Sen. Bob Menendez convicted in bribery trial; New Jersey Democrat found guilty of accepting gold bars and cash
Sen. Bob Menendez, a powerful New Jersey Democrat, was convicted Tuesday in a sprawling bribery scheme in which he was accused of selling out his office for lucrative bribes, including cash and gold bars.
A federal jury convicted Menendez on all 16 felony counts after prosecutors portrayed him as the puppet-master of a complex bribery plan that involved two foreign governments and three New Jersey businessmen.
The verdict marks a remarkable downfall for the longtime senator who sat atop the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee and beat separate bribery charges in 2017. It has renewed pressure on him to resign, including from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. A growing number of his colleagues have said they will vote to expel him if he does not step down.
Menendez, who is now the first senator to be convicted of acting as a foreign agent, said he was "deeply disappointed" by the verdict and predicted his appeal would be successful.
"I have never violated my public oath. I have never been anything but a patriot of my country and for my country. I have never, ever been a foreign agent," he said outside the courthouse. "The decision rendered by the jury today would put at risk every member of the United States Senate in terms of what they think a foreign agent would be."
Menendez's sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 29. Prosecutors did not disclose how much prison time they'd ask for. Menendez is potentially facing decades behind bars, with several of the counts carrying maximum sentences of 20 years.
Menendez tried to shift the blame to his wife, Nadine Menendez, arguing she kept him in the dark about her dealings with the businessmen and her financial troubles. Her trial was postponed as she recovers from breast cancer surgery.
Former federal prosecutor Brian Blais said Menendez's empty-chair defense failed "in pretty spectacular fashion."
"This is a quick jury verdict — less than an hour on each count," he told CBS News on Tuesday. "That shows to me that the jury views this as a relatively open and shut case."
In his closing arguments, prosecutor Paul Monteleoni said the senator "was in charge" and his wife "was his go-between, demanding payment, receiving payment and passing messages but always — always — keeping him informed."
"He calls the shots," Monteleoni said.
The scheme began in 2018, around the time Menendez began dating his now wife, according to prosecutors.
They alleged Menendez acted to secretly benefit the government of Egypt, including ghostwriting a letter for the country lobbying his Senate colleagues to release military aid; pressured a U.S. Department of Agriculture official to protect a halal certification monopoly Egypt granted to a businessman, Wael Hana, who was paying the senator's wife; attempted to quash a federal prosecution against a second businessman, Fred Daibes, while helping him land a lucrative investment deal with Qatar; and interfering in criminal investigations by the New Jersey attorney general's office into the associates of a third businessman, Jose Uribe. Menendez was also accused of obstruction of justice after he and his wife tried to characterize some of the alleged bribe payments as loans and "caused" their former lawyers to make false statements to prosecutors.
In return for political favors, the businessmen provided Menendez and his wife with lavish gifts, including cash, gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz convertible, furniture and mortgage payments.
Menendez was on trial with the two businessmen, Hana and Daibes. They were also found guilty. Hana's lawyer, Larry Lustberg, said they plan to appeal, saying the case "wrongfully criminalized" his longtime relationships. Daibes also plans to appeal.
During the trial, which entered its 10th week Monday, the jury of six women and six men heard testimony from more than three dozen witnesses and saw a voluminous amount of evidence seized in searches of the the Englewood Cliffs house the senator shares with his wife, a safe deposit box stored at a nearby bank, the defendants' electronic devices and financial accounts.
Cash, gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz
Investigators seized 11 1-ounce gold bars, two 1-kilogram gold bars and $486,461 in cash from the home, and nearly $80,000 in cash from the safe deposit box, according to testimony from two FBI agents.
Menendez has insisted that he had a decades-long habit of stockpiling cash that stemmed from his family's experience in Cuba. His older sister told jurors of their parents' practice of storing cash at home after their family fled persecution in Cuba in 1951, before Menendez was born. She called it "a Cuban thing."
A forensic accountant who analyzed Menendez's cash withdrawals on behalf of the defense testified that the senator took out about $400 twice a month between 2008 and 2022. Those withdrawals totaled more than $150,000, he said.
But there were no bank or credit card records showing withdrawals of $10,000 that would explain all the envelopes stuffed with that amount of cash that were found inside the home, prosecutors argued. Daibes' fingerprints were on the tape sealing several of those envelopes, an FBI fingerprint expert testified.
"Just in the basement or office — that Menendez has argued is his area — the FBI found more bills that were first placed into circulation in or after 2018 than the total amount that Menendez withdrew during that time period," Monteleoni said.
Early in the trial, jurors held some of the gold bars found in the couple's home in their own hands that prosecutors linked to Daibes and Hana through serial numbers.
Prosecutors noted a number of Menendez's online searches about the value of gold came as he helped Daibes. The first reference of one kilogram of gold in Menendez's search history is Oct. 18, 2021, an FBI agent testified. Prosecutors said the search happened immediately after Daibes visited the couple's home.
Menendez's lawyers attributed the gold bars and coins in the couple's home to heirlooms and gifts from the family of Menendez's wife, who was born in Lebanon. They said Menendez was unaware of the gold — all of which was found in his wife's locked closet. When Menendez eventually learned of the gold, they said, he updated his Senate financial disclosure forms.
Uribe, who pleaded guilty earlier this year, testified that he asked the senator directly for his help during two meetings in August and September 2019, months after he said he handed Nadine Menendez $15,000 in cash in a restaurant parking lot for a downpayment on the $60,000 Mercedes. Uribe made her car payments until June 2022 — the same month the FBI searched the Menendezes' home.
"The promise of power"
With the lavish gifts came the "promise of power," according to Monteleoni.
In text messages shown to jurors, Nadine Menendez vented about Hana not paying her as she faced foreclosure on her home, saying "what I have done [is] priceless" and "when I feel comfortable and plan the trip to Egypt, he will be more powerful than the president of Egypt."
In April 2019, Egypt granted a lucrative monopoly to Hana's halal certification company, setting off alarms at the Department of Agriculture. Before that, four companies had split ensuring that meat exported from the U.S. to Egypt was prepared according to Islamic law. The abrupt change confused U.S. officials because Hana's company did not have any prior experience in halal certification and had few employees. The decision increased meat costs in Egypt and was seen as detrimental to U.S. businesses, according to several officials who testified.
The U.S. was stonewalled when it sought answers from Egypt, which officials said was unusual for the country — one of the largest recipients of U.S. military aid.
As the U.S. pressed Egypt for answers, Ted McKinney, a former top agricultural official, said he got a call from Menendez with the message: "Stop interfering with my constituent."
"I felt he was telling me to stand down and stop doing all of the things that we were doing to try to revive some sense of competition in the U.S. beef market," McKinney told jurors in May. "It was the first time I'd ever had a call that we thought would clearly harm elements of the U.S. food and [agriculture] industry."
Menendez's lawyers challenged the characterization of the conversation, saying he was doing his job by helping a constituent.
By that time, prosecutors alleged, Menendez was doing favors for Egyptian officials that he knew through his wife and Hana, including secretly helping the country lobby his colleagues to release $300 million in aid that had been held up over human rights concerns and providing it with details about U.S. Embassy employees in Cairo, which prosecutors argued was sensitive information.
The profits from the monopoly allowed Hana to funnel bribe money to the couple, prosecutors said. A former lawyer for the halal certification company testified that Hana wired Nadine Menendez $23,000 to save her home from foreclosure and then put her on the company's payroll for $10,000 a month.
Another FBI agent told jurors about going undercover at an upscale steakhouse near the White House to surveil a group that included an Egyptian official, Hana and his business associate soon after Egypt granted the monopoly. Menendez and his wife unexpectedly showed up. The agent said she heard the senator's wife ask, "What else can the love of my life do for you?" The agent did not hear the response.
Uribe testified that he enlisted the senator and his wife to "stop and kill" an insurance fraud investigation that was being conducted by New Jersey's attorney general.
Gurbir Grewal, the then-attorney general for New Jersey, said Menendez raised a concern "about a pending criminal manner" during a January 2019 call and September 2019 meeting. He recalled telling Menendez, "I can't talk to you about this."
After the September meeting, Uribe said Menendez told him, "That thing that you asked me about, there's nothing there. I give you your peace." The senator later boasted about saving him twice, Uribe testified.
Philip Sellinger, the U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, said Menendez brought up a federal bank fraud case against Daibes as the senator was considering nominating Sellinger for the position he now holds. The senator told him he thought Daibes "was being treated unfairly" by the U.S. attorney's office and "hoped that if I became U.S. attorney that I would look at it carefully," Sellinger testified. He said he told the senator he may have to recuse himself from the case if appointed because of an unrelated lawsuit his law firm had handled related to Daibes.
Sellinger said their longtime friendship ended shortly after that and Menendez told him he would no longer nominate him for the role. The senator did eventually recommend him for the position.
State and federal prosecutors did not take action in the cases after their interactions with Menendez, but prosecutors in the senator's trial said the alleged promises to Uribe and Daibes constitute the crime.
"This is a big case, but it all boils down to a classic case of corruption on a massive scale," Monteleoni said.
–Ash Kalmar contributed reporting.