(Bloomberg) -- US Senator Bob Menendez, the once-powerful New Jersey Democrat, was found guilty of bribery, extortion and acting as a foreign agent of Egypt after a corruption trial focused on 13 gold bars, nearly $500,000 in cash and a Mercedes-Benz seized at his home.
A jury convicted Menendez on all 16 counts against him Tuesday after a two-month trial in New York federal court, where prosecutors claimed the lawmaker sold his influence to protect businessmen and promote Egypt’s interests. Menendez, who faces as many as 20 years in prison on the most serious counts, showed no emotion as the jury foreperson said “guilty” again and again.
Prosecutors argued that Menendez’s wife, Nadine, was a key go-between who collected bribes and set up meetings with the businessmen and Egyptian officials. She was also charged, but will face a later trial.
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“Senator Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our country, and resign,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said after the verdict.
If Menendez doesn’t resign, the Senate could move to expel him. No senator has been expelled since the Civil War, though many have resigned under pressure from party leaders. If Menendez leaves, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat, would appoint a replacement until Menendez’s term ends on Jan. 3.
Outside the courthouse, Menendez said he was “deeply disappointed” and that he expects to succeed on appeal.
“I have never violated my public oath, I have never been anything but a patriot of my country and for my country,” Menendez said. “I have never, ever been a foreign agent and the decision rendered by the jury today would put at risk every member of the US Senate in terms of what they think a foreign agent would be.”
The three-term senator was the first member of Congress convicted of being a public official acting as a foreign agent. He was also found guilty of bribery, extortion, conspiracy, honest services wire fraud and obstruction of justice.
Menendez, the senior Hispanic lawmaker in Congress, saw his political support vanish in Washington and New Jersey amid the publicity of the cash, gold and the Mercedes convertible seized by the FBI from his home in 2022. Following the indictment, he resigned as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In the courtroom, one of Menendez’s lawyers patted him on the shoulder as the verdict was read. The judge set a sentencing date for Oct. 29 for Menendez and two co-defendants convicted with him, Fred Daibes and Wael Hana. Like Menendez, Daibes and Hana are expected to appeal.
Prosecutors said Menendez corruptly helped Egypt secure US military aid and sensitive information; urged a US agriculture undersecretary to stop questioning Hana’s halal monopoly; weighed appointing a US attorney in New Jersey who would influence a 2018 fraud indictment of Daibes; contacted the New Jersey attorney general to disrupt New Jersey criminal probes of two people close to Uribe; and helped Daibes arrange financing from a Qatari investment fund for a real estate project.
‘All That Power’
“This case has always been about shocking levels of corruption,” US Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement after watching the verdict in the courtroom. “This wasn’t politics as usual; this was politics for profit. Because Senator Menendez has now been found guilty, his years of selling his office to the highest bidder have finally come to an end.”
The bribes began when Menendez, 70, started dating Nadine Arslanian in 2018, just after an earlier corruption trial against him ended in a hung jury, prosecutors said. They wed in 2020.
At the trial, jurors held the gold bars stashed in the Menendez house, heard about their tumultuous relationship, and watched a secret FBI video of the couple dining at a Morton’s steakhouse with an Egyptian intelligence official. A third businessman, former insurance broker Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty and testified he bribed Arslanian with a Mercedes.
Menendez didn’t testify but denied wrongdoing. His lawyers said he took no bribes or official actions to advance any quid-pro-quo schemes. His attorney Adam Fee derided the US case as “painfully thin,” woven from “fantasy” speculation and misguided inferences.
Cash in Closets
Defense lawyers sought to defuse the explosive heart of the case — gold bars and cash stuffed in closets, boots, jackets, a safe and a shopping bag. Using fingerprints and DNA evidence, prosecutors traced $82,500 of cash-stuffed envelopes to Daibes.
Serial numbers on two one-kilogram gold bars, valued at about $60,000 each, matched those on a list Daibes kept. Daibes, who grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp, gave other kilogram bars to Nadine Menendez, who sold all but two before the FBI raid, the US said. Defense lawyers said she inherited gold bars from her Lebanese family, and there’s no proof the gold she sold came from Daibes.
Fee said Menendez’s Cuban immigrant parents hoarded cash, and that the senator routinely withdrew $400 for decades from a bank account. He also argued Daibes had been friends with Menendez for 30 years, and he gave gifts out of friendship, not corrupt intent.
Jurors heard Arslanian was mesmerized by Menendez when they began dating, calling him “mon amour” in gushing texts. She and Hana set up meetings with Egyptian officials even as she faced foreclosure on her mortgage and struggled to pay for a new car after totaling a Mercedes when she struck and killed a pedestrian. Prosecutors said Hana gave her a no-show job and paid her mortgage, both as bribes.
Uribe, the cooperating witness, testified he gave her $15,000 in cash in a diner parking lot as a down payment on a new car, and made monthly payments for almost three years. He pushed Arslanian to prod Menendez to contact New Jersey’s attorney general at the time, Gurbir Grewal, to urge him to drop the insurance fraud indictment of an associate.
Serial Liar
Defense lawyers grilled Uribe, seeking to show he was a serial liar who shouldn’t be trusted.
Grewal testified that Menendez called him in January 2019, and met with him eight months later, to complain about insurance fraud investigations of Hispanic truckers.
“Menendez is smart, Menendez is careful,” prosecutor Paul Monteleoni said in his summation. “He wasn’t foolish enough to tell Grewal you need to kill this case.” Instead, Menendez “used a fake claim of discrimination as a tactic because that is a serious accusation, one that could get a case dismissed,” and it gave him deniability “if anyone ever accused him of improperly pressuring Grewal,” the prosecutor said.
The case is US v. Menendez, 23-cr-490, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
--With assistance from Patricia Hurtado, Chris Dolmetsch, Ava Benny-Morrison, Steven T. Dennis and Erik Wasson.
(Updates with statements by Menendez, US Attorney Damian Williams)
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