Diners, drive-ins and bribes: How Bob Menendez's corruption trial is explained by food

A federal stake-out at a high-end steakhouse. A budding romance at IHOP. A meeting about weapons sales hatched while feasting on duck.

Those details, and many more, have emerged during the trial of Sen. Bob Menendez, as prosecutors have told jurors not only of his alleged corruption, but also of his culinary proclivities — and the quiet bars and backroom tables where he, his wife or the businesspeople accused of bribing the Menendezes met.

From watering holes across New Jersey to a high-end Manhattan Chinese restaurant to America's favorite pancake chain, Menendez and his co-defendants wined, dined and smoked cigars.

Menendez’s corruption trial, soon to be decided by a jury, is a tour de force of alleged scheming and bribery from the nation’s Capitol to the Garden State, but the trial also provided what one defense attorney called “a virtual tour of Northern New Jersey restaurants.”

The drinks and meals — along with the text messages sent and photos taken during them — provide a tick-tock of the schemes, according to prosecutors.

IHOP

Union City, N.j.

Known for: Flapjacks and meet-cutes.

Putting the “international” in this popular pancake chain’s name, Menendez, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was a regular at the Union City location.

One time, during breakfast, he was introduced to Nadine Arslanian; it’s unclear when, but he was dazzled by her as a “beautiful and tall international woman,” as his attorney put it.

By early 2018, they were dating and she began introducing the senator to her friend group. Of those friends, a pair of business people, Wael “Will” Hana and Jose Uribe, were charged as co-defendants in the trial along with her. She and Bob Menendez married in 2020.

Morton's The Steakhouse

Washington, D.C.

Known for: “The usual.”

The senator is famous for dining here much of the time the Senate is in session. He pays using his leadership PAC’s credit card, which means donors pick up the tab at the legendary eatery where a bone-in ribeye runs $73. In court, Menendez’s attorney said the senator probably dines 250 nights a year at Morton’s.

On one of those nights in May 2019, a pair of undercover FBI investigators were there to stake out an Egyptian official.

Then Menendez and Nadine sat down at the official’s table on the smoker-friendly patio. It’s unclear who the FBI’s target was, but the senator’s dining companions that evening were Ahmed Helmy, an Egyptian diplomat and intelligence officer; Hana, an Egyptian-American business person based in New Jersey who had recently been granted a lucrative meat monopoly by the Egyptian government; and Nader Moussa, one of Hana’s associates.

It’s also unclear from testimony or other court documents if Menendez was even on the FBI’s radar before the dinner. He soon was.

The FBI heard the senator order his usual and then overheard Nadine say, “What else can the love of my life do for you?” Prosecutors say the senator helped send millions of dollars of American military aid to Egypt.

Defense attorneys for Menendez and Hana have argued it’s unclear what Nadine was referring to. They argue it might have been a response to the senator having just poured wine or passed salt or bread across the table.

Either way, suddenly, New Jersey’s senior senator was on his way to a second corruption trial in less than a decade.

Glenpointe Marriott

Teaneck, N.j.

Known for: A good place to have a quiet conversation.

Uribe, who has pleaded guilty to bribing the senator, made at least three stops here during the course of his scheming.

First, he said he met at the lobby bar in 2018 with Hana and a pair of trucking industry figures who were being scrutinized for insurance fraud by the New Jersey attorney general’s office, like Uribe was.

According to Uribe, they agreed to a deal at the bar. For between $200,000 and $250,000, Hana would be able to get the senator’s help.

“The deal is to kill and stop all investigation,” Uribe texted Hana in April 2018.

Uribe stopped there again for a drink in fall 2019, on his way to a meeting with the senator in Nadine’s backyard. The investigation was still active and, by that point, he’d helped Nadine buy a new Mercedes-Benz allegedly intended to bribe Menendez to make the investigation go away.

Uribe’s recollection of that backyard meeting was perhaps the most vivid moment of the trial. He said the senator called out “mon amour” and rang a little bell that summoned his then-girlfriend Nadine from her house to the backyard.

In the later half of 2022, he would meet Nadine at the Marriott again, but circumstances had changed. Her home had been searched by the FBI in June and authorities had found piles of cash and gold — and the Mercedes.

Villa Amalfi

Cliffside Park, N.j.

Known for: An empty parking lot.

It was in the parking lot of this restaurant, described by Google as serving “Italian classics in swanky quarters equipped with a grand piano,” that Uribe said he met Nadine in spring 2019 and handed her $15,000 in cash to make a down payment on a new Mercedes-Benz.

She had wrecked the car months earlier. Jurors were not told the details of the accident. Nadine struck and killed a pedestrian.

Uribe said they’d picked the spot for the payoff because they’d been there together before. But this time they went there during daytime hours when the restaurant was closed. “She took the money, and she thanks me for it,” Uribe said.

Mr. Chow

Midtown Manhattan, N.Y.

Known for: Being in the Southern District of New York.

Menendez, Nadine and Hana met here in late June 2018. Hana picked up the $524 tab for the dinner, which included $234 worth of duck — served with steamed pancakes and plum sauce, the menu says — an appletini and a $100 tip, according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors focused on the meeting for a number of reasons, but one is substantial:

During dinner, Hana texted with Egypt’s defense attache, Maj. Gen. Khaled Shawky, to schedule a dinner in late July with Menendez.

After that arranged dinner, Menendez, then chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, texted Nadine to tell Hana that he was signing off on sending $99 million worth of tank ammunition to Egypt. This was done with what prosecutors say is uncommon speed and despite the senator’s long-standing concerns about Egypt’s human rights record.

During the government’s closing argument, federal prosecutor Paul Monteleoni stopped to marvel at the absurdity of the text.

“Why is he texting this to his girlfriend?” he asked jurors. He would later make clear prosecutors’ answer to the question.

“Menendez wasn't acting weirdly, he was acting corruptly,” Monteleoni said. “He was acting like a bribed man because that's what he was.”

Le Jardin

Edgewater, N.j.

Known for: Maybe blowing your cover.

Uribe testified that once, while drinking with Hana, the Egyptian-American turned around and yelled out something curious: “You know that I'm an agent for the government of Egypt.”

Hana has not been charged with being an unregistered foreign agent, but Hana clearly has connections to the Egyptian government.

Federal prosecutors say Hana used proceeds from a meat monopoly granted by Egyptian officials to bribe Menendez into acting as a foreign agent. Though Hana denies bribing the senator, he has argued he got the monopoly in part because of his contacts in Egypt.

Il Villaggio

Carlstadt, N.j.

Known for: The table in the back.

Uribe, the government’s star witness, said that after striking a deal with Hana to kill an investigation circling his insurance business, he met the senator and Nadine here for a pair of meetings.

The first, in his words, was “pointless,” and he never got to bring up the bribes he was paying or the investigation he wanted the senator to end. According to Menendez’s attorneys, Nadine had invited Uribe to crash a meal meant to celebrate her and the senator’s two-month anniversary.

But in 2019, he went there again and testified he got to talk with the senator about the investigation he wanted the senator to stop.

During the trial, prosecutors showed jurors several photos of Uribe and the Menendezes drinking together, and they also showed undated photos of the interior or exterior of restaurants. Defense attorneys argued a photo alone doesn’t prove much about Uribe’s testimony.

“It doesn't corroborate anything about whether a bribe is paid,” Menendez attorney Adam Fee told jurors. “It's a restaurant. It corroborates that the restaurant he said he went to exists.”

River Palm Terrace

Edgewater, N.j.

Known for: Champagne toasts and gold bar searches.

Uribe again shows up for another intimate moment, this time at a meal where Nadine and Bob were celebrating their engagement at the best steakhouse in New Jersey, according to the Daily Meal.

Uribe said the Champagne was sent by another table, and they all toasted. Uribe was celebrating too.

“That thing you asked me about — there is nothing there,” Uribe said the senator told him just days earlier about the state investigation. “I give you your peace.”

Uribe took that to mean the senator had worked to stop the investigation, though federal prosecutors say state prosecutors did not bend.

Segovia Restaurant

Moonachie, N.j.

Known for: A bathroom to excuse yourself to.

In summer 2020, amid the pandemic, Uribe said he met the senator, Nadine and her adult daughter at this authentic Spanish restaurant with an outdoor area and a menu featuring lobster stuffed with crab meat and shrimp and four types of sangria.

Evidence shows the senator texted Nadine and the daughter to get up and go to the bathroom. Prosecutors argue this was so the senator could have a quiet word with Uribe; Menendez’s defense attorney argues Uribe was “drunk and high,” and the senator was trying to spare his family.

When they were in the bathroom, Uribe said the senator turned to him and indicated, in Spanish, that he’d saved Uribe and his associates from a state criminal prosecution and a state investigation.

“He said: I saved your ass twice. Not once, but twice,” Uribe said.

Chateau of Spain

Newark, N.j.

Known for: Proximity to federal prosecutors.

Another element of the multi-scheme indictment had its climax here in spring 2022. Menendez’s long-time political adviser, Michael Soliman, arranged a lunch to catch up with the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Philip Sellinger, at this popular spot by the federal courthouse.

Prosecutors say Sellinger got the job at Menendez’s recommendation only after Menendez came to believe that Sellinger was in a position to oversee a case against real estate developer Fred Daibes.

Soliman said he’d brushed off a previous request by Menedez to raise the issue. At the lunch, according to both men, Sellinger preempted any discussion of Daibes by warning Soliman that he would have to report any conversation about a specific case to the Department of Justice.

A few weeks later, Sellinger invited Menendez to a ceremonial swearing in. By then, Menendez wanted nothing to do with his old friend.

“He said, ‘I’m going to pass,’” Sellinger testified. “‘The only thing worse than not having a relationship with the United States attorney is people thinking you have a relationship with the United States attorney, and you don’t.’”