[ad_1]
When FBI brokers searched the house of Bob Menendez, New Jersey’s senior senator, in June final yr, they discovered $100,000 in gold bars and $480,000 in hidden money. A number of the cash, stuffed in envelopes, was hidden in garments, together with jackets with Mr Menendez’s identify stitched into them that had been hanging in his wardrobe.
The main points of the search are specified by an astonishing indictment unsealed on September twenty second. Mr Menendez, who has resigned because the chairman of the Senate international relations committee, and his spouse, Nadine, are accused of a mess of misdeeds, not least of which is sharing delicate info with Egyptian officers. Additionally they allegedly accepted items of the gold bars in change for shielding associates.
The three-count indictment additionally asserts that Mr and Mrs Menendez accepted a whole lot of 1000’s of {dollars} in bribes from three New Jersey businessmen, who had been additionally charged. The bribes the couple are accused of taking embody residence mortgage funds, compensation for a “low or no-show job”, residence furnishings and a Mercedes-Benz. Mr Menendez denies any wrongdoing. He stated the prosecutors are making “false claims” towards him and his spouse. He asserts that the federal prosecutors have “misrepresented the conventional work of a congressional workplace”.
What had been the bribes for? The indictment asserts that Mr Menendez shared delicate and private info with Egyptian authorities officers, with Will Hana, one of many charged New Jersey businessmen, appearing as go-between.
In Could 2018 the senator allegedly instructed Mr Hana {that a} authorities ban on gross sales of arms and ammunition to Egypt had been lifted. Mr Hana then texted this info to an Egyptian official. That July, Mr Menendez texted his spouse to inform Mr Hana that he was going to log out on a sale of $99m-worth of ammunition to Egypt. Mrs Menendez then forwarded the textual content to Mr Hana, who forwarded it to 2 Egyptian officers. One responded with a “thumbs up” emoji. Mr Menendez can be accused of ghost-writing a letter lobbying different senators to help lifting a maintain on $300m in support to Egypt.
Mr Menendez is alleged to have used his place to assist the three businessmen. The indictment alleges that the senator pressured an official on the federal Division of Agriculture in an effort to shield a enterprise monopoly associated to halal certification owned by Mr Hana. It additionally says he tried to disrupt legal investigations by New Jersey’s attorney-general associated to one of many different two. He really useful President Joe Biden nominate a sure particular person as New Jersey’s federal legal professional. The indictment says Mr Menendez believed he may affect the nominee to disrupt prosecutions of his enterprise associates (the nominee, who turned the state legal professional, is just not accused of wrongdoing).
This isn’t Mr Menendez’s first indictment. Scandal and investigation have dogged him for practically 20 years, at the same time as his political profession thrived. In 2015 he was accused of accepting free flights on a personal aircraft in change for lobbying on the proprietor’s behalf in a billing dispute and serving to to course of visas. The case went to trial in 2017, and ended with a hung jury. In 2006, earlier than he turned senator, then state legal professional, Chris Christie, who would later turn into New Jersey’s governor and a presidential hopeful, investigated allegations that Mr Menendez profited from lease paid by a charity for which he helped to rearrange federal funding. He was by no means charged with against the law, and stated a congressional ethics committee had given its approval.
The senator has “exceptional survival abilities”, says Micah Rasmussen, head of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics. A part of that’s all the way down to his personal tenacity. He was barely out of his teenagers when he was first elected to public workplace. As mayor of Union Metropolis, in north New Jersey, a notoriously corrupt spot, he bravely took on politicians in mattress with the Mafia. After his 2017 mistrial he stated: “To those that had been digging my political grave so they might leap into my seat, I do know who you’re and I received’t neglect you.” Some New Jersey politicians, together with his senate colleague, Cory Booker, attended the trial in help. Voters have had the prospect to throw him out, and haven’t.
These newest costs could also be tougher to flee (and extra could also be on the best way). “Even by New Jersey requirements, this feels completely different,” says Mr Rasmussen. Mr Menendez is adamant he’s harmless. “Since this investigation was leaked practically a yr in the past, there was an energetic smear marketing campaign of nameless sources and innuendos to create an air of impropriety the place none exists.” He and his spouse are anticipated to look at a listening to in Decrease Manhattan on September twenty seventh. ■
[ad_2]
Source link
