Politics

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

Getty Images/STEFANI REYNOLDS

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Arjun Singh Contributor
Font Size:

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 DCNF has laid out below. (RELATED: Bob Menendez And Wife Indicted On Bribery Offenses)

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.”

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.

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.

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

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. “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 “low-or-no-show job,” which allegedly served as a front for receiving payments for Menendez’s political efforts to secure Egyptian interests.

Nadine and Menendez later created a shell company, Strategic International Business Consultants LLC, to receive the payments from IS EG Halal. “The company was used to receive bribe payments in furtherance of the crimes charged herein,” the indictment read.

“Nadine I personally gave Bob a check for September,” texted Daibes to Nadine in September of 2019.

“In total, IS EG Halal issued three $10,000 checks to Strategic International Business Consultants, dated August 30, September 28, and November 5, 2019,” according to the indictment.

Menendez allegedly attempted to quash a U.S. government investigation into the company paying his wife bribes

Egypt’s grant of an exclusive monopoly to IS EG Halal to certify U.S. imports to the country “resulted in increased costs for various U.S. meat suppliers and others,” according to the indictment. As a result, the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2019 petitioned Egypt’s government to rescind the monopoly and began investigating the monopoly’s disruptive effect on the U.S. market.

On May 23, 2019, Menendez allegedly called an unnamed high-ranking official at the U.S. Department of Agriculture demanding that the investigation be ceased and the planned report not be published. Though the investigation wasn’t dropped at Menendez’s behest, IS EG Halal maintained its Egyptian monopoly.

Menendez allegedly received a Mercedes-Benz convertible as a bribe for intervening in a criminal investigation

Menendez and his then-girlfriend Nadine received a black Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible worth over $60,000 from Uribe, according to the indictment. The car was allegedly a bribe to Menendez to use his political influence to stop a criminal investigation into his business associates.

On April 5, 2019, Nadine purchased the convertible with a $15,000 down payment using cash that Uribe had given her in a restaurant parking lot the day before. “You are a miracle worker who makes dreams come true I will always remember that,” Nadine texted Uribe after receiving the money.

Nadine then allegedly falsified her employment status and income on loan statements to cover the remaining $45,000 price of the car. Instead of paying them herself, the monthly payments on the car were made by Uribe through several business associates.

Menendez, in September of 2019, personally scheduled meetings with an official at the agency at this Senate constituency office in Newark to discuss the investigation. “We need to make things go away. We need to move fast … [w]e can still stop this,” Uribe had texted Nadine.

Menendez allegedly did not disclose the convertible on Senate financial disclosure forms he was required to file.

Menendez allegedly threatened to quash the nomination of a U.S. Attorney candidate who refused to undercut the prosecution of Daibes

After Daibes’ indictment in 2020, Menendez attempted to use his senatorial influence to have President Joe Biden appoint a U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey who would not prosecute him forcefully, according to the indictment.

Senate customs dictate that a state’s senior senator must approve nominees for U.S. attorney positions in order to receive a vote on their confirmation, and such senators frequently recommend nominees to the White House ahead of the president’s nomination. In December of 2020, prior to the Biden administration taking office, Menendez interviewed Philip Sellinger, a candidate for the role, and said “that he hoped that the Candidate would look into [Daibes’] case” if he were nominated and confirmed, according to the indictment.

Sellinger later told Menendez, however, that he would have to recuse himself from any case involving Daibes, who had been a client of his in private practice. “Menendez subsequently informed the Candidate that [he] would not put forward the Candidate’s name to the White House for a recommendation to be nominated by the President for the position of U.S. Attorney,” the indictment read.

Later, however, Menendez was told by an unnamed advisor that Sellinger would not have to recuse himself in the case, with Sellinger allegedly recanting his vow of recusal in a later phone call to Menendez. Menendez later recommended Sellinger who was nominated by Biden and confirmed in 2021.

Sellinger, however, later recused himself from Daibes’ prosecution, prompting Menendez to express his frustrations to advisers and, through intermediaries, seek assurances that Daibes would receive “due process,” according to the indictment.

Menendez, Sellinger, the White House and the Egyptian mission to the United States did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel