Annals Of DC Corruption: Trump & Menendez
Today’s the day… time for Michael Cohen’s national closeup, his moment in the spotlight. Trump’s former fixer, or consiglieri, who once said he would take a bullet for the don “is prosecutors’ biggest piece of legal ammunition in the former president’s hush money trial… is as challenging a star witness as they come... Trump and his lawyers have assailed Cohen as an admitted liar and criminal who now makes a living off tearing down his former boss. ‘What the defense is going to want the jury to focus on is the fact that he’s a liar’ with a blemished past and a tetchy streak, said Richard Serafini, a Florida criminal defense lawyer and former federal and Manhattan prosecutor. ‘What the prosecution is going to want to focus on is everything he says is corroborated— you don’t have to like him,’ Serafini added. ‘And No. 2, this is the guy Trump chose.’”
Yesterday’s NY Times headline was cute: Michael Cohen Was Paid To Fix Trump’s Problems; Now He’s One of Them. He once bragged he was Trump’s “designated thug” but now he’s “poised to unfix Trump’s life… revealing a mess that prosecutors say his former boss was desperate to hide. It will represent a pivotal moment of the trial, and the climax of a decades-long relationship between two New York loudmouths who used each other, betrayed each other and will now face off on the biggest stage: The first criminal trial of an American president.”
It will certainly be the biggest political trial of the week— but not the only one. Soon to be disgraced ex-senator Bob Menendez’s trial also starts today. “Bars of gold, stacks of cash, a Mercedes-Benz convertible and foreign intelligence officials could all make cameo appearances,” wrote Salvador Rizzo. It would be the top headline everywhere if not for Trump and Cohen. Menendez, who began his political career in New Jersey’s corrupt political milieu as a reformer, quickly went down the dark path… and never looked back. This will be his second federal corruption and bribery trial in a decade. Last time he got off on a technicality. He’s hoping lightning strikes twice, because he’s sure not going to be able to persuade a Manhattan jury that he obtained all that gold (at least 13 bars— worth roughly $60,000 each), cash, an engagement ring, carpeting for the basement and other goodies from Egypt and Qatar legitimately.
The Justice Department says Menendez ultimately became a foreign agent for Egypt, secretly maneuvering to send it U.S. military aid despite resistance in Congress because of that country’s alleged human rights violations. He faces 16 felony counts— including bribery, extortion, fraud, obstruction of justice and acting as a foreign agent— and could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted on all charges.
In the indictment, a team of prosecutors under U.S. Attorney Damian Williams of the Southern District of New York described how one of Menendez’s co-defendants, Wael “Will” Hana, was granted a monopoly by the Egyptian government as the sole U.S. business authorized to certify halal meat exports to Egypt. Hana funneled proceeds from that business to Menendez’s wife, Nadine Menendez, who set up a shell company to receive payments from a low-show or no-show job, prosecutors allege.
Menendez allegedly provided sensitive, nonpublic information to Egyptian officials in exchange, divulging the number of people stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and their nationalities. Prosecutors say Menendez also ghostwrote a letter on behalf of Egypt to other U.S. senators, asking them to release a hold on $300 million in aid to that country.
“Tell Will I am going to sign off this sale to Egypt today,” Menendez wrote in a 2018 text message to then-girlfriend Nadine that was quoted in the indictment, a reference to a $99 million sale of tank ammunition pending before the Senate. “NOTE: These tank rounds are for tanks they have had for many years. They are using these in the Sinai for the counter-terrorism campaign.”
Daniel Richman, an expert on federal bribery law at Columbia Law School, sees a clear distinction in the two corruption cases. “What the government really has going for it in this case, unlike the prior one, is the picture of a powerful senator renting his office to a foreign power,” he said.
Defense attorneys, former prosecutors and law professors point to other significant differences.
The bribes Menendez was accused of taking at his 2017 trial involved more than $700,000 donated to campaign committees supporting his 2012 reelection bid, as well as lavish accommodations on a trip to Paris, undisclosed flights on a private jet and stays at a villa in the Dominican Republic owned by his friend and co-defendant at the time, Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen.
None of that became Menendez’s personal property, the legal experts note, unlike the items seized from his Englewood Cliffs, N.J., residence. The indictment says Hana also paid thousands of dollars toward the home’s mortgage and mentions several other gifts Menendez and his wife received from the businessmen, including a recliner chair, an elliptical exercise machine and an air purifier.
“That tangible evidence— all those luxury goods, gold bars, wads of cash— will no doubt speak volumes in the prosecution’s case,” said Stuart Green, a Rutgers Law School professor.
Menendez and Melgen presented a unified defense seven years ago, describing a longtime friendship and frequent travels together. This time, one of the individuals who allegedly bribed Menendez has already pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. Jose Uribe could take the stand and recount handing Nadine Menendez $15,000 in cash at a parking lot the day before she made a $15,000 down payment on the Mercedes-Benz convertible, as the indictment alleges.
Nadine Menendez needed wheels because she had totaled an earlier Mercedes-Benz in a crash that killed a pedestrian in Bogota, N.J. She was not charged in the man’s death.
Defense attorneys suggested in a legal filing that Menendez may cast some blame on his wife, who was indicted alongside him but is scheduled to be tried separately later this year. A court filing unsealed last month says the attorneys may argue that his wife withheld information from him “or otherwise led him to believe that nothing unlawful was taking place.”
“I am innocent, and will prove so,” the 70-year-old senator told constituents in a video message in March, when he announced he would not seek the Democratic nomination to run for a fourth term this November. “I am hopeful that my exoneration will take place this summer and allow me to pursue my candidacy as an independent Democrat in the general election.”
He added: “All I can ask of you is to withhold judgment until justice takes place.”
But Gov. Phil Murphy, Sen. Cory Booker and a raft of other high-ranking New Jersey Democrats have called on Menendez to resign. A poll released in March by Monmouth University found that 63 percent of respondents in the state said he should leave office, compared with 28 percent who were surveyed after his 2015 indictment.
Twelve senators in U.S. history have been indicted while in office. Six have been convicted. Two of those convictions were later overturned by courts. Menendez is the only senator to be indicted in two unrelated criminal investigations.
“Anytime an individual is indicted two times in a row for, let’s call it public corruption, the odds are not in his favor,” said Chris Adams, a defense attorney at the New Jersey law firm Greenbaum Rowe, which was part of Menendez’s 2017 legal team. “My view as a defense attorney is that this is a much stronger case for the government.”
The latest indictment quotes liberally from text messages and conversations Menendez and his wife had with each other and with Egyptian officials. At a Washington steakhouse in 2019, Nadine Menendez asked an Egyptian intelligence official dining with the couple, “What else can the love of my life do for you?” the indictment says.
The next year, according to the indictment, she sent the same official a text message that said “anytime you need anything you have my number and we will make everything happen.”
New Jersey real estate developer Fred Daibes is Menendez’s other co-defendant. In a 2019 text, Nadine Menendez complained to him that Hana “had not paid her what he owed her,” the indictment says, with Daibes responding: “Nadine I personally gave Bob a check for September.”
The senator is also accused of using his influence in 2020 to try to get the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey to drop its prosecution of Daibes in a separate fraud case. Daibes later pleaded guilty to that offense and was sentenced to probation.
…He has already previewed one likely defense claim— saying that, as the son of Cuban immigrants, he was raised in an environment where storing large amounts of cash at home was not unusual. The indictment details how federal agents found nearly half a million dollars “stuffed into envelopes” and “hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe” when they raided his home in 2022.
The Dems should absolutely not be supporting him or praising him. Stop.