Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and his wife Nadine Menendez arrive for the state dinner with President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, June 22, 2023, at the White House.
In 2016, the Supreme Court, in a unanimous ruling, did their best to write public corruption out of the criminal code. The Court ruled that former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) and his wife were not guilty of using their influence to benefit a dietary supplement company whose CEO gave the couple more than $165,000 in personal gifts and loans.
McDonnell maintained that he merely introduced the CEO to government officials and put in a good word, part of the normal backslapping of politics. The Court agreed, saying that a public official must take a “formal exercise of government power†in a direct quid pro quo for money or something of value to be charged with bribery.
But Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) is a striver. His first corruption indictment ended in a mistrial, aided by the McDonnell standard. But he appears to have taken that as a challenge.
The result is a wild 39-page indictment unsealed on Friday, alleging that Menendez took a number of official actions on behalf of the owner of an Egyptian halal meat certification business named Wael Hana and two of his associates, Jose Uribe and Fred Daibes. In exchange, Menendez and his wife Nadine, who was intimately involved in the activities, received hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, a luxury Mercedes, home furnishings, mortgage payments, two exercise machines, an air purifier, and at least a quarter-million dollars in gold bars, over $100,000 of which were found in Menendez’s house and photographed for the complaint.
No previous senator has been indicted on federal criminal charges in two unrelated cases, a testament to that plucky, persistent spirit. Menendez has stepped down from his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as per the rules for anyone under indictment. But he’s still a sitting senator running for re-election next November.
Menendez has rejected the allegations and signaled a willingness to fight that is almost Trumpian in its shamelessness. “For years, forces behind the scenes have repeatedly attempted to silence my voice and dig my political grave,†he said in a statement, adding that prosecutors “misrepresented the normal work of a Congressional office†and that “those behind this campaign simply cannot accept that a first-generation Latino American from humble beginnings could rise to be a U.S. Senator and serve with honor and distinction.â€
Six years ago, amid his first corruption indictment, Menendez faced no real competition for the Democratic nomination, and even then his no-name, no-money opponent, Lisa McCormick, got 37.7 percent of the vote in the primary. Menendez had to be bailed out in the general election, with the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm spending over $7 million to get him past his Republican opponent, a former pharmaceutical CEO.
Before last Friday, it seemed like Menendez would sneak through once again. Despite public knowledge of this investigation for nearly a year, the only challenger for next June’s primary was a state assemblywoman’s son, a real estate agent for whom there is no campaign contribution data as of yet.
But New Jersey’s Democratic machine, at least, appears determined to not repeat the events of 2018, when Menendez beat his first indictment and went back into power, only to be indicted again. Nearly all major elected Democrats in New Jersey, from the Governor and the heads of the state legislature to the majority of its Congressional delegation, have urged Menendez to resign. A Senate colleague, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), has followed suit. And when Menendez stubbornly refused to consider resignation, Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ), a former State Department official and a Progressive Caucus member whose blue seat was made relatively safer after decennial redistricting, announced that he would run against him. “We cannot jeopardize the Senate or compromise our integrity,†Kim said in a statement on X.
Menendez could survive a primary with a split field. But the quick entry of Kim makes it hard for other credible candidates to enter, lest they be the ones to potentially tip the scales. More than anything, it shows that the anger with Menendez’s actions outweighs the fear of upsetting the natural order in a machine state.
YOU NEED ONLY TO LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENED less than a decade ago to understand why Democrats are calling for Menendez to leave now. President Obama’s Justice Department indicted the senator in 2015, alleging that he received a specific promise of $60,000 in campaign funds from Salomon Melgen, a Florida-based ophthalmologist, in exchange for intervening with the State Department on a port security contract with the Dominican Republic in a way that would benefit Melgen’s company. Melgen also granted Menendez private jet trips, five-star hotel stays, and golf junkets (which were not noted on Senate financial disclosure forms), while Menendez assisted Melgen in procuring visas for a range of girlfriends.
Menendez stepped down from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee leadership, and fought the charges with the same aplomb as the ones announced last Friday. During the case, with the McDonnell verdict fresh in everyone’s minds, the judge kept referring to it obliquely, calling it “you know what†at one point. The judge even threatened to throw out the charges because of the Supreme Court’s interpretation of bribery. The case ended in a mistrial, with 10 out of 12 jurors ready to find Menendez not guilty, because as with the Supreme Court’s read on McDonnell’s activities, they saw it as an instance of one friend helping out another.
Donald Trump’s Justice Department dropped the case on January 31, 2018. Within a week, Menendez returned as ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. Mere moments later (it’s listed as “early February 2018â€), he met and began dating Nadine Arslanian, who was “friends for many years†with Wael Hana. I don’t want to say that powerful people waited for the precise moment Menendez was restored to a powerful position in international affairs and then directed a honeypot to become his wife, but I guess I just did.
Menendez has rejected the allegations and signaled a willingness to fight that is almost Trumpian in its shamelessness.
Democrats allowed Menendez to climb back to his ranking membership despite the fact that the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee found that he “violated Senate Rules, federal law, and applicable standards of conduct†in the Melgen case by failing to disclose the gifts. If the indictment is correct, Menendez went right back to using that perch to favor-trade with his new girlfriend’s wealthy associates.
The indictment says that Menendez explicitly secured military support for and weapons sales to Egypt, which he was in a position to influence as Foreign Relations Committee ranking member and then chair. “I am going to sign off on this sale to Egypt today,†Menendez texts his wife at one point. Incredibly, the indictment supplies evidence of Menendez ghostwriting a letter on behalf of the Egyptian government to persuade his Senate colleagues to lift a hold on $300 million in foreign aid. Nadine Menendez is placed at the meetings with Egyptian officials, including some in Menendez’s Senate office, where these activities were being plotted.
Menendez also made calls to the Trump administration to pressure them into facilitating talks aimed at getting a dam built over the Nile River, a priority of the Egyptian government. He sent what was described as “highly sensitive†nonpublic information about American embassy personnel in Cairo to Nadine, who then passed it directly to an Egyptian government official. And he pressured the Department of Agriculture to lift its opposition to Hana’s halal certification monopoly, which the Justice Department says is where Hana acquired the funds to finance the bribes.
Uribe and Daibes happened to be under state and federal investigations, which later became prosecutions. According to the indictment, Menendez tried to help obstruct those suits, including by recommending a U.S. attorney for New Jersey “who Menendez believed could be influenced.†Menendez and his wife received the Mercedes right after the senator called a law enforcement official about Daibes’s indictment.
The Justice Department, mindful of the McDonnell standard, paints this as all explicit quid pro quo, unearthing documentary evidence like a text from Daibes that reads, “Nadine I personally gave Bob a check for September,†and another from Nadine Menendez to an unnamed Egyptian official stating: “Anytime you need anything you have my number and we will make everything happen.†There are also repeated solicitations from Nadine to Hana and his associates for money. Nadine even set up an LLC to “receive bribe payments,†the complaint alleges, and some of the checks came directly from Hana’s halal business.
Still, all of this might not be enough to convict Menendez. The Supreme Court has so narrowed the law in these instances that there practically has to be a piece of paper that says, “I will take this official government action in exchange for $XXX.†While this case is within inches of that standard, it’s not clear whether that will get past the significant hurdles the Court has put in.
Ironically, the same day the Menendez indictment dropped, we got only the latest in the litany of stories about Supreme Court justices taking gifts from wealthy people with business before the Court. The line between all these revelations and the Court deciding that casual exchanges of benefits in exchange for assistance doesn’t constitute bribery isn’t hard to draw.
BUT WHILE MENENDEZ MAY HAVE A GLIMMER OF HOPE in his legal defense, the political fallout is much more pronounced this time around.
In 2017, after Menendez’s first indictment, he faced calls to resign. But he could point to the fact that Chris Christie, then governor, could appoint a Republican replacement to serve until the next election. That’s no longer the case, with Democrat Phil Murphy in the governor’s chair. Murphy, the state Democratic Party chair, and others in the state have asked for Menendez’s resignation, within hours of the charges being announced.
In an election year where multiple federal indictments of the likely Republican nominee for president will be a core of the Democratic campaign narrative, state Democrats clearly feel that having Menendez seek re-election amid a federal corruption indictment would be political malpractice. New Jersey’s legislative elections coming up this November could be similarly tarnished, which explains some of the state-level condemnation.
Menendez responded to these calls by saying defiantly: “I am not going anywhere.†That's what prompted Kim to get into the race.
While Democrats have won relatively comfortably statewide in New Jersey in recent years, Inside Elections has already downgraded the seat to “Likely Democratic†after Friday’s announcement. A decently funded Republican could at least force Democrats to spend big to hold a seat in a year where they have trouble all over the map.
It’s incredible how much of a political survivor Menendez has been, given ethics allegations that date back to 2006. These new charges are even more comically operatic. Prosecutors seized records from Hana’s halal business as far back as 2019. The investigation was formally disclosed last October, and Menendez set up a legal defense fund early this year.
Anyone in New Jersey politics has had a long lead time knowing about Menendez’s looming ethical troubles. But Democrats have employed a hands-off policy toward Menendez for decades. That has led to the current mess, though this time is looking to be different.
