Politics
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September 22, 2023
The New Jersey senator was arraigned by the Justice Department for a series of charges right out of The Sopranos
Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) flights in the Senate train as he leaves the Senate chambers on February 16, 2023, in Washington, D.C.
(Kevin Dietsch/ Getty Images)
State what you will about New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, however he’s not an empty match. Amongst the lots of lurid information in the Justice Department’s indictment of the sitting chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on corruption charges, one stuck out as being simply a bit too on the nose: Menendez and his cash-hungry partner, Nadine, had actually squirreled away more than $480,000 in loose money in their New Jersey house, the method one does– a few of it bundled in the senator’s match coats bearing his name and the United States Senate insignia.
If that importance in some way strikes you as insufficiently cartoonish, continue reading: The indictment likewise discusses how $100,000 worth of gold bars were discovered in the Menendez’s spread– the sort of old-school pelf praise connected with Scrooge McDuck. Still insufficient? Well, how about Menendez returning from a junket to Egypt, just to Google the worth of a kg of gold?
While the information of the myriad rewards catalogued in the indictment look like the sort of buffoonery you ‘d come across in the American Hustle blooper reel, the underlying charges are rather severe. The indictment charges that Menendez “assured to and did utilize his impact and breach his main task” in the service of 3 New Jersey business people, Wael Hana, Fred Daibes, and Jose Uribe. Menendez likewise supposedly obtained essential favors on behalf of the state of Egypt, amongst the world’s biggest receivers of United States military help. (In a declaration, the senator has actually rejected all the charges as the workmanship of challengers who “see me as a barrier in the method of their wider political objectives.”)
According to the indictment, Menendez provided delicate info to the Egyptian federal government while bring back formerly rejected military financing. On the domestic front, on the other hand, he’s charged with poorly intervening in a New Jersey state chief law officer examination of Uribe, while steering to protect the visit of a United States Attorney who he believed might be bent towards the interests of Daibes, then warding off his own federal indictment. (The lawyer in concern, Phillip R. Sellinger, has actually not been charged with any misdeed.) To highlight the ostentatious character of Menendez’s abuses, the indictment mentions language from the senator’s site, notifying constituents that “our workplace can not force a company to act in your favor or accelerate your case; reverse or affect matters including personal service” or “step in with judicial concerns, offer legal recommendations or advise a lawyer.” Seemingly, no footnoted disclaimer went on to state: “a minimum of not without tons of prepared money or gold bars.”
Menendez’s indictment was lurid, however not precisely stunning. In 2015, the senator dealt with federal bribery charges in New Jersey in a supposed plan to provide legal favors to a rich donor in exchange for more than $1 million in backsheesh. A 2018 trial produced a hung-jury mistrial, which ultimately resulted in a partial acquittal, with the United States Attorney’s workplace lastly dropping the balance of the charges.
To paraphrase Menendez’s Senate coworker Susan Collins of Maine, the veteran graft-broker does not appear to have actually discovered his lesson. In Menendez’s negotiations with Egypt, his other half, Nadine, whom he wed in 2020, showed a main gamer. The 2 started dating in late 2018, and shortly later Nadine scheduled an intro to Wael Hana, who boasted a variety of connections to the Egyptian federal government. (Another exposing vignette from the indictment has Menendez texting Nadine about the pending approval of a $99 million tank offer for Egypt; she without delay forwarded the text to an unnamed Egyptian authorities, who responded with a thumbs-up emoji.) The indictment states that Hana ponied up $23,000 to Nadine’s home mortgage lending institution to fend off foreclosure procedures versus her, which after the senator had actually acted to fix a criminal matter undefined in the indictment, Hana and Uribe acquired a Mercedes convertible for Nadine from a car dealership in Edison, N.J. In another only-in-Jersey grow, Uribe handed her the $15,000 deposit in a dining establishment car park, which got him this gushing thank-you text: “You are a wonder employee who makes dreams come to life I will constantly bear in mind that.” He worked the exact same wonder on the balance of the $60,000 due on the cars and truck, settling half, according to the indictment.
Existing Issue
These sort of Mob-style shenanigans sit awkwardly together with the sober considerations one may anticipate from the Senate’s Foreign Relations chair, however Menendez hasn’t precisely been an unidentified amount to the Democratic Senate management. Rather of discarding the scandal-plagued senator after his last gruesome brush with the law, bulk leader Chuck Shumer invested extravagantly on his 2018 reelection effort, although signed up Democrats surpass Republicans by well over a million in the Garden State. Menendez is once again up for election next year, and it promises that even the exceptionally inertia-prone Democratic facility will be required to get a more feasible prospect; up until now, Joe Signorello III, mayor of the town of Union Park, is Menendez’s just revealed main challenger.
Under Senate guidelines, Menendez will turn over his foreign affairs gavel throughout the course of his arraignment and trial– a result that can just be a policy gain, in addition to an anti-corruption reward. Menendez’s period has actually not just been a feather-bedding workout for significant receivers of United States help such as Egypt and Israel; on his watch, the Foreign Relations Committee has likewise regularly raised the statement of interested state stars over that of reformers, dissidents, and civil-society groups. Provided what we understand of how the senator manages his personal affairs, that’s not precisely a shock, however it’s still a baleful advancement for anybody aiming to see American diplomacy approximately lined up with the forces of democratic reform and responsibility.
It’s real that widespread corruption has actually been a signature New Jersey political export. The Progressive-era muckraking reporter Lincoln Steffens identified it “the traitor state” early in the 20th century, and little about New Jersey’s functional social compact has actually altered because. Another head-spinning phenomenon on today’s political scene is seeing Chris Christie– the previous United States Attorney who had actually introduced a 2006 corruption query versus Menendez, just to go on as guv to phase handle “Bridgegate,” one of the most gloriously minor state political scandals in contemporary memory– now running for president as the straitlaced Never Trump conscience of the Republican celebration. Once again, of course, Menendez himself voted in favor of Trump’s 2019 impeachment for controling military help to Ukraine on baldly political terms– a pay-to-play offer that’s nearly structurally similar to what Menendez is declared to have actually done in the case of Egypt’s military help bundle. It’s normally an excellent general rule, to put it simply, to be cautious of New Jersey pols taking the mantle of reform; likewise, it’s most likely a great preventative measure to see what they’re bring in their coat.
Chris Lehmann
Chris Lehmann is the D.C. Bureau chief forThe Nationand a contributing editor atThe Baffler.He was previously editor ofTheBafflerandThe New Republicand is the author, most just recently, of The Cash Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream(Melville House, 2016).
Robert Menendez’s Family Business posted first on https://www.twoler.com/
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