Sen. Menendez and his wife indicted on corruption charges

U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez was indicted Friday for the second time in 10 years on corruption charges for allegedly accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for helping them enrich themselves and trying to get them out of trouble, according to an indictment unsealed in New York.

Bribes allegedly included cash, gold bars, payments toward a home mortgage, compensation for a low-or-no-show job and a Mercedes-Benz — much of which is detailed in photographs in the 39-page indictment.

On Friday evening, Gov. Phil Murphy called for Menendez to resign, saying in a statement that the allegations "are so serious that they compromise the ability of Senator Menendez to effectively represent the people."

Menendez's wife — Nadine Arslanian Menendez — was also indicted in the alleged scheme.

The three businessmen — Wael Hana, Jose Uribe and Fred Daibes — have been charged with conspiracy to commit bribery and conspiracy to commit honest services fraud.

Story continues below photo gallery.

More than $480,000 in cash was found stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets and a safe at Menendez's Englewood Cliffs home during a search by investigators in June 2022, according to the indictment. They also found over $70,000 in Nadine Menendez’s safe deposit box. The indictment includes photos of cash that was stuffed into clothes, including a windbreaker with Menendez's name stitched on it.

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Some of the envelopes contained the fingerprints or DNA of Daibes — an Edgewater developer and longtime political donor to Menendez — or Daibes' driver, the indictment says.

Agents also found home furnishings provided by Hana and Daibes and a luxury vehicle paid for by Uribe parked in the garage. They also discovered more than $100,000 worth of gold bars in the home, provided by Hana or Daibes, according to the indictment.

Menendez says 'facts are not as presented'

Menendez said in a statement that the prosecutors "misrepresented the normal work of a Congressional office" and have "attacked my wife for the longstanding friendships she had before she and I even met."

“Those behind this campaign simply cannot accept that a first-generation Latino American from humble beginnings could rise to be a U.S. senator and serve with honor and distinction," Menendez said. “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."

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"For years, forces behind the scenes have repeatedly attempted to silence my voice and dig my political grave," Menendez said. "Since this investigation was leaked nearly a year ago, there has been an active smear campaign of anonymous sources and innuendos to create an air of impropriety where none exists."

He said the prosecutors "wrote these charges as they wanted" and that the "facts are not as presented." He also said he is "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."

The Senate Historical Office says Menendez appears to be the first sitting senator in U.S. history to have been indicted on two unrelated criminal allegations.

The indictment alleges that Menendez and his wife “agreed to and did accept hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes in exchange for using Menendez’s power and influence as a senator to protect and enrich Hana, Uribe and Daibes and to benefit the Arab Republic of Egypt.”

Menendez, a Democrat, has been chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but temporarily stepped down Friday after the indictment was unsealed.

Steps Menendez allegedly took

Among the steps the senior senator from New Jersey allegedly took:

• Menendez "improperly advised and pressured" U.S. Department of Agriculture officials to protect a "business monopoly" granted to Hana by the Egyptian government and used in part to fund the bribes being paid to Menendez through his wife, Nadine, the indictment reads.

• Menendez tried to disrupt a criminal investigation and prosecution undertaken by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office related to Uribe and his associates.

• Menendez recommended that President Joe Biden nominate an individual as New Jersey's U.S. attorney who Menendez believed could be influenced to disrupt the federal criminal prosecution of Daibes.

Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District in New York, said at a news conference Friday that the prosecutors contacted by Menendez "did not bend to the pressure."

On Friday evening, Attorney General Matthew Platkin said his office would begin its own independent internal inquiry into the allegations that Menendez tried to lobby prosecutors on behalf of Uribe, who ended up giving the senator's wife a luxury car.

The schemes appear to have been initiated by Nadine Menendez, according to the indictment.

Nadine Menendez told Hana in 2018 that she was dating Menendez. In the following months and years, Nadine and Hana introduced Egyptian intelligence and military officials to the senator for “the purpose of establishing and solidifying a corrupt agreement,” the indictment reads.

A court-authorized search in November 2019 of Hana’s cellphone revealed thousands of text messages between him and Nadine Menendez. She and the senator were married in October 2020.

Egypt, ammo and bribes

After they began dating, Menendez started doing favors for the Egyptian government on behalf of Nadine Menendez and Hana, according to the indictment.

Menendez allegedly texted sensitive information regarding the number and nationality of staff members at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to Nadine Menendez in May 2018, and she forwarded the message to Hana, who forwarded it to an Egyptian government official.

Menendez also ghost-wrote a letter that same month on behalf of Egypt to other U.S. senators advocating for them to release a hold on $300 million in aid to the country. In the ensuing years, he signed off on millions in weapons and ammunition sales to Egypt.

In return, Hana promised Nadine Menendez payments from IS EG Halal Certified Inc. a struggling Edgewater company that Hana operated with financial backing from Daibes.

IS EG Halal had little to no revenue until the spring of 2019, when the Egyptian government granted it a monopoly on the certification of U.S. food exports to Egypt compliant with halal standards — even though the company had no experience with halal certification. The monopoly generated revenue for Hana, and he paid Nadine Menendez, including $23,000 to help bring her mortgage current and three $10,000 checks for a no-show job.

The monopoly caused increased costs for U.S. meat suppliers. When the USDA intervened, Menendez called a high-level official at the agency and told them to back off, the indictment says.

In March 2020, Nadine Menendez texted an Egyptian official, “anytime you need anything you have my number and we will make everything happen.”

A Mercedes and two state investigations

The indictment said Menendez attempted to thwart a state prosecution and another state investigation into associates of Uribe, who was a friend of Hana and developed a relationship with Menendez and his wife in 2018.

In exchange, Hana and Uribe helped buy a Mercedes-Benz C 300 convertible for Nadine Menendez worth more than $60,000 in 2019, according to the indictment.

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The senator contacted a senior prosecutor in the state Attorney General’s Office who supervised the prosecution into Uribe's associate and the investigation into Uribe's employee in “an attempt, through advice and pressure … to resolve these matters favorably,” according to the indictment. The official considered Menendez’s actions inappropriate and refused to intervene, but the indictment notes that Uribe’s associate pleaded guilty to a non-prison sentence, which was more lenient than the prosecutors’ initial plea offer.

A few weeks after Menendez’s call to the prosecutor, Uribe provided $15,000 to Nadine Menendez for a down payment.

Nadine Menendez texted the senator: “Congratulations mon amour de la vie, we are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes” and added a heart emoji.

It didn't end there. Menendez allegedly later met with a government official “in an attempt, through advice and pressure,” to influence the investigation against Uribe’s employee.

In October, 2019, Uribe told Nadine Menendez that he had spoken to the senator about the investigation: “I just got a call and I am a very happy person.”

The indictment includes a photo of Uribe with the senator and his wife at a celebratory dinner holding flutes of champagne a few nights after the text message.

Uribe paid at least 32 monthly financing charges for the car. When investigators approached Menendez, his wife and Uribe in June 2022, Uribe allegedly stopped making payments and Nadine Menendez wrote him a check for $21,000, calling it a “personal loan.”

'Christmas in January'

Menendez put the full-court press on Philip Sellinger before and after he became the U.S. attorney for New Jersey to go light on Daibes, the Edgewater developer who was charged with bank fraud and allegedly bribed the senator with cash and gold bars, according to the indictment.

In December 2020, Menendez met with Sellinger, to consider whether he would support Sellinger’s nomination to the U.S. attorney post. At the meeting, Menendez criticized the prosecution of Daibes and asked Sellinger to “look into” the case if he was nominated, the indictment reads.

After the meeting, Sellinger told Menendez that he would have to recuse himself from the Daibes prosecution because he had handled a matter involving the developer while in private practice. Menendez told him he would be recommending another candidate for U.S. attorney.

But in the spring of 2021 an unnamed adviser told Menendez that Sellinger would not have to recuse himself. “I think if you call [Sellinger], you’ll be comfortable with what he says,” the adviser texted Menendez.Menendez then recommended Sellinger for the post. Sellinger is not named in the indictment and is referred to only as “Official-3.”

Shortly after he was sworn in, the Department of Justice determined that Sellinger would be recused from Daibes’ prosecution.

In early 2022, Menendez had short phone calls with the first assistant U.S. attorney. At the time, Daibes’ unnamed driver had called Nadine Menendez twice on Jan. 24. Later that day, Nadine Menendez texted Daibes: “Thank you. Christmas in January.”

The driver’s fingerprints were later found on an envelope containing thousands in cash at the Menendez home. Several days later, the senator Googled the phrase “kilo of gold price.”

In March, Nadine Menendez met with a jeweler and showed him two 1-kilogram gold bars that were worth more than $120,000, according to the indictment. Serial numbers showed that the gold bars had been owned by Daibes, the indictment reads.

The next month, Daibes pleaded guilty, in a deal resulting in a probationary sentence.

Looking at Dabies properties

The investigation was also looking at the partial sale by prominent Edgewater developer Daibes of several properties along the Hudson, including the Quanta Superfund site, to a Qatari sheikh.

There's also a bill introduced in Trenton last year, co-sponsored by state Sen. Nick Sacco and state Sen. Brian Stack, designed to limit development at the foot of the Palisades cliffs in towns along the Hudson River in Hudson and Bergen counties.

The bill, which has languished since being introduced, could have affected a high-rise development that Daibes had long planned for the Quanta Superfund site.

Ties between the Menendez investigation and Daibes began to surface in the spring, when Sacco received a subpoena from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan requesting correspondence related to Menendez, his wife and Daibes.

Daibes has donated more than $20,000 to various Menendez political campaigns and PACs over the years. Currently there's no indication that Menendez has any connection to the Palisades bill, either by lobbying on its behalf or by opposing it.

You can read the full text of the Menendez indictment here.

Earlier investigation

This isn’t the first federal investigation Menendez has faced.

A 2017 investigation probed ties between Menendez and his longtime friend and donor Salomon Melgen. They stood trial in federal court in connection with alleged favors given to Melgen after he paid for trips and expenses for Menendez.

The judge declared a mistrial, and prosecutors later dropped the charges against Menendez. Melgen was separately convicted of Medicare fraud but was pardoned by former President Donald Trump.

That wasn’t the first time Menendez found himself the target of an investigation, though he has never been convicted of a crime. In 2006, he was under investigation by then-U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, who later became governor, on suspicion of steering federal funds to a local nonprofit, but prosecutors closed the case without filing charges.

In 2012, the year Menendez won a second term as senator, a campaign donor from Franklin Lakes, Joseph Bigica, admitted to federal authorities that he made illegal contributions to the senator. Menendez said he was a victim and donated the money to charities.

In 2013, a federal investigation revealed that the developers of the massive Meadowlands retail and entertainment complex now called American Dream were reportedly asked to contribute $50,000 to Menendez's campaign fund in return for the senator's help in getting permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Federal authorities did not pursue the accusation.

This story contains information from USA Today and The Associated Press.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Sen. Bob Menendez and wife indicted on corruption charges