NJ Sen. Bob Menendez arraigned on new foreign agent charge

New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez on Monday arrived at a federal courthouse in lower Manhattan where he’s expected to deny new charges that he acted as an agent of the Egyptian government while chairing the Senate’s powerful Foreign Relations Committee.

Menendez, 69, didn’t answer questions from reporters when he turned up to court just after 2:30 p.m. The veteran Democrat was slated to appear before Judge Sidney Stein at a 3 p.m. hearing, where he’s expected to plead not guilty to a rewritten version of his bribery indictment that includes a new charge that he conspired with his wife and a Egyptian-born businessman to secretly work on Egypt’s behalf between 2018 and 2022.

All members of Congress are barred from acting as agents of a foreign government.

Menendez has already pleaded not guilty to charges that he and his wife Nadine pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of gold bars and other bribes in exchange for a slew of alleged favors to Egyptian officials and New Jersey businessmen.

FBI agents who raided the Menendez’s Englewood Cliffs home in June 2022 found wads of cash stuffed inside windbreaker jackets emblazoned with the senator’s name, more than $150,000 worth of gold bars, and a 2019 Mercedes C-Class that the couple allegedly bought with a down payment received as a bribe.

Menendez has vehemently denied the allegations against him — claiming that he stockpiled large sums of cash out of a habit inherited from his Cuban ancestors — and has refused to resign from the Senate.

“Piling new charge upon new charge does not make the allegations true,” he said in a statement issued after the new indictment dropped.

The senator has yet to provide an explanation for why the fingerprints for one of the alleged bribers’ drivers were allegedly found on an envelope stuffed with money inside his home, or why he googled “kilo of gold price” shortly after receiving an alleged bribe in gold bars.

Among the most alarming charges that Menendez is facing is that he allegedly secretly pushed his colleagues to unfreeze $300 million in military aid earmarked to Egypt while helming his powerful committee.

The new indictment that Menendez is expected to enter a plea to on Monday includes new explosive details regarding his alleged meetings with Egyptian officials during this time period.

Days after one May 2019 meeting, an Egyptian intelligence agent texted alleged middleman Wael Hana that the senator “would sit very comfortably” if he helped assuage his colleagues’ concerns about funding the Egyptian military in light of a 2015 Egyptian airstrike on a tourist group that seriously injured an American citizen.

“Consider it done,” Hana replied, according to the indictment.

Nadine Mendendez and Hana both pleaded not guilty to the new conspiracy to act as a foreign act charge at a separate hearing last week. The senator was able to push his hearing back to Monday by citing official Senate duties that he needed to take care of.