New Jersey Attorney General's office plans inquiry into Bob Menendez allegations

Daniel Han
·2 min read
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

The New Jersey Attorney General’s office intends to launch an internal inquiry into the allegations that Sen. Bob Menendez intervened in a criminal prosecution on behalf of an associate in exchange for a luxury car, Attorney General Matt Platkin announced Friday.

The alleged intervention happened around 2019 — before Platkin took control of the department — according to the indictment unsealed by federal prosecutors on Friday. Gurbir Grewal, who is now a division director in the Securities and Exchange Commission, was attorney general at the time.

“The conduct alleged in the indictment occurred prior to my tenure as Attorney General, and involved a matter that was resolved prior to my time in office,” Platkin said in a statement. “My Office has cooperated fully with the Southern District of New York’s investigation. We will continue to do so. We are also engaged in our own independent internal inquiry into the allegations set forth in the indictment.”

The indictment says Menendez reached out to an unnamed “senior state prosecutor in the Office of the New Jersey Attorney General” regarding the criminal prosecution into associates of Jose Uribe. Uribe allegedly promised a new Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible in exchange for the senator’s help. Menendez contacted the unnamed senior official in the Attorney General's office to request terms favorable to Uribe’s associate, according to the indictment.

The official, according to the indictment, considered Menendez’s actions “inappropriate and did not agree to intervene.” According to the indictment, the official at the Attorney General’s office did not share with prosecutors that Menendez contacted him to “avoid any potential inappropriate influence in the case.”

According to the indictment, in April 2019, the unnamed associate of Uribe resolved the prosecution with a plea agreement that recommended a non-incarceratory sentence. The plea was more favorable than what state prosecutors initially offered earlier in the case, according to the indictment.