The troubles of New Jersey’s senior senator continue to deepen.
Sen. Bob Menendez spoke kindly of Qatar in official proceedings to help a developer friend who paid him bribes, according to new legal filings against New Jersey’s senior senator.
A second superseding indictment of the 70-year-old Democratic senator — who along with his wife Nadine has already been charged with four counts of bribery, fraud and acting as an unregistered foreign agent — was returned Tuesday. He and Nadine Menendez have pleaded not guilty to those charges, and the senator’s lawyer said the new allegations “stink of desperation.”
The new indictment adds another layer to the deep, detailed allegations that have all but cost Menendez, the former chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, his political career since the first indictment dropped in September. He has already been charged with seeking to aid the Egyptian government and help another co-defendant, Wael Hana, secure a lucrative, exclusive Halal certification contract with the Egyptian government in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gold bars, as well as a new car for Nadine.
According to the indictment Tuesday, Menendez introduced co-defendant Fred Daibes, a developer, to a member of the Qatari royal family and principal of a state-linked investment company as Daibes sought financing for a major real estate project.
The company is not named in the indictment, but according to The Record, Daibes sold a major stake in an Edgewater development project for $45 million to Heritage Advisors of London, which was founded by Sheikh Sultan bin Jassim Al Thani.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/02/menendez-indictment-update-senate-00133530