Robert Menendez hit with unique indictment

A federal big jury has filed a second superseding indictment against Sen. Bob MenendezD-N.J., following previous allegations of accepting bribes.

The unique allegations sigh Menendez made certain statements about Qatar to serve a New Jersey developer salvage a multimillion-buck funding from a firm tied to the nation. The developer cited within the indictment is Fred Daibes, who has also been charged within the case.

Throughout the time of the discussions in leisurely 2021 into 2022 for the funding within the deal, Menendez allegedly made a amount of statements supportive of Qatar.

“Menendez supplied Daibes with these statements in sigh that Daibes could almost definitely almost definitely almost definitely fraction them with the Qatari Investor and a Qatari government authentic linked with the Qatari Funding Company,” the indictment says.

Prosecutors enlighten that Daibes exchanged textual stutter material messages with Menendez relating to the alleged design. In September 2021, Daibes despatched Menendez, by an encrypted app, photos taken from Daibes’ computer of luxury watches valued from $9,990 to $23,990 and asked Menendez “how about even handed this type of,” in accordance to prosecutors.

Adam Price, a lawyer for Menendez, mentioned the unique allegations “stink of desperation.” He mentioned prosecutors assembled  a string of baseless assumptions and peculiar conjectures in conserving with routine, correct contacts between a Senator and his constituents or foreign officers. They are turning this real into a persecution, no longer a prosecution.”

Menendez and Daibes maintain bothpleaded no longer guiltywithin the case. Prosecutors alleged in an indictment in September that Menendez and his critical other frail his influence to pocket thousands and thousands of dollars in bribes, along with “cash, gold bars, payments in direction of a dwelling mortgage, compensation for a low-or-no-model job, a luxury vehicle and different items of price.”

The unique indictment indicates that federal prosecutors reviewed web searches by Menendez after he returned in October 2021 from a time out to Qatar, where, they enlighten, Menendez searched “how much is one kilo of gold worth.”

It changed into once Menendez who presented Daibes to the unnamed Qatari investor, who is a member of the Qatari royal family, in accordance to the indictment.

The Qatari firm struck a deal to take a position with Daibes after a Would possibly maybe well merely 2022 meeting with him and Menendez, and Daibes gave Menendez “at the very least one gold bar” afterwards, the indictment mentioned.

By 2023, the “Qatari Funding Company entered real into a joint mission with a firm” managed by Daibes and “invested tens of millions of dollars into the project,” the indictment mentioned. Menendez, within the meantime, “persisted to procure issues of price from the Qatari Funding Company,” along with tickets to the 2023 Formulation One Huge Prix in Miami.

The indictment illustrious a search warrant of Menendez’s dwelling in 2022 turned up “two one-kilogram gold bars and 9 one-ounce gold bars that had serial amount indicating they had beforehand been possessed” by Daibes.

The unique allegations within the superseding indictment are wrapped into the present charges against Menendez, along with conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit correct companies fraud and conspiracy for a public authentic to behave as a foreign agent. The common indictment charged Menendez, then the chair of the highly effective Senate Foreign Kinfolk Committee, of taking “thousands and thousands of dollars” in payoffs in return for the usage of his influence to counterpoint Daibes and two different New Jersey businessmen and to succor the Egyptian government.

A superseding indictment in October alleged Menendez “supplied soft U.S. Executive data and took different steps that secretly aided the Executive of Egypt.”

Menendez has denied these allegations, saying at the time that they cruise “within the face of my lengthy file of standing up for human rights and democracy in Egypt and in much leaders of that nation.”

Price mentioned Tuesday that his consumer “acted fully accurately with admire to Qatar, Egypt, and the a number of assorted countries he routinely interacts with. These interactions were incessantly in conserving with his authentic judgment as to the most efficient pursuits of the United States.”

Menendez like a flash stepped down as Foreign Kinfolk chair after he changed into once charged however is tranquil on the committee. Extra than two dozen Senate Democrats, along with fellow New Jersey Sen. Cory Bookermaintain called on Menendez to resign from Congress.

CORRECTION(Jan. 2, 2024, 6:46 p.m. ET): A previous model of this article misstated the estimated amount of the alleged funding described by prosecutors. It changed into once millions of dollars, no longer billions.