See YA, Menendez!

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See YA, Menendez!

Post by Amskeptic » Wed Apr 01, 2015 2:12 pm

I have been waiting for this one. If only we could clean house elsewhere in New Jersey and New York. The culture of corruption in the northeast is more hidden than down south, but it is no less pernicious.
New Jersey Senator Faces Corruption Charges
Alex Rogers

New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez was indicted on corruption charges Wednesday for improperly aiding a friend and major Democratic donor, according to the Associated Press. He’s only the twelfth senator ever to be indicted.


A New Jersey grand jury charged Menendez, who rose from a tenement in Union City to chair the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on 14 counts that reportedly include bribery and conspiracy. Menendez has said repeatedly during the two-year federal investigation that he has committed no wrongdoing. On Wednesday afternoon, his communications director tweeted that neither the Senator, nor his legal team, had been informed of the charges.

Federal authorities have been looking into whether Menendez exchanged political favors for gifts from Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen, who has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Senator and other Democrats in various campaigns. Menendez has intervened on Melgen’s behalf at least twice to protest Medicare reimbursement audits alleging Melgen—Medicare’s top-paid physician in 2012—overbilled the government by millions of dollars.

Menendez also pressed the Obama Administration to support a Dominican Republic port security contract, a major Melgen investment, worth $500 million over two decades. Menendez said he considered the matter an anti-drug trafficking national security issue.
After more than a two-year investigation, a federal grand jury indicted Menendez on charges including conspiracy to commit bribery and wire fraud over his advocacy of business interests of Dr. Salomon Melgen.

Menendez’s troubles came to light in January 2013, when officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Health and Human Services raided Melgen’s Florida offices after the conservative website the Daily Caller ran an article claiming that Menendez paid two women in the Dominican Republican for sex at a gated oceanfront resort where Melgen owned a home. While Menendez emphatically denied the report and the FBI found no evidence to support its claims, the Senator ended up personally reimbursing Melgen over $58,000 for two other private jet trips to the country in 2010, citing sloppy paperwork. Menendez did not disclose the free trips as required by Senate rules for three years and the chamber’s ethics committee reviewed the violation.

While Menendez will face pressure to step down from his ranking position on the Foreign Relations committee, there isn’t a party rule that forces Democratic senators in top positions to relinquish their leadership roles as there is for Republicans. A few weeks ago, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said he would not “deal in hypotheticals” when asked if Menendez should do step down from his committee spot if charged. Menendez has been an influential voice in international affairs, as well as an occasional thorn in the Obama Administration’s side on its diplomatic maneuvering with Iran and Cuba.

“Senator Menendez has done a stalwart job as chair of the committee and as far as I’m concerned he’s been an outstanding senator,” said Reid, who voluntarily interviewed with DOJ and FBI officials last year as they investigated the corruption charges. It’s the first time in Reid’s decade at the helm of the caucus that he has had to deal with a charged colleague: The last such Senate Democrat, Harrison A. Williams of New Jersey, was indicted 35 years ago.
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