Sen. Bob Menendez beat corruption case with nude Brazilian

Sen. Robert Menendez is no stranger to corruption investigations and indictments — and to eye-popping revelations about his private life.

The New Jersey Democrat is facing charges of taking gold bars and bribes and stashing hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash around his house in return for using his “power and influence” — including his position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — to benefit the Egyptian government and two local businessmen.

He has denied the charges and called them a conspiracy by over-reaching prosecutors — a tactic which worked for him the last time he was charged with a lurid corruption scheme involving a bizarre cast of characters.

Menendez’s previous case saw him accused of taking lavish hospitality from a Medicare fraudster doctor who asked the senator to help get visas for his bevy of young mistresses; to intervene in an audit which would have stopped him ripping off taxpayers; and to stop Customs and Border Patrol disrupting his side-hustle screening cargo at the Dominican Republic’s ports.

So far, the new case against Menendez does not feature foreign villas, a Brazilian reality star who posed for “Sexy” magazine or a rock-star style “rider” for the politician, that he had to have Evian water when flying on the doctor’s private jets.

Menendez was charged in 2015 alongside Salomon Melgen, a married Palm Beach eye doctor who had allegedly given the senator access to a lavish lifestyle in return for doing favors.

They first met in 2006, when Menendez entered the senate, and Melgen became a mega-donor, putting $751,000 into his 2012 re-election campaign alone.

But, said prosecutors, Melgen got Menendez to use the power of his office on his behalf — particularly to get visas for six foreign girlfriends Melgen wanted to bring to the US.

The senator was accused of deploying his staff to secure a visa for Juliana Lopes Leite, a Brazilian actress who posed nude on the cover of “Sexy” magazine, telling an aide to email a senior State Department official to give her application “special consideration.”

He was also accused of stepping in to help Ukrainian student Svitlana Buchyk who wanted a plastic-surgery consultation. And, the feds alleged, he directed a staff member to “call Ambassador asap” to reverse a visa denial to a 22-year-old Dominican model.

“Menendez used his Senate staff to accommodate Melgen’s requests for official action, including collecting information from Melgen and his agents about Melgen’s needs and interests, arranging for Melgen to meet with a United States Senator and advocating on Melgen’s behalf to Executive Branch officials,” reads the 2015 indictment against Menendez.

In exchange, prosecutors said, the senator was rewarded with flights on both of Melgen’s private jets — the pilot said he always had to have Evian on board — and vacations at the doctor’s villa in the Caso de Campo resort in La Romana, Dominican Republic.

The sprawling resort on the country’s Caribbean coast features three golf courses, three polo fields, a 245-acre shooting range as well as a spa and private beach, according to the 2015 indictment, which noted that Menendez “often brought a guest.”

When he stood trial, Menendez produced a photograph showing his then lover Gwendolyn Beck dining with him, Melgen and Melgen’s wife — at the same time, prosecutors alleged, as the senator was telling his staff to help Melgen fly in mistresses younger than his own daughter.

And in 2010 when Menendez wanted to plan a romantic three-day getaway with one of his own, unnamed, paramours, Melgen used more than 600,000 of his American Express points to book a presidential suite for the senator at the Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome, a luxury five-star hotel in central Paris, the indictment said.

“Melgen offered and gave, and Menendez solicited and accepted things of value, including domestic and international flights, first class domestic airfare, use of a Caribbean villa, access to an exclusive Dominican resort, a stay at a luxury hotel in Paris, expensive meals, golf outings and tens of thousand of dollars in contributions to a legal defense fund,” the 2015 indictment reads.

The quid pro quo, prosecutors said, did not stop at helping girlfriends.

Menendez allegedly tried to stop US Customs and Border Protection from donating shipping container surveillance equipment to the Dominican Republic, which would have threatened Melgen’s “multi-million dollar foreign contract to provide exclusive cargo screening services in Dominican ports,” the indictment said.

Melgen also sought the senator’s help to keep his Medicare fraud running. When Melgen learned that an audit of his Medicare billing was likely to result in a multi-billion dollar overpayment finding, Menendez allegedly emailed an aide with the subject line was “Dr. Melgen.”

In the email, Menendez instructed the aide to “please call him asap at [redacted] re a Medicare problem we need to help him with,” it was alleged.

Melgen was eventually convicted in 2017 of defrauding Medicare of more than $73 million by giving elderly patients treatments that they didn’t actually need. He was sentenced to 17 years in prison, but was pardoned by President Trump after Menendez urged him to grant clemency to his old friend.

But Menendez was luckier: a federal jury in New Jersey deadlocked in 2017 on charges he took bribes. The senator was often accompanied to court by his daughter Alicia Menendez, who is now an MSNBC anchor.

And then, when the Supreme Court narrowed the grounds on which prosecutors could bring corruption charges against elected officials, the Justice Department abandoned plans for a retrial, letting Menendez walk free.

One major contrast between the new charges and the last ones are the use of his staff. In 2015 Menendez was accused of mobilizing six members of his Senate staff to secure Melgen’s lovers’ visas.

This time he was accused of cutting them out entirely as he allegedly ghost-wrote a letter on behalf of the Egyptian government to secure $300 million in aid, and tried to push to install Philip R. Sellinger as U.S. attorney for New Jersey because Menendez believed he could influence Sellinger.

This time around the embattled New Jersey Democrat kept his own senate staff in the dark when he was allegedly ghostwriting a letter for the Egyptian government to secure $300 million in aid from fellow senators and hosting meetings for a foreign intelligence agent in his Senate office, according to a federal indictment charging the senator and his wife with bribery and extortion Friday.

The Cuban-American senator denied the allegations Friday, blaming the prosecution on a political campaign that “simply cannot accept that a first-generation Latino American from humble beginnings could rise to be a US Senator.”

Even before he was a senator, Menendez was long tainted by graft claims.

During his first run for the Senate in 2006, then New Jersey Attorney General Chris Christie subpoenaed records related to a non-profit that had paid Menendez more than $300,000 to “rent” space in a house he owned in Union City in exchange, allegedly, for help to get millions in federal grants.

Menendez denied the allegations and questioned the timing of the subpoenas, calling it a political smear campaign orchestrated by his enemies. He won his election handily.

The probe ended five years later without charges. Shortly after, the new probe into his Melgen ties began.