New Jersey GOP state Sen. Joe Kyrillos is demanding Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez release his schedule and all travel documents from this spring. Kyrillos’ demand is in response to allegations from two Dominican Republic women who claim Menendez paid them for sex around Easter time this year at Casa de Campo, an expensive 7,000-acre resort in the Dominican Republic.
The two women claimed Menendez agreed to pay them $500 for sex acts, but in the end they each received only $100.
“Like the recent Secret Service sex scandal in Colombia, the allegations reported today are deeply disturbing and raise serious questions,” Kyrillos spokeswoman Meaghan Cronin said in a statement. “Senator Menendez must do the right thing and help settle this matter by immediately releasing his schedule and travel documents from the time the alleged incidents occurred. The people of New Jersey deserve answers today.”
Menendez spokeswoman Tricia Enright has refused to answer any questions on the subject. “We’re not going to respond to a completely false accusation,” she wrote by email.
Enright has not answered when asked if Menendez will release his travel records.
Menendez’s 2012 public schedule shows no events listed for Easter or the following three days. On Easter Sunday this year, aircraft records obtained by TheDC show that Menendez donor Salomon Melgen’s private plane left Florida the morning of Easter Sunday, 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.
Melgen, an ophthalmologist and owner of an eye clinic in Florida, appears to have lent Menendez the use of his plane on several occasions and 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 Melgen’s Casa de Campo home.
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.