Senator Bob Menendez was convicted Tuesday of accepting bribes in exchange for favors for Egypt and Qatar and of interfering in two criminal cases to support three New Jersey businessmen in a case that the lead prosecutor said exposed “shocking levels of corruption.”
The jury’s guilty verdict on all counts came on the third day of deliberations and after a nine-week trial in Manhattan federal court. Menendez is only the seventh sitting U.S. senator to be convicted of a federal crime.
Menendez, a Democrat and New Jersey’s senior senator, told reporters outside the courthouse that he was “deeply disappointed” with the verdict.
“I have complete faith that the law and the facts do not support this decision and that we will succeed on appeal. I have never violated my public oath. I have never been anything other than a patriot of my country and for my country. I have never, ever been a foreign agent,” he said.
Two co-defendants who went on trial with the senator — businessmen Fred Daibes and Wael Hana — were also convicted on all counts. Their lawyers also said they would appeal.
Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said that “Menendez’s years of selling his office to the highest bidder have finally come to an end.”
“This case has always been about shocking levels of corruption. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in the form of cash, gold bars, Mercedes-Benz. This wasn’t just politics, this was profit-driven politics,” Williams told reporters.
Hana’s attorney, Lawrence Lustberg, said his client was disappointed.
“He’s surprised, like someone convicted of something he didn’t do. As an immigrant from Egypt, he’s disappointed that the American justice system has let him down,” Lustberg said.
Attorney César de Castro, who represents Daibes, said they were “extremely disappointed.”
“We respect the jury process, of course we respect this particular jury, but we believe the result was flawed,” de Castro said. “We do not believe the government has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Daibes — Senator Menendez’s undisputed friend for 40 years — bribed him for any reason.”
Federal prosecutors in New York are the first accused Menendez, his wife Nadine, Hana, Daibes and Jose Uribe in September.
Then and in several subsequent years they accused the senator replacing indictments for bribery, extortion, wire fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and acting as a foreign agent in connection with crimes they say occurred between 2018 and last year.
Hana is an Egyptian immigrant who, according to prosecutors, bribed the senator with gold bars and cash, paid his wife’s mortgage and gave her a day job at her halal meat company. In return, Menendez directed military aid and weapons to EgyptHe provided Egyptian officials with information about staffing the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, authored a letter to Egyptian officials to influence his Senate colleagues, and otherwise helped the Egyptian government to grant Hany’s company a monopoly on halal meat imports.
Experts concerned about claims Menendez has softened military aid to Egypt
Daibes is a real estate developer and founder of an Edgewater bank whom prosecutors have accused of giving Menendez gold bars and cash in exchange for interfering in a federal bank fraud case he was facing and for publicly endorsing Qatari Government for a company owned by a Qatari royal to invest in one of Daibes’ ventures.
This was not ordinary politics, this was profit-driven politics.
– Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York
Menendez was chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time of the scam. He resigned from his leadership role shortly after his indictment, though he remains on the committee.
Scenes from the court
The courtroom was packed when jurors sent word around 12:30 p.m. that they had reached a verdict. Williams and many of his top staffers were there, along with the senator’s daughter, MSNBC host Alicia Menendez, and older sister Caridad Gonzalez, who testified in his defense last week.
The jury entered its motion at approximately 12:50 p.m. and returned the completed, folded verdict sheet. Judge Sidney H. Stein took it, reviewed it silently, and returned it to the court clerk, who handed it to the jury forewoman.
When the clerk asked how the jury had decided each of the 18 charges against the three defendants, the forewoman repeated “guilty” 29 times. The clerk read the verdict into the record, then polled the jurors one by one to make sure they were unanimous. All 12 said “yes,” that the verdict reflected their vote. They deliberated for about 13 hours over three days.
Menendez watched all this without any noticeable reaction, his hands on his face. Just after 1:05, Stein dismissed the jury, 64 days after they first reported for jury duty.
Stein set August 19 for post-sentence motions. Sentencing for all three men was set for October 29, starting at 2 p.m.
Hana was under house arrest with GPS monitoring and a curfew from 9 p.m. to 8 a.m. That allowed him to go to court, meet with lawyers, go to medical appointments and do other such things during the day, Lustberg said.
Prosecutor Daniel Richenthal asked Stein for an enhanced house arrest sentence, in which he would not be allowed to leave his home at all. However, Stein denied the request after Lustberg noted that Hana had returned to the U.S. from Egypt to face trial but ordered house arrest on weekends.
Hana also provided additional security for the bail — one-kilogram gold bars worth $237,000 and his collection of 14 luxury watches.
It all ended at 1:15 p.m.
“This was a well-executed case,” Stein told prosecutors and defense attorneys before leaving the courtroom.
Other co-defendants
Prosecutors say Nadine Menendez brokered multiple frauds and have also charged her, but Stein delayed her trial until August after she revealed last spring that she had breast cancer and needed treatment.
Uribe pleaded guilty in March as part of a cooperation agreement. He testified at trial that he paid Nadine Menendez nearly $50,000 over three years for a fresh Mercedes-Benz convertible to replace the one she crashed in December 2018 when hit and killed a pedestrian. In return, he wanted Menendez to support kill his friend’s case and stop the New Jersey attorney general. insurance fraud investigation expanded which threatened to embroil his own company. He he told the jury Menendez told him, “I saved your little ass, not once, but twice.”
The jury heard that FBI agents found more than $500,000 in cash, 13 gold bars and other wealth found in the couple’s Englewood Cliffs home and his wife’s bank vault during a June 2022 search. Prosecutors brought some of the cash and gold bars to court and turned them over to a grand jury for review.
In March, prosecutors added obstruction of justice charges, accusing the senator and his wife of trying to cover up a corruption scam by misrepresenting car payments and a mortgage as loans, paying Hana and Uribe $44,000 and having their lawyers lie to authorities.
It was Menendez’s second corruption trial in seven years. The first, in which he was also charged with influence peddling for gifts, ended in a mistrial in November 2017 after four days of jury deliberations and deadlock.
Menendez has resisted calls to resign after his indictment and last month entered for the race for re-election in November as an independent candidate. Rep. Andy Kim (D-03) is seeking to succeed Menendez and will face Republican Curtis Bashaw in the fall.
Outside the courtroom Tuesday, Menendez declined to answer reporters’ questions about whether he would resign as senator or forgo running for reelection.
U.S. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the first Democratic senator to call for Menendez’s resignation, following the New Jersey senator’s impeachment last September. In the weeks that followed, he stepped up his criticism of Menendez, mocking him with a cameo from former GOP Rep. George Santos of New York and calling for his expulsion from the Senate (Santos was expelled from the House in December over ethics concerns).
Fetterman’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment made Tuesday.
U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-Pennsylvania), who also called on Menendez to resign, he said on Tuesday that since the jury found him guilty on all charges, “Senator Menendez should resign or be expelled from the Senate.”
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The Capital-Star team took part in the project.
