have mistakenly erased polling data and other information from the campaign’s hard drives.

“It looks like somebody in the office put a Linux disc into a Windows machine and it erased the data,” a law enforcement source told the Daily News.

Police said one of the 14-year-old boys told a guidance counselor at Intermediate School 2 that he and a friend shattered the office’s windows Saturday night.

“It was a matter of opportunity,” a second police source said. “He was walking with another person and they decided to throw [a piece of concrete] through a window.”

The boys, who were not named by police, were charged with criminal mischief.

A classmate of one of the boys, described him as a troublemaker.

“He’ll throw stuff around. He curses at teachers,” said the student.

Grimm, a Republican who is under investigation by the FBI for alleged campaign finance violations, initially claimed thieves used an old key to break into the rented space and installed software that erased data.

“This heinous act represents an assault on democracy and the political process, more so than it does on me as a person or a candidate,” Grimm said on Sunday night.