The list of federal charges against Senator Bob Menendez grew yet longer today, with a new superseding indictment accusing Menendez of obstruction of justice.
According to the indictment, Menendez and his wife, Nadine Menendez, deliberately misled federal prosecutors about the nature of payments that traded hands between themselves and several businessmen who are co-defendants in the case. The Menendezes told prosecutors that the payments were loans, but the indictment alleges that they were in fact bribery payments.
“Menendez also caused his then-counsel to state at the September 2023 meeting [with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York], in substance and in part, that in 2022, Menendez had learned that these payments were loans,” the indictment reads in one illustrative section. “In truth and fact, and as Menendez well knew, Menendez had learned of both the mortgage company payment and the car payments prior to 2022, and they were not loans, but bribery payments.”
Menendez, a three-term Democratic senator, was first charged with bribery last September. The indictment alleged that he and Nadine Menendez had received cash and gifts – including, most famously, gold bars – from three North Jersey businessmen in exchange for taking official actions to support their businesses and influence federal prosecutions against them and their associates.
In October, new charges were released accusing Menendez of acting as an unregistered foreign agent of the government of Egypt; further details came out in January alleging that Menendez also worked to aid the government of Qatar.
Menendez, whose trial is set to begin on May 6, has denied each and every charge against him, and has filed a number of motions to dismiss or alter the case against him – several of which Judge Sidney Stein has rejected. One of Menendez’s co-defendants, however, unexpectedly switched his plea to “guilty” last week.
In a statement released shortly after today’s superseding indictment, Menendez once again strongly denied any wrongdoing and accused the government of conducting a targeted campaign against him.
“Today’s superseding indictment is a flagrant abuse of power,” Menendez said. “The government has long known that I learned of and helped repay loans – not bribes – that had been provided to my wife. Not content – or capable – of meeting those facts fairly at trial, the government has now falsely alleged a cover-up and obstruction.”
“The latest charge reveals far more about the government than it says about me,” he continued. “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.”
This story was updated at 4:50 p.m. with comment from Menendez.