US Senator Bob Menendez charged with acting as unregistered agent of
Egypt
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[October 13, 2023]
By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) -Prosecutors pursuing a corruption case against U.S. Senator
Bob Menendez on Thursday brought a new criminal charge against him that
he conspired to act as a foreign agent for the Egyptian government.
The new charge was included in a revised indictment filed against the
New Jersey Democrat in federal court in New York that includes four
counts against Menendez. His trial on corruption charges will begin in
May.
Prosecutors have said that Menendez and his wife, Nadine Menendez,
accepted gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for
using their influence to interfere with law enforcement investigations
of three New Jersey businessmen as well as aid the Egyptian government.
Egypt's embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request
for comment on Thursday about the new charge.
The senator has resisted calls for his resignation. He pleaded not
guilty to the prior charges against him as have his co-defendants, his
wife Nadine and businessmen Wael Hana, Jose Uribe and Fred Daibes.
The new indictment accuses Menendez, until recently the chair of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of taking actions from 2018 to 2022
on behalf of Egyptian military and intelligence officials without
registering with the U.S. Department of Justice as a foreign agent.
In a statement, Menendez said he had only ever been loyal to the United
States and that the new charge "flies in the face of my long record of
standing up for human rights and democracy in Egypt, and in challenging
leaders of that country."
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U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) speaks to reporters while on his
way to a vote following a Senate Democratic caucus meeting on
Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., September 28, 2023. REUTERS/Craig
Hudson/File Photo
"Piling new charge upon new charge does not make the allegations
true," Menendez said. "It is an attempt to wear someone down and I
will not succumb to this tactic."
Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, individuals must register
with the department if they act as "an agent of a foreign
principle."
Prosecutors have said that co-defendant Hana arranged meetings
between the senator and Egyptian officials, who pressed him to sign
off on military aid. In return, the businessman put Nadine Menendez
on the payroll of a company he controlled.
The new indictment said both Hana and Nadine Menendez communicated
requests and directives from Egyptian officials to the senator.
"The new allegation that Wael Hana was part of a plot concocted over
dinner to enlist Senator Menendez as an agent of the Egyptian
government is as absurd as it is false," Hana's lawyer, Lawrence
Lustberg, said in a statement.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston and Kanishka Singh and Susan
Heavey in Washington; Editing by Mark Porter, Lisa Shumaker and
Grant McCool)
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