US-POLITICS-CONGRESS-HOMELAND SECURITY-JOHNSON

Washington Post

Federal prosecutors unveiled a 14-count indictment Wednesday of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), one of his party’s leading voices on foreign affairs, charging him with using his office to benefit an eye doctor in exchange for many gifts over their decades of friendship.

After a more than two-year investigation, Menendez faces charges related to what prosecutors say were improper efforts by Menendez to help Salomon Melgen, a Florida-based doctor who was also a contributor to Menendez’s campaigns and his longtime friend. Menendez intervened on Melgen’s behalf in a dispute with federal regulators over Medicare charges and in a bid by Melgen to secure a port security contract in the Dominican Republic.

Menendez is only the second U.S. senator to face a federal corruption indictment in the past 20 years. He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and suggested that any gifts he received from Melgen were part of a close, personal friendship that dates to the early 1990s.

Federal prosecutors also unveiled charges against Melgen connected to the gifts-for-favors allegations. A grand jury in New Jersey issued eight counts each against Menendez and Melgen for bribery charges and three counts each for honest services fraud, according to a statement from the Justice Department. They also each received one count for conspiracy and one count for violating the Travel Act, and Menendez was also charged with one count of making false statements.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/c/embed/11c1aaf8-d8b1-11e4-bf0b-f648b95a6488

The indictment has been telegraphed for almost a month by officials within the Justice Department, but Menendez’s legal team spent the last few weeks making a furious last-ditch effort to persuade Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s top deputies not to file charges.

The senator has said he has no intention of resigning and plans to stay in office during the trial phase of the case, which could last many months or years. “I’m not going anywhere,” Menendez said at a March 6 news conference.

The senator has planned a 7 p.m. news conference Wednesday in Newark to address the charges.

The indictment has been telegraphed for almost a month by officials within the Justice Department, but Menendez’s legal team spent the last few weeks making a furious last-ditch effort to persuade Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s top deputies not to file charges.

The senator has said he has no intention of resigning and plans to stay in office during the trial phase of the case, which could last many months or years. “I’m not going anywhere,” Menendez said at a March 6 news conference.

The senator has planned a 7 p.m. news conference Wednesday in Newark to address the charges.

While Congress is amid a two-week recess, the charges against Menendez threaten to upend two matters under fierce debate in the Senate.

One is the possible nuclear deal with Iran. As ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Menendez has been the most prominent Democratic voice raising qualms about the ongoing multilateral negotiations. He is the lead Democratic sponsor of a bill — expected to move forward once the Senate returns April 13 — that would bring any Iran deal before Congress for a 60-day review.

Menendez said as recently as Sunday, according to a Bloomberg News report, that he would oppose a deal leaving Iran with a one-year “breakout” time to build a nuclear weapon.

Last month, Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) declined to say whether Menendez should step down from his committee post should charges be filed. Although Senate Republicans require members under indictment to temporarily relinquish leadership or top committee posts, Senate Democrats have no such rule.

“Senator Menendez has done a stellar job as chair of the committee, and as far as I am concerned, he’s been an outstanding senator,” Reid said.

The other issue to which Menendez could be pivotal is the confirmation of attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch, which has lingered for months. With scores of Republican senators saying they oppose Lynch’s confirmation because of her views supporting President Obama’s immigration policies, every Democratic vote — plus a potential tie-breaker from Vice President Biden — could be needed to secure a majority.

Democratic aides said last week that Menendez could refrain from voting on the Lynch confirmation because of the appearance of conflict created by the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation.

Including Menendez’s expected vote for Lynch, Democrats can count on at least 50 votes of support: All 46 members of the Democratic caucus and four Republicans have indicated their support of Lynch. That would leave Biden to cast the tie-breaking vote.

There are a few Republicans who have not indicated their intentions on the Lynch nomination, so it is possible that she could win confirmation even if Menendez were to abstain.

Menendez’s case began under some of the most bizarre circumstances, even by the standards of New Jersey politics, where corruption has been a focus of the U.S. attorney’s office in Newark for several decades.

In 2012, during Menendez’s bid for a second full Senate term, an anonymous tipster using the pseudonym “Pete Williams” reached out to the media and to the FBI to suggest that Menendez was seeing underage prostitutes on his Dominican vacations with Melgen. (Pete Williams is the name of the last New Jersey senator to be charged with corruption, the late Harrison “Pete” Williams, who was convicted and expelled from the Senate.)

The prostitution angle fizzled, but investigators began scouring Menendez’s relationship with Melgen.

Twice in recent years — in 2009 and 2012 — Menendez and his top staff members spoke directly to top federal health agency officials about their finding that Melgen had overbilled the government by $8.9 million for care at his clinic. Menendez repeatedly questioned whether federal auditors had been fair in their assessment of Melgen’s billing for eye injections to treat macular degeneration. His office said he questioned the fairness and consistency of the federal agency in its decision-making with all doctors, not just Melgen.

But Melgen was a man whose personal life also drew scrutiny. He was seen at times with dates while entertaining Menendez near his vacation home in the Dominican Republic.

Menendez also appeared to use his position to help Melgen after the doctor became the chief investor in a company holding a long-dormant port security contract in the Dominican Republic. The contract called for paying lucrative fees for security screening of ships coming into the port.

In the summer of 2012, as Melgen donated $700,000 to support the senator and other Democrats, Menendez pressed for the United States to push the Dominican Republic to put the contract into effect. In a July Senate hearing he scheduled on Latin American businesses, Menendez urged officials from the Commerce and State departments to apply pressure to countries that didn’t honor agreements with U.S. businesses. Without naming Melgen, Menendez highlighted the contract to provide security in the Dominican port.

0 thoughts on “Sen. Robert Menendez indicted”
  1. All of The Congress does this stuff. He must of not given the jews their cut.

  2. The senator has said he has no intention of resigning and plans to stay in office during the trial phase of the case, which could last many months or years. “I’m not going anywhere,” Menendez said at a March 6 news conference.

    That’s just for show. In reality, Menendez surrendered today. As a ranking member of the Senate Foreign relations Committee, he was the only person who could truly have impeded Obama’s deal with Iran. That’s just the way the politics breaks down.

    So today he stepped down as ranking member of the committee, in order to say to Obama, “Okay I am out of your way. Please do not proceed further with the prosecution.”

    As I have noted before, many Congressmen have gone to prison when they made the wrong political enemies. Menendez doesn’t want that to happen to him.

    I told you that Menendez would buckle. Obama’s deal with Iran involves billions and billions of dollars in new profits for key players. Menendez could not stand in the way of that for long.
    https://quatloosx.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/menendez_01.jpg

  3. Yes. Who is next?, I hope more of them who have working for Israel all this time and have gotten a lot of $$$$$$$$$.$$ (a lot of our money)

  4. I would not hold my breath waiting for the deal with Iran:
    http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-defense-secretary-we-might-bomb-iran-even-if-a-peace-agreement-is-signed/5440188
    and I would not give big business’s interests — no matter how big — a lot of chances to prevail over Israel’s goals. It didn’t happen before, when the oil industry was quietly but forcefully lobbying against starting a war on Iraq.
    Menendez was not the only ace in the war mongers’ pack: they always build redundancy in their system. I don’t believe he was ‘felled’ due to his opposition to the deal with Iran. Maybe he outlived his usefulness. Funny thing: that which makes a tool useful can often also be his outdoing. Pedophilia is a prized entry in a Western politician’s CV — it makes him manipulable by blackmail. Once his “inclination” becomes known, however, he is neither manipulable nor credibly usable.

  5. Konrad it would be a relieve, even if only a tiny one, if ‘big business’ would be able to enforce heir aims over that of jewry. “Billions involved”- but aren’t corporation all dependent on jewish owned international high finance. Some those owners, like Rothschild own half of the globe quadrillions are at their disposal. Even so seeing Menendez, one of their lackey’s, go down is great.

  6. @ Ostmann:

    Everyone involved in high finance thinks and acts like a Jew, but not all of them call themselves “Jews.” These people have power over average Jews and Goyim alike.

    Menendez is their servant; nothing more. He opposes any Iran deal in order to show that he supports Israel and his Jewish constituents. But his masters are interested in profits, and they have decided that the Iran deal shall go through. Therefore they told Obama to indict Menendez so that Menendez would get out of the way, which Menendez did the instant the indictment was delivered – exactly as I said he would.

    The greed of the money masters is infinite. No longer content to simply blockade and sanction Cuba and Iran, they will open up both countries, and subject them to neo-liberalism, so that the money masters can make countless billions in new profits off them.

    The rich oligarchs in Iran are eager for this, since they too will profit. The gap between them and the lower cases will widen more than ever. The Tehran stock market will take off. Iran will be financialized (Wall Street will eclipse Main Street.) Workers will be reduced to disposable slaves. Poverty and homelessness will explode. Iran will join the “international community (i.e. Iranian oligarchs will join the money masters club).

    The losers will be average Iranians in the middle and lower classes, who will be enslaved, and shorn like sheep. This is already starting to happen.

    Iran is not like Libya or Syria. It is vastly bigger in area, population, industrial might, and financial exploitability. And as I said, rich Iranians want to be among the exploiters. Obviously the nuclear issue is a trivial and irrelevant smokescreen for all this.

    In the past, the money masters were content to hurt, sanction, blockade, and punish Iran and Cuba.

    Now they have decided to make billions in profits off Iran and Cuba. And if they can ever et Venezuela’s government out of the way, they will do it to Venezuela too.

    I should write a post to explain the details.

  7. @ LASILENCIA:

    You should be sad. Everyone seems to think this Iran deal is a good thing.

    It is not.

    The age of sanctions and blockades is over.

    We are now in the age of neoliberalism and global inequality.

    Upper class Iranians will throw massive parties to celebrate.

    Middle and lower class Iranians will taste the bitter waters of “freedom.”

    Iran will be flooded with Hollywood trash and LGBT politics.

    Half of Iranians will become unemployed. The other half will toil in sweatshops. All will become debt slaves.

    There will more taxes for the poor, and no taxes on the rich.

    Bribery, financial fraud, and environmental destruction will be decriminalized.

    Iranian politicians will join the global “war on terror,” plus the “war on drugs,” and all the other class wars that keep the 99% enslaved.

    Iran’s jails will fill up, especially when they become privately owned.

    Tehran’s stock market will take off, bringing all new forms of financial frauds and swindles.

    The government will impose gratuitous austerity on the middle and lower classes.

    The middle class itself will go into its twilight, and then go extinct.

    Iran’s central bank will be privatized. So will Iran’s utilities, roads, and public services (prisons, police, fire departments, etc.)

    Free education and health care will end.

    As I keep saying, the money masters want Iran. Already there are hundreds of hedge fund managers crawling all over Iran. All of them have stars in their eyes as they anticipate record profits. The hotels are packed full of rich foreigners.

    I think I shall do a post that explains the details. TUT readers are so used to hearing Iran being vilified that they are stuck in the past. They think that things will continue as always.

    They will not. The Iran deal will happen. A framework was agreed to today. The Cuba deal will also happen.

    These are not good things.

  8. Meanwhile, the masses still believe this was a historical deal. It was a deal done with kosher blessings. The mafia has just expanded. My heart is heavy.

  9. Obama will bring poverty and unemployment to the middle and lower classes in Cuba and Iran.

    For this he will be celebrated as “the man who brought freedom and democracy to Cuba and Iran.”

    Meanwhile Jews like Netanyahu have based their political careers on the “Iranian threat.” That’s all they have. It’s the only thing that keeps the masses compliant as the masses are ground into poverty. Such politicians don’t want to change. And so they will go extinct.

    Trust me. Netanyahu’s days are numbered.

    The world has moved from the age of sanctions, blockades, and Iran-bashing to the age of the 1% vs the 99%.

  10. As in all mafia families, the elders eventually go instinct and a more brutal gang takes over. Evil is still evil. Many thoughts run through my mind. High rollers are now rolling the dice. New rules. New gang. New game. New twist.

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