Embattled Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife were hit with additional charges, including obstruction of justice and bribery, in a new federal indictment on Tuesday.
The superseding indictment comes after the guilty plea of Jose Uribe, one of the three businessmen charged alongside Menendez and his wife.
The superseding indictment charges the senator and Nadine Menendez with new counts of conspiracy to obstruct justice and obstruction of justice related to their alleged attempts to cover up the bribe payments the senator is accused of taking from several New Jersey businessmen.
The pair allegedly instructed their attorneys at the time to tell federal investigators they thought a mortgage payment on Nadine Menendez’s house and a payment for her Mercedes-Benz were loans when, in fact, prosecutors said they knew the payments were bribes.
The new accusations appear to result from last week's guilty plea of co-defendant Jose Uribe, who admitted to providing Nadine Menendez with a Mercedes-Benz convertible in exchange for the senator's help. (ABC News)
Prosecutors say that in 2022 when the senator and his wife learned about the federal investigation they tried to cover up the bribery payments. They allege the couple took gifts, including gold bars, in exchange for favors for Uribe and the governments of Qatar and Egypt.
The two have pleaded not guilty to the earlier charges.
Responding to the superseding indictment in a statement, Menendez called it “a flagrant abuse of power.”
"The government has long known that I learned of and helped repay loans -- not bribes -- that had been provided to my wife,” he said.
"Not content -- or capable -- of meeting those facts fairly at trial, the government has now falsely alleged a cover up and obstruction,” the New Jersey Democrat added. “The latest charge reveals far more about the government than it says about me. It says that the prosecutors are afraid of the facts, scared to subject their charges to the fair-minded scrutiny of a jury, and unconstrained by any sense of justice or fair play. It says, once and for all, that they will stop at nothing in their zeal to get me."