The Details Of Bob Menendez’s Bribery Scheme Are Outright Cartoonish

Democratic New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez was indicted Friday on federal corruption charges, bringing to light sensational new allegations against the lawmaker as detailed in court documents reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Menendez, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was charged with three felony counts related to his alleged receipt of bribes in exchange for steering U.S. foreign policy to favor Egypt, according to an indictment issued by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. The indictment alleges several corrupt acts by Menendez and his wife, Nadine, which the Daily Caller News Foundation has listed below.

1. Menendez allegedly hid stacks of cash and gold bullion received from his associates in his home

In June of 2022, the FBI executed a search warrant on Menendez’s home in New Jersey as well as a safe deposit box belonging to his wife Nadine. At these locations, officials found, “[o]ver $480,000 in cash — much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe … along with over $70,000 in [Nadine’s] safe deposit box,” according to the indictment.

These cash amounts were found, stacked, in Menendez’s clothes hanging in his closet and bearing the U.S. Senate logo. Additionally, the FBI discovered gold bullion bars worth over $100,000 in Menendez’s home and safe deposit box.

The cash and gold, as well as two exercise machines, an air purifier and other furniture, were provided to Menendez by Wael Hana, Jose Uribe and Fred Daibes, three associates of his wife who were introduced to Menendez and who allegedly acted on behalf of Egypt’s government in the scheme.

“Some of the envelopes contained the fingerprints and/or DNA of DAIBES or his driver … and was marked with DAIBES’s return address” the indictment read, with Nadine later texting Daibes that it was “Christmas in January.”

2. Menendez allegedly leaked sensitive information about the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to Egyptian officials

On May 6, 2018, while he was the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Menendez allegedly contacted the U.S. Department of State to obtain sensitive and non-public details about personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, the indictment claims. These included the total number of persons working at the embassy as well as their nationalities — including U.S. citizen officials accredited to Egypt as well as non-citizen locally employed staff, according to the indictment.

Menendez later shared this information with Nadine, who was his girlfriend at the time, according to the indictment. This was transmitted to Hana, who then shared it with an unnamed official of the Egyptian government.

“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 read. Menendez provided the information to Hana without informing his Senate staff, the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or the Department of State, according to the indictment.

3. Menendez allegedly ghost-wrote a letter on behalf of the government of Egypt to other senators to lift a hold on arms sales

In 2017, the Trump administration withheld $195 million worth of arms sales to Egypt over concerns about human rights, with several senators raising “human rights or rule-of-law objections” to the sales, according to the indictment.

In 2018, after a request from Egyptian officials through his girlfriend Nadine, Menedez personally drafted a letter for the Egyptian government to send to his Senate colleagues and enlist their support for lifting the hold, according to the indictment. The letter, though ghost-written by Menendez, was signed by high-ranking Egyptian officials and made to appear as though they had drafted it, and was transmitted to them via a personal email account, the indictment claimed.

“[A]nytime you need anything you have my number and we will make everything happen,” Nadine later texted to an Egyptian government official in 2020.

4. Menendez’s girlfriend allegedly obtained a no-show job from a company that received an Egyptian government monopoly over exports

In exchange for their efforts on behalf of Egypt, the country’s government in 2019 granted “IS EG Halal,” a firm founded by Hana, an exclusive monopoly on the certification of all food imports from the United States as compliant with “halal” standards, referring to Islamic rules regarding how food is to be prepared, which are required by Egyptian law. “Neither [Hana] nor his company, had experience with halal certification,” the indictment claimed.

The revenue that Hana generated from his exclusive monopoly over U.S. imports enabled him to pay Menendez’s girlfriend, Nadine, even though she did not engage in any work for the company. The indictment described the position as a…