Democratic Senator Charged with Being an Agent of Egypt
Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey has been accused of acting as a foreign agent on behalf of Egypt, according to a new indictment.
Menendez and his wife, Nadine, were already facing a federal indictment out of New York concerning an allegedly corrupt arrangement with three businessmen to help them and benefit Egypt, according to CNBC.
Menendez had been the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee until he stepped down from that post after last month’s indictment, according to The New York Times.
After that indictment, calls were issued for Menendez to resign from the Senate, which he has said he would not do. Menendez was scheduled to hold a major fund-raising event Friday at a luxury resort in Puerto Rico.
The superseding indictment against Menendez and his wife said they worked with “Wael Hana , a/k/a ‘Will Hana,’ Jose Uribe, and Fred Daibes” to “accept hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes in exchange for using Menendez’s power and influence as a Senator to seek to protect and enrich Hana, Uribe and Daibes and to benefit the Arab Republic of Egypt.
“Those bribes included cash, gold, payments toward a home mortgage, compensation for a low-or-no-show job, a luxury vehicle, and other things of value,” the indictment said, saying the Menendez “willfully and knowingly combined, conspired, confederated, and agreed” to serve Egypt.
The indictment said the senator undertook “a series of official acts and breaches of official duty in exchange for bribes.”
“Among other actions, Menendez provided sensitive U.S. Government information and took other steps that secretly aided the Government of Egypt,” the indictment said.
The indictment noted that Egyptian officials sought “foreign military sales and foreign military financing” and that “In exchange for Menendez and Nadine Menendez’s promise that Menendez would, among other things, use his power and authority to facilitate such sales and financing to Egypt, Hana promised, among other things, to put Nadine Menendez on the payroll of his company in a low-or-no-show job,” the indictment said.
Menendez “promised to take and took a series of acts on behalf of Egypt, including on behalf of Egyptian military and intelligence officials,” saying that Hana and Menendez’s wife acted as go-betweens.
The indictment said that in 2018, “Menendez sought from the State Department non-public information regarding the number and nationality of persons serving at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt. Although this information was not classified, it was deemed highly sensitive because it could pose significant operational security concerns if disclosed to a foreign government or if made public.”
The indictment said he then sent the information to his then-girlfriend — the woman who would become his wife.
The indictment said Menendez also intervened in 2019 to help Egyptian officials deal with a 2105 incident in which an American citizen was injured by the Egyptian military in an airstrike using an American-made Apache helicopter.
In 2020, Menendez used his influence to push forward American support for a Nile River dam project, the indictment said.
According to the indictment, a search of Menendez’s hone in June 2022 netted “[o]ver $480,000 in cash—much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe.”
The search also found “over one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of gold bars in the home,” the indictment said.
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