Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) has been slapped with corruption charges which reads like a movie script. We have envelopes of cash, money hidden in clothing, a Mercedes-Benz, and even gold bars. That’s the kicker, right there. It seems that Bob should’ve created a network of shell companies to take these favors instead of leaving them all over his house. And as Spencer wrote today, it wasn’t a couple dollars. The man had $480,000 spread all over the place:
According to the indictment, Senator Menendez and his wife "agreed to and did accept hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes" in return for Menendez's "power and influence as a senator to protect and enrich" the three individuals identified as Wael Hana, Jose Uribe, and Fred Daibes and "to benefit the Arab Republic of Egypt."
Notably, Menendez serves as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"Those bribes included cash, gold, payments toward a home mortgage, compensation for a low-or-no-show job, a luxury vehicle, and other things of value," the indictment says, in addition to allegations that Menendez "provided sensitive U.S. Government information and took other steps that secretly aided the Government of Egypt."
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When search warrants for the Menendez home and a safe deposit box were executed in June 2022, federal agents found the "fruits" of the alleged bribery agreement including more than $480,000 in cash "much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe," with some envelopes containing "the fingerprints and/or DNA of Daibes or his driver."
The 2022 search also turned up "home furnishings provided by Hana, the luxury vehicle paid for by Uribe parked in the garage, as well as over one hundred thousand dollars' worth of gold bars in the home, which were provided by either Hana or Daibes."
A previous federal corruption case against Senator Menendez in 2017 ended in a mistrial, apparently right around the time he started up the allegedly corrupt scheme at issue in the latest indictment.
And predictably, the man remains defiant, though he was forced to step down as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee per procedure. You cannot chair a committee while under indictment.
Back home, New Jersey Democrats are reportedly freaking out over the corruption charges and are pushing for the senator to resign (via Politico):
The explosive indictment of Sen. Bob Menendez has forced an urgent decision on New Jersey Democrats: Stick with a powerful senator who’s survived corruption ordeals before and is known for punishing disloyalty, or cut their losses and protect what should be a safe Democratic seat.
A year before Menendez is up for reelection, they’re leaning hard towards the latter.
While Democrats stay publicly silent, interviews with half a dozen well-placed Democratic operatives, advisers and staffers show a party stunned by the level of alleged corruption and hard-pressed to imagine a scenario in which the party backs Menendez for another term. But the fact that no one was willing to criticize him on the record in the face of such damning allegations may be reason to question whether state Democrats will ultimately force a reckoning with Menendez over his political future.
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“Democrats should call for his resignation. If this was a high-ranking Republican, they’d be lining up to do that like it was a Springsteen concert,” said one top Democratic congressional staffer from the New Jersey delegation. “This is not what happened a few years ago. The stuff in here is sickening. You couldn’t dream this up to be on an FX show — that’s how detailed is.”
The staffer, like party insiders and leaders interviewed for this story, was granted anonymity when speaking about the fluid situation and Democratic support for the notoriously-vindictive Menendez, who after surviving a 2017 corruption trial vowed that he would not forget “those who were digging my political grave.”
Time is not on the side of the state party: The 2024 election is already taking shape and Democratic Party leaders do not want to see a New Jersey Senate seat flip to Republicans for the first time since 1972.
The lack of immediate support by New Jersey Democrats for Menendez’s reelection was obvious Friday and starkly contrasted with party reaction after his last indictment.
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“This is horrifying. And anyone who doesn’t think it’s disqualifying, that’s a problem,” one influential Democratic operative told POLITICO after federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York unsealed the indictment.
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Photos in the latest indictment show gold bars and nearly half a million dollars of cash, some of it stuffed into clothing that bore the senator’s name.
“This is crazy. This is cash in envelopes, the gold bars,” said one Democratic adviser with connections to a major party leader.
In 2006, we called him Boss Bob Menendez. The Politico piece had an even better moniker: gold bar Bob.