Defiant to the end, New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez told David Cruz of NY Spotlight News last Thursday, “The easiest thing to do would be to resign. But that’s not me. I don’t do the easiest thing. I’m innocent, and I’m going to prove it.”
Menendez spent most of the 30-minute interview either denying charges of bribery, extortion, and fraud brought against him in recent weeks, or claiming that such charges were politically motivated in such a way to make him look bad.
He told Cruz, “As I read the indictment, there’s a lot of inferences but not a lot of facts at the end of the day. Those inferences try to create a storyline that is the most negative, pejorative storyline you can create.”
Readers will remember that, following a multi-year investigation into Menendez’s corruption, it was revealed in September that:
Over $480,000 in cash — much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe — was discovered in [Menendez’s] home, as well as over $70,000 in Nadine Menendez’s safe deposit box, which was also searched pursuant to a separate search warrant.
Some of the envelopes contained the fingerprints and/or DNA of [New Jersey developer Fred] Daibes or his driver. Other of the envelopes were found inside jackets bearing Menendez’s name and hanging in his closet.
The 39-page indictment, which Menendez declared was just a false “storyline”, claimed that the 17-year senator accepted bribes from three people — Wael Hana, Jose Uribe, and Fred Daibes — not only to enrich and protect himself and them, but also to help the Egyptian government.
Isabel Vincent, writing for the New York Post, summed up the indictment:
Daibes is accused by federal prosecutors of plying Menendez, 69, and second wife Nadine Arslanian, 56, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, gold bars, furniture in return for the Democratic senator trying to “disrupt” a federal fraud case against him — and doing Daibes other favors.
Menendez has been dirty since he was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1993. For 10 years he rented out office space in a building that he owned to a non-profit agency, collecting some $300,000 in rents. But the game wasn’t in those piddling rents. It was in his “assistance” in successfully persuading the Department of Health and Human Services to designate the property as a federally qualified “health center.” Over the next eight years, he collected nearly $10 million in rents from the same facility.
Menendez, when challenged over the matter, claimed that he had not profited from the deal.
In 2006 a series of tapes were released dating back to 1999 showing that Menendez was involved in extortion. As DiscoverTheNetworks noted, from its collection of public sources:
On the tapes, Menendez’s close friend and fundraiser Donald Scarinci, a powerful attorney professing to speak on Menendez’s behalf, asks Sandoval to hire Dr. Vicente Ruiz (a staunch Democratic Party supporter with ties to Menendez) or face the prospect of losing all of his government contracts.
Scarinci can be heard saying that “Menendez will consider that a favor” which would earn “protection” for Sandoval. As soon as the tapes were made public, the Menendez campaign cut its ties with Scarinci and denied that the latter had been acting on Menendez’s behalf.
In 2012 the FBI began an investigation into reports that Menendez had travelled frequently to the Dominican Republic to engage in sex parties involving underage girls acting as prostitutes.
This was followed in 2015 by a 68-page indictment of Menendez on multiple counts of federal corruption. The Department of Justice filed a court brief in 2017 exposing Menendez’s claim that he only flew three times as a lie:
The truth is that Menendez and his personal guests had enjoyed more than a dozen flights on [Menendez’s friend Salomon] Melgen’s private jet, dating back as least as far as 2006….
Menendez’s lies to the public were aimed at covering up more than just flights. They were aimed at hiding a corrupt pact spanning seven years, in which Melgen [a wealthy Miami ophthalmologist] showered many more things of value on the New Jersey Senator than just flights on a private jet, and Menendez responded with reciprocal action advancing the South Florida eye doctor’s personal whims and business interests.
In November 2017, Menendez’s corruption trial ended in a mistrial after the jury reported that it was hopelessly deadlocked. In January 2018, the DOJ announced it was going to re-try Menendez, but two weeks later the agency dropped its case against him.
However, Menendez’s close friend Salomon Melgen didn’t get off so easily. In February 2018, he was found guilty of 67 counts of Medicare fraud and was sentenced to 17 years in prison.
In April 2018 the Senate Ethics Committee sent Menendez a four-page “public letter of admonition” over the affair, saying that he had “knowingly and repeatedly accepted gifts of significant value from” Melgen.
That letter ended:
For the reasons set forth above, the Committee concludes that your actions violated Senate Rules and related statutes, and reflected discredit upon the Senate.
Accordingly, you must repay the fair market value of all impermissible gifts not already repaid, and amend your Financial Disclosure Reports to include all reportable gifts.
Finally, by this letter, you are hereby severely admonished.
On September 22, Menendez and his wife were indicted, accused of having accepted massive sums of money as compensation for Menendez’s influence in helping enrich three New Jersey businessmen, including charges of bribery, fraud, and extortion. The indictment stated that one of those businessmen, Wael Hana, “provided hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes” to Menendez and his wife “in exchange for Menendez’s acts and breaches of duty to benefit the government of Egypt, Hana, and others, including with respect to foreign military sales and foreign military financing.”
Menendez has been asked to resign by his party. And on Monday, that was followed up by a poll from Stockton Polling Institute that revealed that New Jersey voters, both Democrats and Republicans, are fed up with Menendez’s corruption. Eight in 10 of those polled said Menendez should resign.
Even in New Jersey, where Menendez has repeatedly sold out his influence for money, voters have finally had enough.
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