Bob Menendez again plays victim as he faces new federal charges. Are we surprised? | Kelly

Here we go again.

Sen. Bob Menendez’s admitted habit for taking gifts from constituents has again landed the powerful New Jersey Democrat in court.

Once again, as federal prosecutors outlined in an indictment on Friday, Menendez has been charged with taking illegal gifts in exchange for senatorial favors. Once again, he faces years in prison and a possible Humpty Dumpty-like, humiliating, career-ending fall from his high political pedestal.

On Friday, it was announced that he was temporarily stepping down as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a fellow Democrat, issued a statement on Friday evening urging Menendez to resign from the Senate altogether, calling the latest allegations "deeply disturbing."

Not surprisingly, once again, Menendez claims he has done nothing wrong and has accused federal authorities of not really understanding how he does his job. He wants us to believe that he is not another one of those corrupt, Jersey-style, hand-in-the-cookie-jar politicians. As he asserted on Friday soon after his indictment was announced: “They have misrepresented the normal work of a Congressional office.”

Déjà vu

What’s striking about the charges outlined Friday in a 39-page indictment of Menendez, his wife and three business associates by federal prosecutors in New York City, is how much they mirror in tone if not substance a series of similar federal allegations against Menendez nearly a decade ago in New Jersey.

The latest indictment lists three career-ending charges against the 69-year-old Menendez — conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud and conspiracy to commit extortion “under color of official right.” Each charge, which carries a possible penalty of years in prison if Menendez is convicted, all stem from his decision to allegedly accept gifts from three New Jersey businessmen who sought his help in dealing with various government agencies.

The list of alleged illegal gifts is stunning — abnormal in some respects for a politician who insists he is accomplishing the “normal work” of Congress and who began his public life as a self-proclaimed reformer. They include a Mercedes-Benz convertible, mortgage payments on a home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, an alleged “low-or-no-show job” for Menendez’s wife, gold bars and more than $566,000 in cold hard cash.

When FBI agents raided Menendez’s home last year, they said they found some of the cash stuffed in a jacket bearing his name and having fingerprints and DNA from one of the men who allegedly tried to bribe him.

Even if this case never reaches trial, such details should at least raise ethics questions in Congress about how Menendez views what he can — or cannot — accept from constituents in return for what he defines as “normal work.”

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This is not the first time Menendez has faced such questions. Indeed, the details in the latest indictment eerily echo corruption allegations aimed at Menendez nearly a decade ago.

Back then, Menendez was charged with conspiracy, bribery and fraud by taking free Caribbean vacations, trips on private jets, more than $750,000 in campaign contributions and even a stay at a high-end Paris hotel in return for helping a friend who happened to be a physician and business operative resolve a $9 million Medicare dispute with federal authorities and gain a $500 million port security contract with the Dominican Republic.

Back then, Menendez did not deny he took these gifts. In fact, he said he did nothing wrong and asserted they were not bribes.

He said he was merely helping his friend and campaign donor, Dr. Salomon Melgen, navigate a complicated federal bureaucracy. As for ethics questions or even the potential illegality of taking gifts in return for his help, Menendez explained that the gifts were just a sign of what good friends do for each other. In other words, normal.

After a grueling, 11-week trial in Newark in 2017, Menendez walked away a free man. Jurors said they could not reach a verdict on whether the gifts were illegal and, therefore, constituted bribery and fraud. The presiding judge declared a mistrial. Federal prosecutors hinted they would mount a new trial of Menendez on the same charges but they never did.

Melgen was later convicted on federal health care fraud charges. But his 17-year prison sentence was commuted by then-President Donald Trump on his last day in office in 2021. Menendez and Trump later said Menendez supported Trump's commutation of Melgen's prison term.

Menendez, meanwhile, emerged from his legal ordeal angry and claiming he had been unfairly targeted because he was Hispanic.

It was a Thursday in mid-November 2017, outside the federal courthouse in Newark when Menendez pushed back on the corruption charges dogging him. The scene was triumphant and filled with the sudden self-righteousness of a proud man who felt vindicated after being unfairly dragged into court.

Standing before a thicket of media microphones, Menendez, trying to hold back tears, thanked God for being “delivered from an unjust prosecution” and expressed his gratitude to jurors who “saw through the government’s false claims” and “used their Jersey common sense” in their no-decision deliberations over whether the senator’s gifts constituted unfair influence peddling.

“I’ve made some mistakes,” Menendez said, “but my mistakes were never a crime.”

That statement was the closest Menendez came to explaining — or even conceding — that taking so many high-end freebies might have been wrong or at least an example of poor judgment.

Instead, he targeted his accusers.

“The way this case started was wrong,” he said. “The way it was investigated was wrong, the way it was prosecuted was wrong, and the way it was tried was wrong as well. Certain elements of the FBI and of our state cannot understand or, even worse, accept that the Latino kid from Union City and Hudson County can grow up and be a U.S. senator and be honest.””

He didn’t stop there.

“To those who were digging my political grave so that they could jump into my seat, I know who you are, and I won’t forget you,” he said.

Column continues below gallery.

Did Menendez learn anything?

If Menendez entered into a period of self-reflection and perhaps a reassessment of how he conducted business as a senator, it did not show. Within months of the mistrial, according to Friday’s indictment, Menendez again began a series of relationships that resulted in the current charges that he took illegal gifts in exchange for granting favors.

Friday's bombshell indictment: Bob Menendez and his wife indicted on corruption charges

Only this time, the charges also include three additional elements that cast the new charges against Menendez in an even far more serious light than those he faced in his 2017 trial in Newark.

First, the new indictment claims that Menendez, without asking permission from the U.S. State Department or even telling his own staff, gave Egyptian authorities “non public information regarding the number and nationality of persons serving at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.”

The indictment points out that “this information was not classified” but “was deemed highly sensitive because it could pose significant operational security concerns if disclosed to a foreign government or if made public.” In other words, if this information fell into the wrong hands — and Egypt certainly is a home of terrorists, including the Muslim Brotherhood — American lives could be at stake.

After passing on the information to Egyptian authorities, Menendez allegedly helped a New Jersey businessman, Wael Hana, gain exclusive control of exports to Egypt of Muslim-approved Halal food products from the United States.

What could come next: Could Menendez resign amid corruption indictment? How would his Senate seat get filled?

Did the sensitive information about the U.S. embassy in Cairo that Menendez gave to Egyptian officials play a role in helping Hana gain his exclusive contract for Halal exports? If so, should Menendez face additional charges for giving away sensitive information to a foreign government that is hardly regarded as stable? Certainly such questions hover over the indictment — and Menendez.

It turns out that Hana’s friend, Nadine Arslanian, was dating Menendez at the time of this deal and would soon become the senator’s wife. Nadine Arslanian Menendez was also indicted with Hana and Menendez. In return for the senator's help on the Halal contract, Hana reportedly gave Nadine Arslanian Menendez a "low-show or no-show job."

A second factor in the latest indictment involves Menendez’s alleged efforts to intervene with New Jersey’s attorney general “to disrupt a criminal investigation and prosecution” of another New Jersey businessman, Jose Uribe.

In return for Menendez’s efforts, Uribe, who was also charged in the indictment, reportedly purchased a Mercedes-Benz that he gifted to the senator and his wife.

A third additional factor in the indictment involves the powerful Edgewater riverfront developer, Fred Daibes, a longtime friend and campaign donor of Menendez, who is now awaiting sentencing on a federal financial crime and was also charged in Friday’s indictment.

The indictment claims that Menendez, in return for monetary payments from Daibes, tried to lobby for the appointment of a U.S. attorney in New Jersey who would be lenient on Daibes.

A 'smear campaign'?

On Friday, Menendez, the son of Cuban immigrants who moved to America in the early 1950s, stridently proclaimed his innocence. And just as he did after his mistrial in 2017, he said in a nearly 350-word statement released by his office that he was unfairly targeted again because of his Hispanic background.

“For years, forces behind the scenes have repeatedly attempted to silence my voice and dig my political grave,” he said, claiming he is the target of “an active smear campaign of anonymous sources and innuendos to create an air of impropriety where none exists.”

“Those behind this campaign,” he said, “simply cannot accept that a first-generation Latino American from humble beginnings could rise to be a U.S. Senator and serve with honor and distinction. Even worse, they see me as an obstacle in the way of their broader political goals.”

He ended with an appeal to “my supporters, friends and the community at large” and asked that they “recall the other times the prosecutors got it wrong and that you reserve judgment” until “all of the facts are presented and my fellow New Jerseyans will see this for what it is."

Right now, the facts of this latest indictment paint a picture of a U.S. senator with a habit of taking gifts he was not entitled to take.

It’s a portrait Menendez has fought hard to explain and dispel before.

This time could be his most challenging, though.

Certainly it raises yet another question: Who is the real Bob Menendez?

Mike Kelly is an award-winning columnist for NorthJersey.com, part of the USA TODAY Network, as well as the author of three critically acclaimed non-fiction books and a podcast and documentary film producer. To get unlimited access to his insightful thoughts on how we live life in the Northeast, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: kellym@northjersey.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Sen. Bob Menendez indicted: Victimhood strategy already in play