Add obstruction of justice rap to long list of charges N.J. Sen. Menendez is facing
New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez was hit Tuesday with new criminal charges in his Manhattan bribery case that allege he lied to the feds in the leadup to his arrest.
The embattled senator is newly accused of obstruction of justice and plotting to obstruct justice for allegedly claiming through his lawyers that he thought thousands of dollars in bribes given to his wife, Nadine Menendez, were loans.
Feds in the Southern District of New York say that Menendez relayed the bogus information to prosecutors in June and September of last year — right before he was indicted.
He allegedly claimed he’d initially been in the dark about thousands paid to his wife toward a new Mercedes-Benz and another payout of more than $23,000 issued by his co-defendant Wael Hana toward the company holding the mortgage on the couple’s New Jersey home.
“In truth and in fact, and as [Menendez] well knew, [Menendez] had learned of both the mortgage company payment and the car payments prior to 2022, and they were not loans, but bribe payments,” reads the indictment.
Menendez, 70, slammed the new charges as “a flagrant abuse of power” and doubled down on his claims his co-defendants had merely lent money to his wife, not bribed her.
“The government has long known that I learned of and helped repay loans — not bribes — that had been provided to my wife,” he said in a statement. “Not content — or capable — of meeting those facts fairly at trial, the government has now falsely alleged a coverup and obstruction. The latest charge reveals far more about the government than it says about me.”
Menendez has pleaded not guilty to a host of charges accusing him, among other allegations, of conspiring to act as a foreign agent for the Egyptian government in his powerful role as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
He’s also accused of abusing his position to advance lucrative Qatari interests in exchange for gold bullion bars, flashy watches and Formula 1 tickets, along with other lavish gifts.
The new charges come days after Jose Uribe — a former Garden State insurance broker charged alongside Menendez, his wife and two others last fall — on Friday pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe the senator in exchange for the powerful Democrat’s help quashing criminal investigations into two associates, honest services wire fraud, tax evasion, obstruction of justice and related charges. Under the terms of his plea agreement, Uribe has agreed to cooperate against the senator and testify at his trial slated to begin May 6.
Details revealed during Uribe’s Friday plea hearing were included in the rewritten indictment filed against Menendez, his wife and businessmen Fred Daibes and Hana in Manhattan Federal Court, including a conversation Uribe allegedly had with the spouse the day he got a subpoena.
Uribe claimed Friday that he met Menendez’s wife at a Marriott Hotel to discuss a cover story in June 2022 after the feds requested information about large sums of cash he gave her.
Nadine Menendez asked “Uribe what he would say if law enforcement asked him about the payments he had made for the Mercedes-Benz Convertible. Uribe responded that he would say those payments had been a loan, and [Nadine Menendez] said that sounded good,” prosecutors wrote in Tuesday’s new filings.
Following his indictment, Menendez stepped down from his role on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but has refused to resign from office.
On Monday, a judge shot down his arguments challenging the lawfulness of search warrants executed on his home last year when the feds turned up almost half a million dollars in cash and gold bullion bars.
Lawyers for Nadine Menendez, Daibes and Hana did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment.