Two women from the Dominican Republic told The Daily Caller that Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez paid them for sex earlier this year.
In interviews, the two women said they met Menendez around Easter at Casa de Campo, an expensive 7,000-acre resort in the Dominican Republic. They claimed Menendez agreed to pay them $500 for sex acts, but in the end they each received only $100.
The women spoke through a translator in the company of their attorney, Melanio Figueroa. Both asked that their identities remain obscured for fear of reprisals in the Dominican Republic.
When shown a photograph of Sen. Menendez, the women said they recognized him as the man with whom they’d had sexual relations at Casa de Campo this spring. Both said they were brought to the resort with the understanding they would be paid for sex.
Neither knew the identity of the man at the time. Both claimed to recognize him later as Sen. Menendez.
“He called him[self] ‘Bob,’” said one.
One woman said Menendez wooed her with compliments like “beautiful” before they slept together. The other woman recounted, with apparent bitterness, receiving from an intermediary only $100 of the $500 she had been promised.
“He lies,” she said of Menendez. “He says one thing and does another.”
According to the translator’s summary, Menendez “was nice at first, but then later he did not seem to care about her.”
Menendez, who is 58 and divorced, has represented New Jersey in the U.S. Senate as a Democrat since being appointed to fill a vacancy in 2005. He is up for re-election on Nov. 6.
Asked about the allegations, Menendez spokeswoman Tricia Enright refused to answer any questions on the subject. “We’re not going to respond to a completely false accusation,” she wrote by email.
It is known that Sen. Menendez has been a regular visitor to the Dominican Republic. On at least one occasion, according to a news account, Menendez has been a guest at the Casa de Campo home of a friend and campaign donor named Salomon Melgen, an ophthalmologist and owner of an eye clinic in Florida.
Melgen has donated $14,700 to Menendez’s campaigns since 1993, with the bulk of it coming since he became a U.S. Senator, according to Federal Election Commission data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Melgen also appears to have lent Menendez the use of his plane on several occasions.
Menendez’s 2012 public schedule shows no events listed for Easter or the following three days. Aircraft records obtained by TheDC show that Melgen’s plane left Florida the morning of Easter Sunday this year, stopped at the Teterboro private airport near Menendez’s home in New Jersey, and flew on to the Dominican Republic.
Two days later it returned to the United States from a private airport near Casa de Campo.
Charles C. Johnson contributed reporting.
