Sen. Bob Menendez charged with taking bribes to help business cronies, Egyptian government

NEW YORK — A federal grand jury in New York indicted Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and his wife, charging the two with bribery in connection with their relationship with three New Jersey businesspeople, according to an indictment unsealed Friday.

Federal prosecutors accused the couple of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in cash, gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible and home mortgage payments in exchange for using the senator’s position to benefit the businesspeople and the government of Egypt between 2018 and 2022. The two were charged with conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud and conspiracy to commit extortion.

The three businesspeople were also charged in the indictment.

Menendez, 69, called the charges “baseless allegations” and said prosecutors “have misrepresented the normal work of a Congressional office.”

“For years, forces behind the scenes have repeatedly attempted to silence my voice and dig my political grave,” he said in a statement. “Since this investigation was leaked nearly a year ago, there has been an active smear campaign of anonymous sources and innuendos to create an air of impropriety where none exists.”

David Schertler, a lawyer for Menendez’s wife, Nadine Menendez, said: “Mrs. Menendez denies any criminal conduct and will vigorously contest these charges in court.”

Menendez and his co-defendants will make an initial court appearance on Wednesday morning, according to the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office.

It is the second time Menendez has been indicted. Menendez went to trial in 2017, resulting in a hung jury. Though prosecutors briefly intended to retry the case, they soon gave up.

The latest indictment of the prominent Democrat gives DOJ a chance to appear politically evenhanded as it faces withering criticism from former President Donald Trump and his allies over the two federal criminal indictments that Trump is under.

The 39-page indictment alleges explosive conduct by Menendez. According to prosecutors, he “provided sensitive U.S. Government information and took other steps that secretly aided the Government of Egypt,” as well as pressured an official at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to benefit the business of Wael Hana, one of the three businesspeople defendants.

Prosecutors also allege Menendez used his position “to seek to disrupt a criminal investigation and prosecution undertaken by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office” related to another one of the other businesspeople defendants, Jose Uribe, and his associates. And they say Menendez recommended to President Joe Biden that he nominate a person to become U.S. attorney in New Jersey who Menendez “believed could be influenced” by the senator to impact the prosecution of the third charged businesspeople, Fred Daibes.

Attorneys for Hana, Daibes and Uribe didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

During a search of the Menendezes’ New Jersey home in June 2022, federal agents probing the alleged scheme found “over $480,000 in cash — much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe” along with $70,000 in Nadine Menendez’s safe-deposit box, the indictment says.

The indictment — the culmination of years of investigation by federal prosecutors in New York — is the latest legal blow for New Jersey’s senior senator and the powerful chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Menendez has survived two previous federal investigations.

The first, in 2006, concerned whether Menendez had done favors for a nonprofit that had paid him about $300,000 in rent. Federal authorities eventually dropped that probe.

The second came to a head in 2015, when federal prosecutors in New Jersey brought bribery charges against Menendez, alleging he helped an eye doctor with federal officials in exchange for vacations at the doctor’s Dominican villa, flights on his private jet and campaign donations.

Although Menendez's trial ended in a hung jury, he was later admonished by the Senate Ethics Committee regarding his conduct with the doctor.

The New York indictment comes as Menendez has said he plans to run for reelection in 2024, and most who know him don’t believe he would back down even while facing federal criminal charges. New Jersey Democrats stuck with Menendez through his previous corruption allegations and trial.

But as the New York investigation has unfolded, Democratic leaders have privately been wary about jeopardizing a normally-safe Senate seat in a blue state by sticking with Menendez — although, fearing upsetting the notoriously prickly senator, they’ve been loath to talk about it publicly.

Menendez, after all, appears to have been anything but cowed by attempts by either prosecutors or his political adversaries to remove him from office and put him behind bars.

“To those who were digging my political grave so they could jump into my seat,” he said upon exiting the Newark federal courthouse after his mistrial in 2017, “I know who you are and I won’t forget you.”

Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.