Sen. Bob Menendez faces decades in prison as he’s convicted of sprawling gold bar bribery scheme
He’s a newly minted felon.
New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez was found guilty Tuesday of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes in exchange for using his powerful post to enrich and protect three businessmen and the Egyptian and Qatari governments.
The three-term Democrat, wearing a blue suit and pink tie, sat with his head bowed and kept a poker face while the jury forewoman read the word “guilty” 16 times, convicting him of each count that he faced.
The bombshell verdict was delivered in Manhattan federal court after about 12½ hours of deliberations spread over three days. It capped a nine-week trial that revealed how the senator leveraged his position to cater to the whims of men who showered him and his wife with 1-kilogram gold bars, cash and gifts including a Mercedes-Benz convertible.
“This wasn’t politics as usual,” US Attorney for the Southern District Damian Williams told reporters outside court Tuesday. “This was politics for profit.”
Jurors heard how Menendez’s cluttered Englewood Cliffs house was teeming with gold bars and cash when FBI agents raided it in June 2022.
Photos revealed at trial showed 13 gold bars worth $150,000 found inside Menendez’s bedroom, and $486, 471 in cash spread out all over the house — including wads of bills totaling $14,500 stuffed into a pair of well-worn Timberland work boots.
Cash-filled envelopes were also found stuffed inside Menendez’s official US Senate jacket emblazoned with his name.
Menendez’s conviction immediately added fuel to calls for the senator — who has proclaimed his innocence and claimed he was targeted because he’s a prominent Latino — to resign from Congress, which he has refused to do.
His indictment last September took a political toll, and led to him stepping down from his post as chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was trounced in June’s Democratic primary by Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ) and has announced plans to run in November’s general election as an independent candidate instead.
“I’m deeply, deeply disappointed by the jury’s decision. I have every faith that the law and the facts are not sustained with that decision, and that we will be successful upon appeal,” Menendez said outside court, while insisting “I have never violated my public oath.”
Menendez, 70, faces what could amount to a life sentence — with some of the counts carrying a possible term of up to 20 years behind bars — when he learns his fate Oct. 29.
The trial was his second time facing federal corruption charges.
An earlier case in which the senator was charged by New Jersey federal prosecutors with accepting lavish bribes — including all-expense-paid vacations and private flights — in exchange for doling out favors to a Palm Beach doctor ended in a mistrial in 2017.
The charges a jury of 12 New Yorkers convicted him of in the Manhattan case included bribery, extortion, obstructing justice and acting as an illegal foreign agent.
“Mr. Menendez sold the power of his office,” prosecutor Paul Monteleoni told jurors in the government’s closing statement.
“It wasn’t enough for him to be one of the most powerful people in Washington,” Monteleoni said. “It wasn’t enough for him to be entrusted by the public with the power to approve billions of dollars of US military aid to foreign countries.
“Robert Menendez wanted all that power — but he also wanted to use it to pile up riches for himself and his wife.”
His attorneys tried to poke holes in the government’s case by arguing that Menendez’s “beautiful, tall” wife Nadine had “kept him in the dark” about what she was asking co-defendants Wael Hana, 40, and Fred Daibes, 66, to give her.
Hana and Daibes were each convicted of funneling the bribes to Menendez and his wife in exchange for a series of valuable favors and promises.
Prosecutors detailed a dizzying array of actions Menendez took between 2018 and 2022 on behalf of his cronies, including Hana, a businessman, who bribed the senator with hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash and gold.
In exchange, prosecutors said, Menendez did favors for Egypt including ghostwriting a letter asking the US to unfreeze $300 million in military aid that had been held up due to human rights concerns.
Menendez also leaned on an Agriculture Department official to protect Hana’s lucrative monopoly on approving halal meat exports to Egypt, evidence revealed.
In exchange, Hana gave Nadine Menendez a no-show job worth $120,000 per year, prosecutors said.
“What else can the love of my life do for you?” Nadine told an Egyptian official while the senator smoked cigars and swigged red wine during a May 2019 meeting at Morton’s Steakhouse, an FBI agent who secretly observed the scene testified.
The senator also traded gold bars and cash for trying to meddle in a federal bank fraud case against Daibes and setting up a meeting between the real estate mogul and a member of the Qatari ruling family, prosecutors said.
Gold bars in the Menendezes’ safe had serial numbers linking them to Daibes, while envelopes of cash bore fingerprints tying them to both him and Hana, trial evidence showed.
Also involved in the bribery scheme was New Jersey insurance broker Jose Uribe — who pleaded guilty and flipped on Menendez.
Uribe testified that he bought Nadine a new Mercedes-Benz C-300 in exchange for help scuttling state criminal probes.
“I saved your ass, not once but twice,” the Garden State pol bragged during an August 2020 dinner at the North Jersey restaurant Segovia, Uribe testified.
“Congratulations mon amour de la vie, we are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes,” Nadine Menendez texted her husband after receiving the first payment toward the new car, using the French phrase for “love of my life.” She added a heart emoji at the end of the message.
Uribe told Menendez the name of a man being probed by state authorities, and the morning after, Menendez pressured New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal to speak about the active criminal probe, Grewal testified.
“Whoa, that was gross,” Grewal’s deputy said after the September 2019 meeting in the senator’s Newark office, trial testimony revealed.
Nadine Menendez, 57, was slated to go on trial separately from her husband, but her trial date was delayed indefinitely hours before the verdict Tuesday while she recovers from breast cancer surgery.
Hana and Daibes each face up to 20 years in prison on the top count when they are also sentenced on Oct. 29.
When asked by reporters how he felt about the guilty verdict as he left court for the day, Daibes responded, “Not good,” while flashing a half-smile. Hana declined to comment.
Menendez did not testify.
His attorneys had claimed the feds tried to dazzle jurors with the gold and cash found in their client’s home to overcompensate for a “thin” case relying on scant evidence that the senator had taken “official acts” in exchange for the bribes.
“The core of this case is hollow,” Menendez’s lawyer Adam Fee said in his closing statement.
He called the prosecutors “overzealous” and claimed that Menendez’s actions were, in fact, “exactly what we want our elected officials to do.”
The defense called three witnesses, including the senator’s older sister, who testified that Menendez’s decades-long habit of stashing cash was part of a “normal” distrust of banks stemming from his Cuban heritage.
“It’s a Cuban thing,” Caridad Gonzalez testified.
— Additional reporting by Kyle Schnitzer.
