N.J. Sen. Menendez Indicted in Bribery Scheme; Says He Kept $500K Cash Against Possible Illegal Confiscation

It appears that Democrat Bob Menendez’ long career as a pro-abortion gun-grabber in the U.S. Senate might soon end.

Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have indicted him on a “years-long” bribery scheme that enabled him and his wife to pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, gold, and other goodies.

And he stupidly stored much of that ill-gotten loot in his home. Menendez, the son of Cuban immigrants, says he kept the cash close-by to protect himself against illegal confiscation by what he believed might be a future, Castro-like regime.

This isn’t the first time the feds have tried to bag the slippery Swamp dweller. 

The Indictment, the Search

Even by the low standards of Washington, D.C., the corruption described in the 39-page indictment, unsealed on Friday, is a shocker.

The 17-year senator accepted bribes from three people — Wael Hana, Jose Uribe, and Fred Daibes — not only to enrich and protect himself and them, but also to help the Egyptian government, the indictment alleges. Prosecutors charged Menendez with “conspiracy to commit bribery,” “conspiracy to commit honest services fraud,” and “conspiracy to commit extortion under color of official right.”

The trouble for Menendez apparently began when he met and married his wife, Nadine, who introduced him to Hana, an Egyptian. He was business pals with Daibes and Uribe.

From 2018 through 2022, the indictment alleges, Menendez accepted bribes from those three, including gold, cash, and a luxury convertible. The bribes included $23,000 in payments on Nadine Menendez’ mortgage, as well as a $30,000 “salary” for a no-show job for the lucky lady. Even home furnishings were included.

In June last year, the FBI searched Menendez’ home and found many of the “fruits of this bribery scheme, including cash, gold, the luxury vehicle, and home furnishings,” prosecutors allege:

Over $480,000 in cash — much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe — was discovered in the home, as well as over $70,000 in Nadine Menendez’s safe deposit box, which was also searched pursuant to a separate search warrant. Some of the envelopes contained the fingerprints and/or DNA of Daibes or his driver. Other of the envelopes were found inside jackets bearing Menendez’s name and hanging in his closet.

Agents apparently didn’t find any cash or gold stuffed in Menendez’s Jockey shorts, but anyway, maybe the idea to hide all the booty at home came from watching The Sopranos, the HBO program about North Jersey Mafia kingpin Tony Soprano. He kept wads of cash in the ductwork of his home. Come to think of it, Soprano would have been one of Menendez’ constituents, although not one of his voters. Tony and wife Carmela were patriotic Republicans and supporters of POTUS 43 George W. Bush.

Agents also uncovered the other goodies, including a new 2019 Mercedes-Benz C-300 for which the generous benefactors paid. The gold alone is worth more than $100,000, prosecutors allege. 

What Menendez Did

For all that money, Menendez worked hard, the indictment alleges.

He “agreed to take a series of official acts and breaches of his official duty,” first by helping the Egyptian regime. In exchange for his wife’s mortgage payments and no-show job’s money, he improperly pressured the U.S. Department of Agriculture to protect a monopoly that the regime granted to Hana. That scheme involved providing the regime with the names and nationalities of embassy employees in Cairo:

Without telling his professional staff or the State Department that he was doing so, on or about May 7, 2018, Menendez texted that sensitive, non-public embassy information to his then-girlfriend Nadine Menendez, who forwarded the message to Hana, who forwarded it to an Egyptian government official. Later that same month, Menendez ghost-wrote a letter on behalf of Egypt to other U.S. Senators advocating for them to release a hold on $300 million in aid to Egypt. Menendez sent this ghost-written letter to Nadine Menendez, who forwarded it to Hana, who sent it to Egyptian officials. 

As well, he tried to disrupt New Jersey’s criminal probe of Uribe, the act that precipitated a $15,000 down payment for the Mercedes, then monthly payments for the luxury car until the FBI began investigating. 

The corruption even involved Joe Biden, who faces enough trouble of his own:

Between December 2020 and 2022, Menendez agreed to attempt to influence the pending federal prosecution of Daibes in exchange for cash, furniture, and gold bars that Daibes provided to Menendez and Nadine Menendez. In furtherance of this aspect of the scheme, Menendez recommended that the President nominate an individual (“Official-3”) as U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey who Menendez believed he could influence with respect to Daibes’s case.

The indictment helpfully includes photographs of the cash, gold, and Mercedes.

Menendez could face as many as 45 years in prison.

His Excuse

Amusingly, Menendez, a Cuban-American, said he kept all the cash and gold because of the totalitarian depredations of Cuba’s communist Castro regime.

“For 30 years, I have withdrawn thousands of dollars in cash from my personal savings account, which I have kept for emergencies and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba,” he said. “Now, this may seem old-fashioned. But these were monies drawn from my personal savings account, based on the income that I have lawfully derived over those 30 years.”

Menendez was born in New York in 1954 to Cuban immigrants.

Six years ago, a similar case against him by the federal government ended in a mistrial.

H/T: Daily Caller