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Sen. Bob Menendez pleaded not guilty Monday to a fresh indictment charging him with obstruction of justice , as the embattled Democratic lawmaker’s corruption trial draws near. He entered the plea at a hearing before U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein in Manhattan. The New Jersey senator has refused demands from colleagues to stand down as a deadline looms for him to run for another term.
Federal prosecutors accuse him and his wife of receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes in gold bars, cash and a Mercedes as part of an alleged plot to help the Egyptian government and to assist three businessmen facing their own criminal investigations. The couple have denied all the charges.
But a new indictment lodged a week ago accused him in 2023 of falsely telling prosecutors that he believed mortgage and car payments made by two businessmen for his wife constituted loans, rather than bribes. Menendez continues to attend Congress but did step down temporarily from his role as chair of the Senate’s foreign relations committee.
FBI agents seized gold bars, $500,000 in cash and the Mercedes during a raid on his home when the investigation began. Menendez also was charged with helping another New Jersey business associate get a lucrative deal with the government of Egypt. He is set to go on trial on May 6. Businessmen Wael Hanna and Fred Daibes also appeared in court Monday.
Jose Uribe, the third of the Menendez associates, pleaded guilty last week to a slew of charges including obstruction for admitting he gave them the car in exchange for help with a friend who had been indicted in an unrelated matter. Uribe, 56, is said to be cooperating with prosecutors and admitted he caused his attorney to falsely admit monthly payments on the car were loans.
Last week, Menendez lost his claim that the search warrants that led to corruption charges and the discovery of gold bars and cash at his New Jersey home were unconstitutional. Judge Sidney H. Stein ruled that multiple warrants were properly carried out.
The senator’s lawyers had claimed the warrants were ‘riddled with material misrepresentation and omissions that deceived the authorizing magistrate judge.’ The judge said that any omissions in the warrants were not intentional or material and a hearing was not necessary to explore the claims further.
He also denied challenges to search warrants by one of three businessmen charged in the case that also resulted in the arrest of Menendez’s wife. The warrants were issued between January and July 2022, along with a final warrant pertaining to cellular phones last September.
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