New Jersey Senator Senator Bob Menendez is facing charges of taking gold bars and bribes and stashing hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash around his house in return for using his “power and influence” — including his position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — to benefit the Egyptian government and two local businessmen.

This is not the first time Menendez was caught with his pants down. His previous case saw him accused of taking lavish hospitality from a Medicare fraudster doctor who asked the senator to help get visas for his bevy of young mistresses; to intervene in an audit which would have stopped him ripping off taxpayers; and to stop Customs and Border Patrol disrupting his side-hustle screening cargo at the Dominican Republic’s ports.

Now it is reported that this lowlife spent years helping developer and imam behind reviled ground zero mosque.

Ground Zero Mosque: AFDI/SIOA Rally of Remembrance

Menendez Bribery Indictment Is Just The Tip Of The Iceberg

Embattled Sen. Bob Menendez spent years helping developer and imam behind controversial ground zero mosque

By Isabel Vincent, NY post, Sep. 23, 2023:

Sen. Robert Menendez spent years helping the Egyptian-American imam behind the controversial ground zero mosque — a plan the embattled Democrat later championed.

Menendez, 69, was indicted on federal bribery charges Friday, along with his wife, for schemes that allegedly benefited the government of Egypt and three New Jersey businessmen.

Starting in 1989, when the senator was the mayor of Union City, NJ, Menendez reportedly secured more than $2 million in public cash and loans for Egyptian-American imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.

The funding was meant to renovate three low-income apartment buildings Rauf owned there, according to reports — buildings that, tenants complained, remained dilapidated for years after the money was received.

At the same time, Rauf was in business with developer Fred Daibes — the Menendez political benefactor who allegedly bribed him with gold bars and cash, and who was named as a Menendez co-defendant Friday.

Keep reading….

More on the indictment from Technofog:

A newly unsealed indictment, released today, has revealed an elaborate bribery and corruption scheme orchestrated by New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez and his wife, Nadine Menendez.

The allegations:

Senator Menendez and his wife “agreed to, and did accept, hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes in exchange for using Menendez’s power and influence as a senator to seek to protect and enrich” various New Jersey associates and “the Arab Republic of Egypt.”

In essence, Menendez was acting as an agent of a foreign government – while serving as a US Senator. According to the indictment:

• Menendez “provided sensitive US Government information and took other steps that secretly aided the Government of Egypt.”
• He pressured the US Department of Agriculture to protect the monopoly of an Egyptian businessman.

He also abused his authority, and sought to corruptly influence, criminal investigations and a potential US Attorney for New Jersey:

• He used his power and influence to “disrupt a criminal investigation and prosecution undertaken by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office” related to an associate.
• And, he used his power to recommend a person as US Attorney for the District of New Jersey who “Menendez could be influenced by Menendez with respect to the criminal prosecution” of an associate.

In return for these corrupt acts, Menendez was paid – and paid well. In June 2022, FBI agents found “over $480,000 in case – much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets and a safe – was discovered in the [Menendez] home, along with over $70,000 in Nadine Menendez’s safe deposit box.”.

Thousands of dollars found within “official Robert Menendez” jackets

But there was more. The Menendez’s home was furnished through the bribery scheme and their luxury vehicle was paid for by their “associates.” FBI agents also uncovered two gold bars provided as part of the criminal enterprise, estimated at being worth over $100,000

The evidence in the FBI’s possession is damning. Here’s an example.

In January 2019, Senator Menendez, his wife, and his associates agreed that Menendez would attempt to influence a New Jersey criminal investigation “in exchange for a car.” Senator Menendez delivered, getting the New Jersey defendant a guilty plea “that recommended a non-incarceratory sentence.” This plea was more favorable that that which prosecutors had initially offered

In return, Menendez’s associates provided his wife $15,000 in cash at a restaurant parking lot. The very next day, Nadine Menendez made a $15,000 down payment on a new Mercedes Benz. After providing that down payment in cash, the Menendez associate would then pay the monthly financing payments for the car, masking the source of the payments by making them through business associates or through a company he controlled.

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Article posted with permission from Pamela Geller