US Senator Bob Menendez indicted for acting as agent of Egypt – JURIST

US prosecutors indicted Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) on Thursday for acting as a foreign agent of the Egyptian government. These charges are in addition to previous charges of bribery against Menendez and are related to the same incidents.

The indictment alleges that Menendez accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bribes from Egyptian businessmen in cash, gold, vehicles, mortgage payments, and compensation for a no-show job. Officials executed a search warrant of Menendez’s home in September and found luxury vehicles, gold bars, and over $480,000 in cash that was stuffed into envelopes and safes. In exchange for these bribes, prosecutors say Menendez promised to take and took “a series of official acts and breaches of official duty” that benefitted Egypt. This included: providing sensitive government information to Egypt, protecting the business monopolies and interfering in New Jersey, and federal investigations,

Menendez is accused of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which regulates individuals in the US who act on behalf of foreign powers. A person qualifies as a foreign agent if they engage in certain conduct, like political advocacy or publicity, in the interest of a foreign entity. People who qualify as foreign agents must register with the US Attorney General. As a public official, Menendez is prohibited from acting as a foreign agent, even if he had registered properly. The new indictment cited past statements from Menendez where he discussed the prohibition on public officials acting as foreign agents and said that a former member of Congress who had engaged in such conduct should be “held to account.”

These charges come soon after Menendez was indicted for various corruption-related charges. More than half of Senate Democrats have called for Menendez to resign, including New Jersey’s other Democratic Senator, Cory Booker. Menendez’s primary challenges called for his expulsion.

Menendez has not yet commented on these new charges. but he previously denied the corruption charges. He recalled a previous 2015 corruption case against him which resulted in a partial acquittal and dropped charges, saying “They wrote these charges as they wanted; the facts are not as presented. Prosecutors did that last time and look what a trial demonstrates. People should remember that before accepting the prosecutor’s version.”

Menendez was also charged with various corruption offenses in 2015 for allegedly accepting over $600,00 in bribes from a friend, ophthalmologist Salomon Milligan. However, a jury deadlocked on the charges in November 2017, resulting in a mistral. A federal judge then acquitted Menendez on 7 out of 18 charges facing him in January 2018, and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) dropped the remaining charges days later.