Jon Corzine appointed Menendez to the Senate seat he vacated when he became governor.

He was a state legislator and spent 14 years in the U.S. The son of Cuban immigrants, Menendez has held public office continuously since 1986, when he was elected mayor of Union City, New Jersey. Menendez has always maintained his innocence, and prosecutors dropped the case after a jury deadlocked in November 2017 on charges including bribery, fraud and conspiracy, and a judge dismissed some counts. Salomon Melgen - securing visas for the doctor’s girlfriends and helping protect a contract the doctor had to provide port-screening equipment to the Dominican Republic. The first time Menendez was indicted, he had been accused of using his political influence to pressure government officials to resolve a Medicare billing dispute in favor of a friend - Dr. The indictment says that after the transaction was complete, Nadine Menendez texted her husband to say, “Congratulations mon amour de la vie, we are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes,” with a heart emoji. Separately, after Menendez called a government official about an investigation of a Uribe associate, Uribe and Hana worked to provide the senator’s wife with a Mercedes-Benz convertible. government support, as well as transmitting nonpublic information to Egyptian officials about military issues, the indictment says. His efforts include ghostwriting a letter to fellow senators encouraging them to lift a hold on $300 million in aid to Egypt, one of the top recipients of U.S. government misgivings over the country’s human rights record that in recent years have prompted Congress to attach restrictions on aid. Other accusations include repeated actions by Menendez to benefit Egypt despite U.S.

Prosecutors say he also tried to use his position of power to try to meddle in a separate criminal investigation by the New Jersey Attorney General’s office. One set of allegations is that Menendez directly interfered in criminal investigations, including by pushing to install a federal prosecutor in New Jersey he believed could be influenced in a criminal case against a businessman and associate of the senator. Investigators also say they discovered a Google search by Menendez for the value of a “kilo of gold,” and DNA of one man prosecutors say bribed him on an envelope filled with thousands of dollars. Photos in the indictment show cash that was stuffed in envelopes in jackets bearing Menendez’s name. Menendez accused prosecutors of misrepresenting “the normal work of a congressional office” and said he would not allow his work in the Senate to be distracted by “baseless allegations.”Īuthorities who searched Menendez’s home last year found more than $100,000 worth of gold bars, as well as over $480,000 in cash - much of it hidden in closets, clothing and a safe, prosecutors say. It also includes charges against his wife and three New Jersey businessmen who authorities say showered the couple with money, gold and a luxury car in exchange for official favors.Ī previous indictment of Menendez stemming from different allegations ended in 2017 with a deadlocked jury. priorities and his private interest in cultivating relationships with wealthy businessmen. The indictment, the second in eight years against the 69-year-old senator, alleges an illegal commingling of Menendez’s obligations to advance U.S. Menendez was forced to relinquish his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but said he would not resign from Congress, though New Jersey’s governor, a fellow Democrat, and other Democrats in the state’s congressional delegation said he should. Bob Menendez of New Jersey was charged Friday with secretly aiding the authoritarian government of Egypt and trying to thwart the criminal prosecution of a friend in exchange for gold bars and cash under a corruption indictment that accuses him of using his foreign affairs influence for personal gain.

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