US prosecutors have a second chance to nail Senator Bob Menendez for corruption in a case that could torpedo Joe Biden's re-election, two legal experts say.
The Democrat New Jersey senator and his wife Nadine were indicted last week on corruption charges on the recommendation of a grand jury.
Menendez is accused of using his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee to lobby for a two-year arms embargo on Egypt over alleged human rights abuses to be dropped. The indictment claims he took payments from the Egyptian government through intermediaries, including via a paid position where he hardly ever showed up for work.
The senator also allegedly took bribes in return for political favours to a firm exporting halal meat to the Muslim North African nation.
Investigators found almost $500,000 in cash hidden in clothes at their home, along with $100,000 worth of gold bars and a luxury Mercedes Benz car they received as a gift.
Law professor Kim Keenan told Sputnik that Menendez had previously escaped prosecution for corruption in 2015 after the jury failed to reach a verdict — "but here we are in 2023, and he's accused of misusing his position as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee."
"You've got to know that somebody back at the FBI was just going, yeah, we didn't get it this time, but he's a crook, so we're going to get him next time," she said.
The details of the new indictment are much more lurid, she noted, ensuring more media coverage.
"The gold bars make everything sexy," Keenan said. "Usually people just have cash. But this is the first one we've seen a long time where literally they found $100,000 in gold bars in his possession."
Another interesting aspect of the new investigation was the snaring of Nadine Menendez along with her husband.
"The wife was the go between. That's why she's right there in the indictment," Keenan said. "She's clearly accepting a lot of these sort of ill gotten gains. She set him up a little bit... these are her friends, these are her associates."
Lawyer Dan Kovalik told Sputnik the case had come at a bad time for the Biden administration, just three months before the 2024 election season begins.
"I don't think this helps Biden. I think people will associate Menendez with Biden because he's a Democrat," Kovalik argued. "People who are hungry to say: 'oh this is a Republican problem, look at Trump, he's being indicted' — now that's hard to say because now Menendez... looks like he was getting gold bars and envelopes stuffed with cash."
The commentator said the Menendez indictment underscored that "Washington is a cesspool."
"[Former House speaker] Nancy Pelosi is the richest legislator in the world," he noted. "Remember also the scandal in the Senate, which I don't think anyone was punished for, ultimately turned out that four senators, two Republicans, two Democrats appear to have insider knowledge about the pandemic before it was announced and ended up trading stocks based on that knowledge."
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