Nearly 20 years has handed since federal prosecutors started issuing subpoenas aimed toward catching Sen. Robert Menendez along with his hand within the cookie jar. So far, the artful veteran has gained each combat, staying in energy, staying out of jail, and preserving sufficient political mojo to get his unqualified son elected to Congress.
So, along with his subsequent corruption trial set for May, let’s verify the scoreboard, and clear up just a few misconceptions.
Starting with this one: Chris Christie and Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania are proper to see Menendez as a snake, however they’re each flawed to say he’s a low-rent snake.
The latest indictment, which got here final week, expenses that Menendez acted as a corrupt agent of Qatar, a small nation with the misfortune to sit down on this planet’s worst neighborhood, caught between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The indictment expenses that Menendez intervened with the Qataris to assist a slippery developer pal from Jersey, Fred Daibes, win investments from the royal household to assist build a high-rise in Edgewater.
Here’s what Christie and Fetterman have flawed: They appear to suppose Menendez did this dance for a gold watch. That’s as a result of the indictment expenses that after a vital assembly of those alleged conspirators, Daibes despatched Menendez an encrypted message with images of luxurious watches price as much as $24,000, asking, “How about one of these?”
Yes, that factors to a baffling function of corruption in New Jersey: Why would so many politicians threat their necks for envelopes filled with $5,000, and even $500?
Fetterman, who’s on a one-man quest to expel Menendez from the Senate, tweeted: “Now, accused of selling his honor and our nation for a $24,000 watch.”
Christie weighed in on CNN, telling Anderson Cooper that when he was the highest federal prosecutor, his FBI brokers advised him that baiting the hook in Jersey got here low cost, that one stuffed envelope would do the job.
“It was amazing to me,” Christie stated. “I mean, $5,000 in an envelope could get most officials…Who would throw their life away for five grand?”
Two issues with that. One is that Menendez didn’t come that low cost, in response to the indictment. A pleasant watch may spruce up the deal a bit, however Daibes was a part of the group charged with delivering greater than $500,000 in money, gold bars, and a pleasant Mercedes to Menendez and his bride.
Second is that whereas it makes little sense to threat all of it for one envelope, these guys are likely to make it a life-style. When the feds caught Robert Janiszewski, the previous Hudson County government, taking a modest money bribe in an envelope, they searched his home and located a file cupboard within the basement stuffed with these envelopes, with $88,000 in all. In a 2002 plea deal, Janiszewski admitted he had been taking bribes for years.
“I came home and put them in the cabinet,” he testified.
Think of the gold watch as only one envelope. Menendez didn’t threat all of it for that, in response to the indictment. It was simply that week’s providing. The man has his flaws, however he doesn’t promote himself low cost.
The unforgiveable half will not be the greed, for those who ask me. It’s the assistance he gave the murderous Egyptian army dictatorship, outlined within the first indictment. It expenses that Menendez used his perch as chairman of the Foreign Affairs committee to assist the Egyptian regime evade restrictions on U.S. arms exports that have been designed to cease them from utilizing torture towards dissidents.
Menendez permitted arms gross sales he may have stopped, the indictment says. He suggested the regime pitch fellow senators, and even secretly drafted a letter to assist them make the case. Worse, he shared secret authorities details about Egyptian workers on the U.S. embassy in Cairo, placing them in danger.
If confirmed true, all that makes Menendez complicit to the horrors that human rights teams have documented in Egypt’s torture chambers, the place safety goons rape girls to strain their husbands, the place they connect steel grips to males’s genitals for shock remedy, the place they dangle teenagers by their arms, tied behind their backs, and depart them squirming till their shoulders separate.
By comparability, the greased actual property take care of the Qataris shrinks into insignificance.
I don’t know if Menendez is responsible, and a few legal professionals I respect say he could slip the hook once more this time. Maybe.
But Menendez can’t clarify the gold bars. He claims the $500,000 in money was readily available for “emergencies.” And he and his spouse, Nadine, tried to disguise the funds on the Mercedes as a mortgage from a pal, in response to indictment.
I sat by means of Menendez’s final corruption trial in 2017 and was shocked that jurors couldn’t agree on his guilt. But that case was about old-fashioned greed. This one can be about violence, and the proof appears overwhelming.
“The Egypt part of this is a slam dunk,” says Ed Stier, a legendary New Jersey corruption fighter who ran the state Division of Criminal Justice. “I’m curious why they even added this Qatari stuff to it.”
Meanwhile, Democrats within the Senate gained’t expel Menendez, saying he hasn’t been criminally convicted but, as if that low bar is sufficient to qualify for a seat within the Senate, with all its privileges. Rep. George Santos, for the report, was not convicted when Republicans expelled him from the House in December.
“If you are going to expel Santos, how can you allow somebody like Menendez to remain in the Senate?” Fetterman asks.
Good query. For now, Menendez has yet another 12 months on his time period. My wager is he gained’t final that lengthy.
More: Tom Moran columns
Tom Moran could also be reached at [email protected] or (973) 986-6951. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
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