The new charges appear to be based on the guilty plea of co-defendant Jose Uribe.
Sen. Bob Menendez (D.N.J.) and his wife faced new obstruction charges and indictments Tuesday in a superseding indictment brought by federal prosecutors in Manhattan.
The superseding indictment charges the senator and Nadine Menendez with new conspiracy to obstruct justice charges and obstruction of justice charges related to the senator's efforts to cover up bribes he received from several New Jersey businessmen. has been done.
At the time, the two allegedly instructed their attorneys to tell federal investigators they believed the mortgage payment on Nadine Menendez's home and the Mercedes-Benz payment were loans, when in fact prosecutors said they believed the payments were loans. said he knew the payment was a bribe.
The new charges appear to stem from last week's guilty plea by co-defendant Jose Uribe, who admitted giving Nadine Menendez a Mercedes-Benz convertible in exchange for the senator's assistance.
When Menendez and his wife learned of the federal investigation in 2022, prosecutors said they tried to cover up the bribe payments.
“In fact, as Menendez well knew, he made both the mortgage company payments and the car payments prior to 2022, and they were bribe payments, not loans.” It is written in the letter.
Prosecutors allege that the senator accepted gifts including gold bars, wads of money and luxury watches in exchange for official favors to Uribe's government and the governments of Egypt and Qatar. He is the first sitting member of Congress to be charged with conspiracy to act as a foreign agent by a public official.
The senator, his wife and other defendants previously pleaded not guilty to charges in the bribery case. A trial was scheduled for May.
The senator said in a statement that he was innocent.
“Today's superseding indictment is a flagrant abuse of power. The government has known for a long time that I learned about the loans – not bribes – offered to my wife and helped repay them. ” the statement began.
“The government was not satisfied or able to fairly prove these facts in court, so it now made false allegations of concealment and obstruction. “It reveals far more about the government than it does,” prosecutors say. “Afraid of the facts, afraid of exposing their charges to the impartial scrutiny of a jury, they are free from any sense of justice or fair play.” is not bound either.It’s me,” his statement continued.
“Prosecutors are trying to bring me down by simply repeating wild allegations without actually proving anything,” Menendez said in a statement. “They have unlimited resources and a budget. “We have no intention of allowing prosecutors to conduct excessive investigations,” he added. ”
