US Senator Mr. Robert Menendez before his meeting with the President of the Republic of Cyprus, Mr. Nikos Christodoulides at the Presidential Palace in the capital of Nicosia. Cyprus, Thursday, August 24, 2023.
Danil Shamkin | Nurphoto | Getty Images
U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey and his wife were indicted in New York on federal bribery charges related to an allegedly “corrupt relationship” with three businessmen from their home state to protect the men and benefit the nation of Egypt.
“This investigation is very much ongoing,” said Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office Damian Williams at a press conference about the indictment against the Democratic senator and his wife, Nadine Menendez. “. “We are not done.”
Also charged in the case are the three businessmen: Wael Hana, Jose Uribe and Fred Daibes.
Menendez, who is up for reelection in 2024, has agreed to step down as chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee because of the indictment, according to a source close to him who spoke with NBC News.
The indictment says that Menendez and his wife from at least 2018 through 2022 accepted “hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for using Menendez’s power and influence as Senator” to benefit the men and Egypt.
“Those bribes included cash, gold, payments toward a home mortgage, compensation for a low-or-no-show job [for Nadine], a luxury vehicle, and other things of value,” according to the indictment, which was issued by a grand jury in Manhattan federal court.
This is the second time Menendez has been indicted on federal bribery charges.
In 2015, he was charged with 14 criminal counts related to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of lavish gifts and campaign donations he received from a Florida ophthalmologist, Salomon Melgen.
Melgen was later convicted of Medicare fraud and sentenced to more than 15 years in prison. But the prosecution against Menendez was dropped after his trial ended in a hung jury.
U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and his wife Nadine Arslanian arrive for a reception honoring of Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his wife Mareva Mitsotakis in the East Room of the White House on May 16, 2022 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images
Menedez and Nadine in the new case are charged with three counts: conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud, and conspiracy to commit extortion under color of official right.
Hana, Uribe and Daibes are charged with the first two of those counts.
The indictment alleges that Menendez sought to disrupt a federal criminal prosecution of Daibes in exchange for the money and other items of value.
Those efforts allegedly included the senator recommending to President Joe Biden that he nominate a candidate for U.S. Attorney for New Jersey “who Menendez believed could be influenced by Menendez with respect to Daibes’s case,” the indictment charges.
Biden later nominated Phillip Sellinger as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey. Sellinger ended up being confirmed for that post as the top federal prosecutor in the state.
A phone message left at Menendez’s personal Senate office was not immediately returned. A spokesman for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee did not respond to a request for comment.
The indictment says that during a June 2022 raid on the Menendezs’ New Jersey home and a safe deposit box, federal agents found cash, gold and a luxury vehicle that were the “fruits of [the couple’s] corrupt bribery agreement” with the businessmen.
“Over $480,000 in cash — much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe—was discovered in the home, along with over $70,000 in Nadine Menendez’s safe deposit box,” the indictment said.
“Some of the envelopes contained the fingerprints and/or DNA of Daibes or his driver,” the charging document said.
In addition to the cash, agents also seized 81.5 ounces of gold bars, which at current prices are worth about $155,000.
Two of the gold bars DAIBES provided are depicted in the photographs.
Source: SDNY
Menendez was setting up a legal defense fund in connection with the criminal probe before he was indicted, according to NBC New York.
That defense fund appears to be run directly by Menendez and his longtime campaign treasurer John Palumbo, according to a filing sent to the Internal Revenue Service.
The document, signed by Palumbo in July, lists Menendez as a “grantor” of the fund and the campaign treasurer as a “trustee.”
The fund is titled the “Menendez Legal Defense Fund” and with a listed goal of paying “expenses in connection with legal proceedings incurred in connection with service to the U.S. Senate.”
The new indictment against Menendez comes nearly a decade after the Supreme Court began making it more difficult for federal prosecutors to win corruption cases against elected officials and others for acts related to government services.
Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell was convicted of corruption in 2014, only to have his conviction overturned two years later by the Supreme Court in a ruling.
In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court found that prosecutors had applied what justices called “a boundless” definition of what constitutes an official act.
In 2020, the Supreme Court in a unanimous ruling reversed the fraud convictions of two aides to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie who played key roles in the 2013 “Bridgegate” scandal.
Justice Elena Kagan in the decision wrote that Bridget Anne Kelly and William Baroni “could not have violated the federal-program fraud or wire fraud laws” because the scheme did not “aim to obtain money or property.”
Last year, another unanimous Supreme Court ruling tossed out the conviction on a so-called “honest services” charge of Joseph Percoco, the manager of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s re-election campaign.
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