Menendez indicted on federal bribery charges

The Justice Department will announce the unsealing of an indictment this morning charging U.S. Senator Bob Menendez and his wife with bribery, alleging that they accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for using his Senate post to enrich them.

Menendez and his wife, Nadine, are accused of accepting cash, gold bars, a luxury Mercedes convertible, payments toward a mortgage, home furnishings, and payment for a “low-or-no-show job.”

Prosecutors say that Menendez sought to influence the nomination of a U.S. Attorney who he thought he could influence in the federal prosecution of a longtime friend and donor, Bergen County developer Fred Daibes.

He is additionally charged with seeking to “disrupt” a criminal investigation by the state attorney general’s office of Jose Uribe, a businessman and associate of the senator.

The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which conducted the investigation, alleges that Menendez provided sensitive U.S. Government information and other steps to assist the Arab Republic of Egypt secretly and helped Wael Hana obtain a lucrative Halal meat inspection contract with the Egyptian government.  They claim that Hana paid bribes to the senator through his wife.

Menendez, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, is also accused of pressuring a U.S. Department of Agriculture official to protect Hana’s deal.

A June 2022 search warrant of Menendez’s home and safe deposit box led federal agents to find over $480,000 in cash – “much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe” – and another $70,000 in Nadine Menendez’s safe deposit box.  Some of the cash was found in the pockets of Menendez’s clothing.

“Some of the envelopes contained the fingerprints and/or DNA of Daibes or his driver,” the indictment says.

Menendez has already faced federal charges once, in 2015, when he was indicted on corruption charges over his ties to a wealthy Florida ophthalmologist. But the trial in that case ended in a mistrial, and Menendez was ultimately acquitted in 2018; he won re-election to a third term in the Senate later that same year.

Menendez is preparing to seek a fourth Senate term in next year’s election, but today’s indictment throws a major wrench in those plans. It remains to be seen whether the senator continues with his re-election bid – and whether top New Jersey Democrats will support him if he does.

This is a developing story and may be updated as more information becomes known.