Gold bullion value greater than $100,000. New Mercedes Benz convertible within the storage. Wads of money stuffed into the pockets of a jacket with the phrases “Bob Menendez” embroidered on the chest.
The signature on the backside of the federal indictment launched Friday charging Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J. His spouse Nadine and three alleged bribery accomplices belong to Damien Williams, the US Legal professional for the Southern District of New York.
However the particulars of what federal brokers stated they present in June 2022 once they raided Menendez’s New Jersey dwelling, and of their subsequent investigation into the couple’s electronic mail and cellphone accounts, might have been stripped from an episode of “The Sopranos.”
Menendez and his spouse have denied allegations of wrongdoing.
Listed here are some highlights of the indictment:
- Practically half one million {dollars} in money was discovered hidden inside envelopes and hid inside clothes pockets hanging in closets at Menendez’s dwelling in Englewood Cliffs, together with a big roll of payments in a jacket from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus with Menendez’s identify on it. .
- Fingerprints from co-defendant’s driver, Farid Daibes, had been discovered on a minimum of one of many envelopes, alongside together with his DNA and his return tackle, prosecutors stated. “Christmas in January,” based on the indictment.
That is “extraordinarily painful,” stated Patrice Schiano, a former FBI forensic accountant who’s now a lecturer at John Jay Faculty of Legal Justice.
“It would not shock me that there could be money hidden in the home, as a result of in the event that they took it to the financial institution it could be reported,” Schiano stated. “However that will be tough to defend as a result of any jury would have such a lot of cash on the home.”
- Two different defendants within the case — Jose Uribe and Wael Hanna — purchased a Mercedes Benz for Menendez’s spouse in trade for the senator’s intervention within the state legal trial of an aide to Uribe accused of insurance coverage fraud and the investigation of a member of the family who labored for him, based on the indictment.
“You’re a miracle employee who makes goals come true,” Nadine Menendez texted Uribe. “I’ll all the time keep in mind that.”
- Prosecutors stated Menendez additionally helped Hanna safe navy funding for Egypt in trade for a promise to not present up for his spouse at work.
Later, Nadine Menendez submitted to her husband a request from an Egyptian official to put in writing a request to the US Senate to help $300 million in help to Egypt.
The Justice Division stated Menendez “wrote the letter on behalf of the Egyptians and despatched it from his private account to his spouse’s electronic mail.” She then despatched the e-mail to Hana. Not lengthy after, Menendez and his spouse deleted these emails.
“Nearly everybody on this digital age is vulnerable to having their digital lives uncovered by regulation enforcement investigators.” Andrew Guthrie Fergusonstated the regulation professor at American College Washington Faculty of Legislation. “The truth that somebody ought to know higher that they used a digital system to incriminate themselves is a testomony to how frequent and inevitable it’s to do all the pieces — whether or not legal or not — by means of a traceable digital system.”
- Two days after Menendez’s non-public assembly with an Egyptian official, Hana bought 22 one-ounce gold bars.
Every one has a singular serial quantity. Two of them had been later discovered at Menendez’s dwelling by federal investigators, prosecutors stated.
Additionally they found that on January 29, 2022, Menendez performed a Google seek for “value per kilo of gold.”
