New obstruction of justice crimes levied against Sen. Bob Menendez in rewritten indictment

NEW YORK — New obstruction of justice charges were added Tuesday to the charges against Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife, who allege they accepted gold bars, cash and a luxury car in exchange for favors the senator provided to help three businessmen.

The charges were included in a rewritten indictment against the Democrat in Manhattan federal court.

Charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice and obstruction of justice were added against Menendez and his wife Nadine. In a statement, the senator called the additions “a blatant abuse of power” and alleged that prosecutors “tried to get me to give in, simply by making wild accusations over and over again, without actually proving anything.”

He said the government “had long known that I heard about and helped repay loans (not bribes) made to my wife.”

“Unsatisfied – or unable – to honestly face these facts at trial, the government has now falsely alleged a cover-up and obstruction,” Menendez said. “I am innocent and will prove it no matter how many charges they continue to pile up.”

David Schertler, a Washington-based attorney for Nadine Menendez, declined to comment on the new allegations.

An indictment already alleges that the couple conspired with three businessmen to accept the bribes in exchange for the senator’s help with their projects. Both have pleaded not guilty, along with two businessmen. A trial is scheduled for May.

One businessman pleaded guilty last week and agreed to testify against the others at trial.

After his arrest last fall, the 70-year-old Menendez was forced to relinquish his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but he said he would not resign from Congress.

According to an indictment, Menendez and his wife accepted gold bars and cash from a real estate developer in exchange for the senator using his influence to get that businessman a multimillion-dollar deal with a Qatari investment fund.

Menendez was also accused of helping another New Jersey business associate strike a lucrative deal with the Egyptian government.

Among the new charges, prosecutors say Menendez arranged for his then-attorney to meet with prosecutors last June and September to say the senator was unaware until 2022 of a $23,000 mortgage payment a businessman had made on the home from Nadine Menendez in New Jersey to avoid foreclosure or the money. another defendant paid for a Mercedes-Benz convertible.

Prosecutors allege Menendez also arranged for his attorney to say at the September meeting that Menendez learned in 2022 that the payments were loans.

Prosecutors wrote that Menendez was aware and “had heard of both the mortgage company payment and the car payments due before 2022, and that they were not loans, but bribes.”

Prosecutors also said in the rewritten indictment that Nadine Menendez induced her attorney last August to tell prosecutors that the mortgage payment and money provided for the convertible loan were loans, even though she knew they were bribes.

The new charges allege the couple attempted to obstruct justice in the weeks before they were charged with several crimes last September.

Prosecutors also say Nadine Menendez asked a businessman, after receiving a subpoena for documents, what he would tell investigators if they asked him about payments he made for the convertible. After the man responded that he would say the payments were a loan, Nadine Menendez “said that sounded good,” prosecutors said.

And, prosecutors said, Bob and Nadine Menendez both tried to return some of the bribe money once they knew an investigation was underway. In particular, they noted that in December 2022, Bob Menendez wrote his wife a check for $23,569 – the amount of the mortgage payment she had received – with a handwritten memo: “To liquidate the loan.”

The charge was added to the indictment just a day after Judge Sidney H. Stein dismissed Menendez’s claims that search warrants that led to the discovery of gold bars and cash at his New Jersey home were unconstitutional.

Defense attorneys had argued that documents presented to magistrate judges between January 2022 and September last year to obtain search warrants for email records, phones and materials at Menendez’s residence were “replete with material misrepresentations and omissions.” .

FBI raids on the home in June 2022 resulted in the discovery of more than $100,000 in gold bars and more than $480,000 in cash, much of it hidden in closets, clothing and a safe, prosecutors said.

Menendez said the money found in the home was personal savings he had stashed away for emergencies.

In his statement Tuesday, Menendez said the rewritten indictment “reveals much more about the government than it does about me. It says the prosecutors are afraid of the facts, afraid to submit their charges to the fair examination of a jury, and unconstrained by any sense of justice or fair play. It says once and for all that they will stop at nothing in their zeal to get me,” he said.

The son of Cuban immigrants, Menendez has held public office continuously since 1986, when he was elected mayor of Union City, New Jersey. In 2006, then-Gov. Jon Corzine appointed Menendez to the Senate seat he vacated when he became governor.

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Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed.