WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — A possible double indictment could be brought against US Senator Bob Menendez and his benefactor Dr. Salomon Melgen in a pending US federal criminal corruption case, legal expert and chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, Ken Boehm told Sputnik.
“The thing to look for is if an indictment comes out, is it just Melgen or is it Menendez too? It could be both, it could be one or the other,” Boehm said on Friday.
If only Melgen is indicted, Boehm noted the strong possibility that Melgen would offer incriminating evidence about his relationship to Menendez in exchange for leniency from the court. “If that happens, that’s really bad news for the senator,” Boehm said.
Over the course of three years, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had been investigating Melgen, a Florida-based ophthalmologist, for possible Medicare and Medicaid fraud amounting to more than $20 million. In recent weeks, the New Jersey press implicated Menendez in the scandal.
Later in August 2012, both Menendez and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid held a meeting with the head of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
“Melgen brought in the big guns, meaning Senator Menendez and later Senator Reid, to try to get the Medicare folks off his back,” Boehm alleged. He added that in 2012 Melgen had contributed $700,000 to a shadowy campaign fund that paid into the coffers of both senators.
The FBI investigation into Melgen’s possible Medicare and Medicaid fraud in Florida “had been going strong,” Boehm said, referring to multiple FBI raids of Melgen’s medical office in 2013. However, the renewed focus on the New Jersey side of the case beginning last week indicates a “critical turning point,” Boehm added.
Two of Senator Menendez’s staffers were called to testify before a lower court to divulge their knowledge of the senator’s dealings with Melgen. The staffers denied the court’s request and brought their case to a federal appeals court where, according to Boehm, the appeal was rejected and they were forced to give testimony.
“That kind of says the thing is moving along. If this was some half-dead case… I don’t think you’d see that kind of activity,” Boehm noted.
The legal expert further pointed to Senator Menendez’s substantial legal defense fund. “He is totally lawyered up,” Boehm said, adding the kind of money being spent shows “something is heating up.”
CNN reported on Friday that the US Department of Justice was moving ahead with a criminal corruption indictment against Menendez. The DOJ would not confirm or deny the report when reached by Sputnik. Menendez denied any allegations of wrongdoing in a Friday press release.
Menendez is currently the ranking Democrat on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and original sponsor of the Ukraine Freedom Support Act as well as other anti-Russian legislation.
