Feds accuse Sen. Bob Menendez and wife of lying about bribe money, Mercedes-Benz in new indictment

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan on Tuesday indicted Sen. Bob Menendez once again, accusing the New Jersey lawmaker of having his former lawyer "make false and misleading statements" to investigators in a years-long corruption probe.

Menendez was charged with a dozen new counts in a superseding federal indictment against him — the third time prosecutors have added to his indictment since the initial one in September.

The senior senator from New Jersey had faced four counts under the previous indictments and now faces 16 — most of which also charge his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez.

The latest charges against Menendez come a day after the judge overseeing his case denied his effort to have evidence against him, including cash and gold bars, suppressed. And just last week, one of the three businesspeople who were initially charged with the Menendezes, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty to seven charges and agreed to "fully cooperate" with authorities. The other businesspeople, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, have pleaded not guilty.

While most of the latest allegations against the Menendezes themselves are not new, the counts returned by a grand jury are. Three of them, against both of the Menendezes, charge obstruction of justice. They allege that the Menendezes wrote checks to repay bribe money to Uribe and Hana and purposefully mischaracterized them as loan repayments.

“Menendez and Nadine Menendez wrote checks and letters falsely characterizing the return of bribe money to Wael Hana … and Jose Uribe as repayments for loans,” reads the new indictment. It also says the Menendezes “caused their counsel to make statements regarding the bribe money from Hana and Uribe" which they "knew were false, in an effort to interfere with an investigation.”

The indictment also alleges the Menendezes committed obstruction of justice when Nadine Menendez sold two gold bars that were allegedly bribe payments.

Bob Menendez called the latest indictment a "flagrant abuse of power" and said the federal government has "long known" that he helped repay loans, not bribes.

"The latest charge reveals far more about the government than it says about me. It says that the prosecutors are afraid of the facts, scared to subject their charges to the fair-minded scrutiny of a jury, and unconstrained by any sense of justice or fair play. It says, once and for all, that they will stop at nothing in their zeal to get me," he said in a statement. "I have no intention of allowing overzealous prosecutors, with unlimited resources and budget, to do that to me. I am innocent and will prove it no matter how many charges they continue to pile on.”

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment. Lawyers for Nadine Menendez did not immediately respond to message seeking comment on the new charges.

The Menendezes are expected to go on trial in early May — a month before the Senate Democratic primary. But Bob Menendez's political fate seems sealed, with first lady Tammy Murphy and Rep. Andy Kim battling for the nomination to replace him and virtually every one of his political allies cutting ties.

The initial indictment against Menendez last year detailed a years-long scheme to trade his influence as then-chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for lavish gifts that included nearly half a million dollars in cash, about a dozen gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz for his wife.

According to the indictment, Menendez wrote a check in December 2022 for $23,000 to Nadine Menendez with the memo "for car payment." That same month she wrote a $21,000 check to Uribe for a "personal loan." Bob Menendez also wrote a check for $23,569 to his wife with the memo "to liquidate loan," and Nadine Menendez then wrote a check for $23,568.54 to an attorney for Hana for "full payment of Wael Hana loan."

Months later, in June, August and September 2023, Bob and Nadine Menendez "caused" their lawyers to make "false and misleading statements" to investigators, according to the indictment. It does not say who those lawyers were, but Bob Menendez had been represented at the time by the law firm of Abbe Lowell, his longtime lawyer. Lowell, who was not charged or accused of wrongdoing, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

In November, Menendez replaced Lowell with Avi Weitzman and Adam Fee of the firm Paul Hastings. He also brought on Yaakov Roth, who has had notable success at the Supreme Court in corruption cases, earlier this year.

Other charges Menendez faces in the latest indictment include conspiracy to commit extortion and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.