Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, facing corruption charges for the second time in a decade, appeared in a Manhattan courtroom Wednesday alongside his wife and alleged co-conspirator and pleaded not guilty in a brazen bribery scheme.
Menendez and his wife face charges that they accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from three New Jersey businessmen in the form of gold bullion bars, stacks of cash and a sports car in exchange for abusing his powerful position as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to advance corrupt Egyptian interests.
Wearing a slate gray pinstripe suit with a paisley blue tie, Menendez strolled into court hand in hand with his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, shortly after 8 a.m. He ignored questions from dozens of reporters camped outside the courthouse, where protesters bore signs calling on him to resign.
The longtime politician, buffeted by a chorus of Democratic calls for his resignation, said little in court besides telling Manhattan Magistrate Judge Ona Wang, “Yes, your honor,” when asked whether he understood his rights.
Wang released Menendez on a $100,000 bond and ordered him to surrender his personal passports but not his official ones. He’s prohibited from foreign travel, except for official business, and can’t contact his co-defendants other than his wife or any Senate staffers with personal knowledge about the case.
Nadine, 56, his wife of three years, also pleaded not guilty to the years-long bribery scheme. Wang set her bond at $250,000, which will be secured by her Englewood Cliffs, N.J., home.
The feds allege Menendez, whose unrelated 2015 corruption case ended in a mistrial, endangered national security and put his career, reputation and liberty on the line for businessmen Wael Hana, Fred Daibes, and Jose Uribe, going to extreme lengths to pad their pockets.
Throughout the bribery scheme, between 2018 to 2022, Menendez quietly assured Egyptian officials through his co-conspirators that he would use his power to influence foreign military financing and equipment sales to the authoritarian nation, according to charging papers.
Menendez leaked information to Egyptian officials in May 2018 — routed through his wife and Hana — regarding occupants of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, according to the indictment. Prosecutors say the highly sensitive information posed significant security concerns in the hands of a foreign government. The same month, the feds say, he ghost-wrote a letter on behalf of Egyptian officials to U.S. senators urging the release of $300 million in aid.
Meetings with Egyptian officials were organized by Nadine, who served as the bribery scheme’s linchpin, according to charging papers. In one July 2018 back-and-forth, according to the indictment, Menendez texted his wife to tell Hana, a 40-year-old halal entrepreneur from Egypt, that he would sign off on a multimillion-dollar weapons sale. Nadine forwarded the message to Hana, who got a “thumbs up” emoji when he sent it to Egyptian officials, the indictment said.
Menendez received compensation for the backdoor deals from Hana’s company, IS EG Halal Certified, Inc., which Egypt granted exclusive rights over its U.S. exports of Halal products in 2019, despite Hana having no experience in food certification, according to court papers. The pair allegedly discussed the deal over steaks in Manhattan.
The New Jersey senator pressured a high-level Agriculture Department official to keep in place Hana’s arrangement that screwed over U.S. meat suppliers, the feds allege. Hana allegedly paid off Nadine’s mortgage debt as she faced foreclosure proceedings, paid her for a low-or-no-show job, and showered the couple with gold and cash.
Hana was arrested getting off a plane from Egypt at Kennedy Airport on Tuesday and later released on a $5 million bond.
For Uribe, Menendez allegedly interfered in a criminal prosecution against one of his associates and a probe into one of his employees, pressuring prosecutors in vain to go easy on them. Nadine, in exchange, allegedly received a Mercedes Benz convertible.
For Daibes, Menendez accepted cash, furniture, and one-kilogram gold bars from the real estate developer and loyal longtime donor in exchange for trying to thwart a federal case against him. Menendez allegedly tried to get then-President Donald Trump to nominate a federal prosecutor he believed would help Daibes’ cause.
Daibes and Uribe also appeared in court Wednesday and were released on $2 million and $1 million bond, respectively. Judge Wang said Daibes’ $10 million bond in a separate case would be transferred to his Manhattan case if it resolves without his conviction.
One of 13 U.S. senators in history to be indicted, Menendez rose to prominence as mayor of Union City, N.J., in the 1980s. Later, the son of Cuban immigrants spent over a decade serving in the House of Representatives, rising to the Senate in 2006.
On Friday, Menendez was forced to step down from his prestigious position of chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee when his indictment was unsealed. He served in the post for a decade.
But he has refused to resign from the Senate despite deafening calls from New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy; Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat; and most of the Senate’s Democratic caucus, including New Jersey’s Cory Booker.
Menendez claims he’s the victim of a setup, defending his integrity and insisting his record is “clear and consistent in holding Egypt accountable.”
According to the feds, when they searched his home last year, they found more than $100,000 worth of gold bars and over $480,000 stashed in closets and jackets emblazoned with his name.
Menendez on Monday said the cash — which prosecutors allege contained one of his co-conspirator’s DNA — was withdrawn for emergencies from his savings, saying he was “old-fashioned” like that.
If convicted, Menendez and his wife, charged with conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud and conspiracy to commit extortion, could face up to 45 years in prison.
Uribe, Daibes, and Hana, charged with conspiracy to commit bribery and conspiracy to commit honest services fraud, each face up to 25 years. Uribe and Daibes avoided reporters Wednesday.
All five are due back in court on Monday.
