Sen. Bob Menendez and wife charged with obstruction, accused of trying to cover up bribes

New Jersey. Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife Nadine were hit with more criminal charges in an alleged corruption case involving gold bars, a luxury car and other alleged bribes, according to federal prosecutors.

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A federal grand jury in New York hit the Democrat and his wife with two new counts tied to obstruction of justice, and conspiracy to obstruct justice, bringing the total amount of charges faced by New Jersey's senior senator to 18, a copy of the superseding indictment shows.

The FBI alleged the pair lied about money they received for a new Mercedes convertible and home mortgage payments. The senator and his wife lied, claiming the money was given as loans they planned to repay – when all along the cash payments were alleged bribes.

In a statement, Menendez called Tuesday's superseding indictment "a flagrant abuse of power. The government has long known that I learned of and helped repay loans  — not bribes —  that had been provided to my wife." The senator once again maintained his innocence, claiming prosecutors are "scared" and have no evidence of any crimes.

"The government has now falsely alleged a cover-up and obstruction. The latest charge reveals far more about the government than it says about me. It says that the prosecutors are afraid of the facts, scared to subject their charges to the fair-minded scrutiny of a jury, and unconstrained by any sense of justice or fair play. It says, once and for all, that they will stop at nothing in their zeal to get me," the statement continued. "These prosecutors are trying to get me to give in simply by making wild allegations again and again, without actually proving anything."

David Schertler, a Washington-based lawyer for Nadine Menendez, declined to comment on the new allegations.

Prosecutors said that from June 2022 into 2023, Menendez and his wife Nadine wrote checks that stated they were repaying a loan to businessman Jose Uribe, when in fact no such loan existed.

Those checks, according to prosecutors, were presented to the United States Attorney’s Office in an attempt to obstruct justice by falsely characterizing the return of bribe money “in an effort to interfere with an investigation of Menendez, Nadine Menendez, and others in the Southern District of New York.”

Uribe pleaded guilty on Friday in the so-called gold bar corruption case, saying he paid bribes to the senator. He is now cooperating with prosecutors.

Uribe said he met with Nadine Menendez once the criminal investigation began and the pair concocted the story claiming the cash he gave them was not a bribe, but rather a loan.

Among newer allegations included in the indictment, Menendez is accused of sending his then-attorney in to allegedly tell a false story to federal investigators in June and September of 2023— a story that allegedly detailed the money he and his wife got was a loan. The attorney said the senator had been unaware until 2022 of a $23,000 mortgage payment one businessman made on the Menendez’s New Jersey home or the money another defendant paid toward a Mercedes-Benz convertible.

Prosecutors allege that Menendez also caused his lawyer to say in the September meeting that Menendez in 2022 had learned that the payments were loans. The prosecutors wrote that Menendez knew and “had learned of both the mortgage company payment and the car payments prior to 2022, and they were not loans, but bribe payments."

Prosecutors also said in the rewritten indictment that Nadine Menendez caused her lawyer to tell prosecutors last August that the mortgage payment and funds provided for the convertible were loans when she knew they were bribe payments.

The new charges allege that the couple was trying to obstruct justice in the weeks before they were charged last September with a variety of crimes.

According to the indictment, Menendez and his wife accepted gold bars and cash from a real estate developer in return for the senator using his clout to get that businessman a multimillion-dollar deal with a Qatari investment fund. Menendez also was charged with helping another New Jersey business associate get a lucrative deal with the government of Egypt.

The senator and his wife have pleaded not guilty. They now face 18 counts in all and are accused of taking gold bars and cash from Uribe and two other businessmen who allegedly wanted help with international business deals and separate legal problems two of the businessmen were facing.

Two of the other businessmen have pleaded not guilty as well. A May trial has been scheduled.

The charges were added to the indictment just a day after Judge Sidney H. Stein rejected Menendez’s claims that search warrants that led to the discovery of gold bars and cash at his New Jersey home were unconstitutional. Defense lawyers had alleged that documents submitted to magistrate judges to obtain search warrants for email records, phones and materials at Menendez's residence from January 2022 to last September were “riddled with material misrepresentation and omissions.”

FBI raids on the residence in June 2022 resulted in the discovery of over $100,000 in gold bars and more than $480,000 in cash, much of it hidden in closets, clothing and a safe, prosecutors said. Menendez said the cash found in the house was personal savings he had put away for emergencies.

After his fall arrest, the 70-year-old Menendez was forced to relinquish his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but said he would not resign from Congress.

The son of Cuban immigrants, Menendez has held public office continuously since 1986, when he was elected mayor of Union City, New Jersey. In 2006, then-Gov. Jon Corzine appointed Menendez to the Senate seat he vacated when he became governor.

Larry Neumeister of the Associated Press contributed to this report.