The gloves are way off on Staten Island.

"So he is the one getting nasty, and I am going to try to do my best now to try not to get in the mud with him," Republican congressional candidate Michael Grimm said about his primary opponent, the current Congressman Dan Donovan.

Just hours before Grimm said that, NY1 learned that a volunteer for Michael Grimm's campaign filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics against Donovan's top staffer. It alleges Donovan and his team were using government resources for campaign work, something prohibited by House rules.

As evidence, the Grimm campaign sent NY1 a 35-page document of emails from Donovan's chief of staff. The document shows some of the emails went through an IP address that originates in the U.S. House of Representatives. The emails are related to the GOP campaign for district attorney in 2015.

NY1 asked Grimm if he knew about the complaint: "I knew about it," Grimm said. "I actually counseled someone to stay away from it."

The Donovan campaign dismissed the new attack, arguing the staffer was using public Wi-Fi in the Capitol on his personal device.

In a statement a Donovan spokeswoman Jessica Proud said, "We know Michael Grimm is desperate to cover up his litany of crimes and record as one of Obama's biggest allies, but this is a total waste of taxpayer dollars and voter's time."

The latest complaint comes as the Grimm campaign is accusing Donovan's team of intimidating voters and sending campaign workers posing as official investigators door-to-door to check on the authenticity of Grimm petitions. Grimm's campaign had sent NY1 grainy images of these workers.

Donovan's team fired back, releasing an audio recording of the incident that showed it was a cordial conversation. At no point in the recording do you hear the workers identify themselves:

"We knew what a petty [expletive] Dan Donovan was, so we knew that this was going to happen," someone says in the recording.

Bringing this all full circle, that audio recording happened to be with the same Grimm volunteer who filed the most recent ethics complaint, showing it's a small world in Staten Island politics.