Sen. Bob Menendez convicted of all charges, including accepting bribes paid in cash, gold and a car
- by The McDowell News
- Jul 16, 2024
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Sen. Bob Menendez was found guilty on all counts Tuesday in his federal corruption trial.
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More shocking than the cash or gold, though, were allegations that Menendez had earned some of it by using his powerful perch on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to take actions that benefited Egypt, an important U.S. ally but one that is also often subject to American criticism over alleged human rights abuses.
Prosecutors said Nadine Menendez held herself out as a conduit to her powerful husband, exchanging texts with an Egyptian general and helping to arrange a Washington visit by the chief of Egyptâs intelligence service. To one general she texted, âAnytime you need anything you have my number and we will make everything happen.â
Sen. Menendez, prosecutors said, took actions to ingratiate himself with Egyptian officials, including providing them with information about the staff at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and ghostwriting a letter to fellow senators encouraging them to lift a hold on $300 million in military aid to Egypt. The senator also told his wife to let her Egyptian contacts know that he planned to sign off on $99 million in tank ammunition.
Charges, originally announced last September, were expanded over time, eventually including bribery, extortion, fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and, for Menendez, acting as a foreign agent of Egypt.
Prosecutors said serial numbers on the gold bars and fingerprints on tape that bound together the stacks of cash were traced to Hana and Daibes. Some fingerprints on tape, they said, belonged to Menendez.
In return for bribes, prosecutors said, Menendez took numerous actions to benefit the businessmen.
Those included protecting Egyptâs decision to award Hana a lucrative monopoly to certify that meat sent to Egypt met Islamic dietary requirements. Menendez asked a U.S. agriculture official to drop his opposition to the monopoly deal, which he had questioned over fears it would drive up prices.
Uribe testified at the trial that he paid for Nadine Menendez to get a Mercedes-Benz convertible in exchange for the senatorâs help assuring that his insurance business would not be affected by New Jersey criminal probes of a trucking company belonging to his friend.
Prosecutors also said Sen. Menendez attempted to interfere in a federal criminal prosecution of Daibes, a politically influential real estate developer accused of bank fraud. The U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Philip Sellinger, testified at the trial that Menendez questioned him about the Daibes prosecution and said he believed he was âbeing treated unfairly.â
Prosecutors also presented evidence that Menendez took actions favorable to Qatarâs government to help Daibes secure a multimillion-dollar deal with a Qatari investment fund.
Menendezâs political career began in 1974 when, only two years out of high school, he was elected to the education board in Union City, New Jersey. He later served in the state legislature, then was elected to the U.S. House in 1992. He became a U.S. senator in 2006.
Menendez had the dubious distinction of being the only U.S. senator indicted twice.
In 2015, he was charged with letting a wealthy Florida eye doctor buy his influence through luxury vacations and campaign contributions. After a jury couldnât reach a unanimous verdict in 2017, New Jersey federal prosecutors dropped the case rather than put him on trial again.
Voters accepted the mistrial as an exoneration and returned Menendez to the Senate.
After his second indictment last summer, Menendez claimed he was being persecuted, saying some people âcannot accept that a first-generation Latino American from humble beginnings could rise to be a U.S. Senator.â
While the trial was underway, he announced he would run for reelection as an independent.
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