As a U.S. congressman from New Jersey, Robert Menendez reportedly sought $50,000 in campaign contributions from a company two months after he reached out to the Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency to inquire about a permit for a mall construction project.
The company, Mills Corp., also allegedly hired a woman who had worked for and been romantically involved with Menendez, now a U.S. Senator, believing that she would help with the permit process.
Those claims, as reported by the North Jersey Record, were made by former Mills Corp. executive Jim Dausch in grand jury testimony in 2008 but were only revealed Tuesday as part of an unrelated corruption case involving Bergen County Democratic Chairman Joseph Ferriero.
Mills Corp. was competing for a permit on the Xanadu mall project to be built on the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, N.J.
According to Dausch, the company, which stood to lose $1 million in revenue for each month the permit was delayed, developed close ties to Menendez, a Democrat.
The company brought lobbyist Kay LiCausi into the fold. A former member of Menendez’s staff who he had also reportedly been involved with romantically, it was believed that she could leverage that relationship to help the company.
“It was her relationship with Menendez that we thought she might be helpful with,” Dausch testified, “because he was one of the highest-ranking Democrats in the congressional delegation down there and we wanted to make sure that…he didn’t weigh in against us with the feds and that if we could get his support that we would ask him to help us make sure those decisions were made in a timely way.”
Dausch said that after a meeting arranged by LiCausi at Menendez’s district office, the lawmaker reached out to officials at the Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency seeking an update on the status of the permit.
“I was aware that he checked with EPA just to see whether or not they were going to go along with our opponents,” Dausch testified, the North Jersey Record reported.
“And I remember that he made a call — now I can’t remember to who, whether it was to the Newark office of the corps or to the corps in Washington, to inquire about when this permit decision was going to get made.”
When the company was finally granted the permit, Dausch noted the unorthodox manner in which it was delivered. Though he claimed that permits of that nature are usually sent by mail, Dausch testified that it was hand-delivered by the head of the New York office of the Corps of Engineers.
Two months later, Dausch said that Menendez, or someone on his behalf, reached out to Mills Corp. soliciting a $50,000 campaign contribution.
Dausch testified that he could not remember if Menendez himself requested the contribution or if it came from Bob DeCotiis, an attorney hired by Mills Corp., or from LiCausi.
“But one way or the other, it was clear that the request was coming from Menendez and, and it was in anticipation, we understood, of a run that he was planning to make for the Senate in 2006,” Dausch testified, according to The Record.
Dausch said that Menendez’s request was daunting. Federal campaign law at the time allowed only a $1,000 or $2,000 donation per individual, he said.
“So when that request was made I gulped a little,” Dausch testified. “It meant trying to find a lot of people to write small checks. And it was a little bit beyond what we had normally been able to do.”
When Menendez called Dausch’s office in May 2005, the Mills executive said that he dodged the call knowing that it was about the campaign money.
Dausch testified that he then emailed LiCausi, “Bob and I had traded calls and I checked and I know why he’s calling – the 50 we promised to raise for him didn’t all get in.”
According to the North Jersey Record, Federal Election Commission filings show that Mills Corp. associates or their families contributed $20,000 to Menendez’s campaign by Sept. 2005. (RELATED: Menendez Pushed Clinton For Visa For Daughter Of Bank Fugitive)
The players involved in the permit process denied any wrongdoing.
Col. Richard Polo, the Army Corps of Engineers official who hand-delivered the permit to Dausch, told The Record that no political influence was involved in the permitting process.
LiCausi declined to comment.
A spokeswoman for Menendez denied to The Record that the lawmaker had attempted to influence the permit process. She did not comment on the campaign contribution.
Though Menendez has not been officially accused of any wrongdoing for the Xanadu project, the news of his involvement comes as he is under investigation for alleged influence peddling involving Florida-based eye doctor Salomon Melgen.