N.J. Sen. Bob Menendez indicted over gifts of gold bars and a luxury car

Gold bars, a luxury car, and envelopes stuffed with tens of thousands in cash were among the bribes that federal authorities on Friday accused U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of accepting as they charged him in a sweeping corruption indictment — the second the New Jersey Democrat has faced in less than a decade.

Prosecutors said that in exchange for those gifts, Menendez, 69, routinely sold the powers of his office to three New Jersey businessmen seeking his assistance with personal and legal problems.

Menendez, they said, used his leadership position on the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee to help one of the men maintain a monopoly on certifying U.S. exports of halal meat to Egypt — an arrangement that hurt American meat producers.

And, in a stunning allegation, they accused the senator of backing the 2021 nomination of New Jersey’s U.S. attorney, Philip R. Sellinger, primarily because he believed he could influence Sellinger’s decision-making in a criminal prosecution of another executive who is accused of paying him bribes.

» READ MORE: U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez Indictment: Read the charges

As he unveiled the charges at a news conference Friday, Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, made clear that Sellinger ultimately recused himself from that case and that his office resisted Menendez’s alleged pressure campaign.

But in detailing the indictment charging Menendez; his wife, Nadine Arslanian; and the businessmen with bribery counts that threaten to send them all to prison for decades, Williams noted that the senator’s website contains a page stressing it’s illegal for him to perform the types of political favors that have now landed him back in court.

“Behind the scenes, Sen. Menendez was doing those things for certain people,” Williams said. “The people who were bribing him and his wife.”

Menendez remained defiant.

The three-term Democrat — whose career in public life spans more than four decades and who faces reelection next year — dismissed the allegations in a statement as “a smear campaign of anonymous sources and innuendos” and accused the Justice Department of “repeatedly attempt[ing] to silence [his] voice and dig [his] political grave.”

“I have been falsely accused before because I refused to back down to the powers that be, and the people of New Jersey were able to see through the smoke and mirrors and recognize I was innocent,” he said. “I am confident that this matter will be successfully resolved once all of the facts are presented, and my fellow New Jerseyans will see this for what it is.”

But by Friday evening, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, state Assembly Speaker Craig J. Coughlin — both fellow Democrats — and the chairman of the state party had all called on Menendez to resign.

”The alleged facts are so serious that they compromise the ability of Sen. Menendez to effectively represent the people of our state,” Murphy said in a statement.

» READ MORE: N.J. Gov. Phil Murphy, other top Democrats call on Sen. Bob Menendez to resign after second bribery indictment

» READ MORE: Who is Bob Menendez’s wife, Nadine? Who else was charged in the indictment?

The charges come less than six years after Menendez escaped the threat of conviction in a separate federal bribery case — that one alleging that he accepted lavish gifts, flights on private jets, and campaign support from a Florida eye doctor.

A jury weighing those charges deadlocked in 2017, and the judge later acquitted Menendez of some of the charges before prosecutors opted not to retry the case.

The new indictment paints a portrait of Menendez as a man with a stunning level of hubris. Undeterred by that previous brush with the law, the senator, it alleges, brazenly began accepting bigger and more lavish payoffs almost immediately.

Within months of prosecutors’ decision not to retry the senator in 2018, Menendez and Arslanian, then his girlfriend, pressured one of the charged businessmen to buy them a 2019 Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible, according to the indictment.

Last year, the indictment says, the payments to Menendez and Arslanian, now married, grew to include gold bars delivered by the driver of one of the indicted businessmen as he picked the couple up at the airport from a return flight from Egypt.

The next day, authorities said, Menendez googled “How much is one kilo of gold worth?”

Prosecutors said Friday that the FBI uncovered $100,000 in gold bars and nearly $500,000 in cash during a search of the couple’s Bergen County home last year — some of it stuffed in envelopes hidden in jackets bearing the senator’s name.

As prosecutors told it, it was Arslanian — whom Menendez met at a Union City IHOP in 2019, proposed to at the foot of the Taj Mahal in India in 2019, and married in Queens, N.Y., a year later — who introduced him to each of the businessmen charged in the case.

She was unemployed when she began dating Menendez but started her own company, Strategic International Business Consultants, in 2018, which allegedly served as a conduit for one of the businessmen, Wael Hana, to pay bribes to her and the senator.

Hana, the Egyptian-born founder of a New Jersey-based halal meat certification company, and Arslanian had a long-standing friendship before she met Menendez. She introduced the men, suggesting Menendez could help Hana with his political and business interests both in Egypt and the U.S., according to the indictment.

As the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Menendez holds broad influence over U.S. foreign affairs, which prosecutors said he routinely wielded to benefit Hana and his interests.

At the request of Hana and other Egyptian officials, the indictment says, he repeatedly weighed in to back U.S. arms sales to the country. And in 2018, Menendez allegedly sent Arslanian a list of U.S. Embassy personnel in Cairo — information, that while not classified, is considered highly sensitive and is routinely kept secret from foreign governments. She allegedly passed it along to Hana, who shared it with officials in Egypt.

When the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2019 urged Egypt to reconsider a monopoly it had granted Hana’s company to be the sole U.S.-based certifier of halal meat exports to the country, Menendez allegedly lobbied top officials at the agency to drop their resistance. Ultimately, they ignored his requests.

Still, prosecutors said, Hana repaid Menendez for his assistance over the years by giving Arslanian a no-show job at his company, $23,000 to help her get her Englewood Cliffs home out of foreclosure, exercise equipment, and gold bars worth $1,800 each.

“Anytime you need anything, you have my number,” she texted one Egyptian official Hana had introduced her to in a 2019 exchange quoted in the indictment. “We will make everything happen.”

Friday’s indictment describes the other two charged executives — Fred Daibes, a New Jersey real estate developer and banker, and Jose Uribe, a former insurance broker — as friends and associates of Hana’s.

Both sought Menendez’s help in quashing criminal investigations tied to their business dealings and, as prosecutors described them, were allegedly willing to pay.

In 2019, Uribe, who before meeting Menendez had already been convicted of fraud and had his insurance license revoked, bought the senator and his wife a Mercedes-Benz in exchange for their support in two state probes involving his associates, the indictment says.

The senator purportedly sought to pressure a senior official in the Attorney General’s Office to resolve those cases favorably for Uribe’s friends — an effort, prosecutors said Friday, that ultimately failed. One of the charged Uribe associates pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation; the other was never charged.

Whether or not Menendez had anything to do with those outcomes, Uribe appeared satisfied with the results.

“I am a very happy person,” he texted Arslanian in 2019. “God bless you and him forever.”

Several nights later, they celebrated over dinner with a champagne toast — an event memorialized in a photo included in the indictment.

Daibes, the real estate developer, was already facing federal charges for obtaining bank loans under false pretenses when Menendez allegedly weighed in on his behalf in late 2020.

At the time, President Joe Biden was poised to nominate a new U.S. attorney for New Jersey, and Menendez, as the state’s senior senator, held significant influence over the appointment.

Both Daibes and Menendez believed Sellinger, who would later be confirmed for that post, would be more malleable and open to Menendez’s influence on Daibes’ pending case, prosecutors said.

According to the indictment, Menendez quizzed Sellinger on his opinions about the pending prosecution during his initial interview for the job, after Daibes plied the senator with cash, furniture, and more gold bars.

Menendez allegedly kept up that pressure campaign after Sellinger was confirmed, purportedly making repeated attempts to lobby the U.S. attorney, who had recused himself from Daibes’ case, and others in his office.

But they, too, resisted. Daibes pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation last year.

As for the charges filed Friday, a lawyer representing Daibes did not return requests for comment. Nor did Uribe’s attorney. A spokesperson for Hana dismissed the charges as baseless.

David Schertler, Arslanian’s lawyer, said in a statement that she “denies any criminal conduct and will vigorously contest these charges in court.”

What the case could mean for Menendez’s future in Congress remains to be seen. He vowed Friday that he would continue serving in his post as the case plays out.

He was reelected in 2018 soon after his last corruption trial, consolidating support in the Democratic Party and defeating a well-funded Republican candidate despite the negative publicity associated with the case.

Menendez has said he intends to seek reelection next year but has not officially launched his campaign. Though New Jersey is a reliably blue state, Menendez has already attracted a Republican challenger and his indictment Friday is sure to worry fellow Democrats, who are counting on his seat to maintain their narrow control of the Senate.

“I have worked every day … to create jobs, strengthen public safety, update infrastructure and reduce costs for New Jersey families,” Menendez said in his statement Friday. “I remain focused on continuing this important work and will not be distracted by baseless allegations.”