US Senator Menendez receives honorary citizenship and church honor in Cyprus Paphos recognizes contributions while Church awards gold medal for justice advocacy 23 AUGUST 2023 The City of Paphos announced on Monday that it will bestow the title of Honorary Citizen upon US Senator Robert Menendez in a special ceremony scheduled for Friday. The event, taking place at the Paphos Municipal Hall, will recognize Senator Menendez's exceptional contributions. The ceremony is set to commence at 6:00 p.m. on August 25th and will be preceded by a visit from Senator Menendez to the ongoing construction facilities of the American University in the city. The Mayor of Paphos and the University's Rector will accompany the US Senator during this visit. Senator Menendez is also lauded for shaping and endorsing a vision of peaceful coexistence, cooperation, and security in the Eastern Mediterranean, based on international law. His commitment to supporting the vulnerable and championing justice is highlighted, especially during critical global moments. This award ceremony will take place on Thursday, August 24, at 19:00, in the Archbishopric in Nicosia, where the Archbishop of Cyprus, Georgios, will award Senator Menendez with the Gold Medal of Apostle Varnavas, the highest honor for the Church of Cyprus, the Archbishopric said in a press release.
Senator Bob Menendez, his 'consultant' wife and kilos of gold: The Egyptian bribery claim that's hit US congress By Emilie Gramenz in Washington DC Posted 8 hours ago Nadine and Bob Menendez are accused of taking cash, gold and other bribes.(Reuters: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades) By the time FBI agents showed up at the New Jersey home of Bob Menendez last year, the US senator and his wife had allegedly been taking bribes for years. According to court documents unsealed in New York overnight, the agents found hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of evidence to back their suspicions. The documents accuse Senator Menendez and his wife Nadine of accepting the bribes in exchange for, among other things, providing sensitive information to benefit the Egyptian government. The 69-year-old, who chairs the Senate's foreign relations committee, is also accused of using his position to try to "protect and enrich" a trio of Egyptian-American businessmen – Wael Hana, Jose Uribe and Fred Daibes. "The FBI found many of the fruits of this bribery scheme, including cash, gold, [a] luxury convertible, and home furnishings," the US Attorney's Office for New York's Southern District said today. During the June 2022 search, more than $US480,000 ($745,000) in cash was found stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets and a safe in the home, and another $US70,000 cash in Nadine Menendez's safe deposit box. Some of the envelopes were found inside jackets emblazoned with Senator Menendez's name, hanging in his cupboard, and others had the fingerprints or DNA of Mr Daibes. There was more than $US100,000 worth of gold bars in the house. The gold bars were allegedly gifted by two of the businessmen.(Supplied: US Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York) FBI agents also found home furnishings and a luxury car parked in the garage – all allegedly provided by the three New Jersey businessmen who have also now been charged. Mr and Ms Menendez are each charged with three criminal counts: conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud and conspiracy to commit extortion. In a statement, Senator Menendez said prosecutors had mischaracterised routine legislative work. "The excesses of these prosecutors is apparent," he said. "The facts are not as presented." A lawyer for Nadine Menendez said she also denied any wrongdoing. A trade in sensitive state information Four years earlier, the powerful Democrat senator allegedly hosted a group in his Washington office. According to federal prosecutors, this was no ordinary meeting. The sweeping corruption indictment alleges Egyptian military officials and Mr Hana were present. The businessman was a friend of Nadine Menendez. She was then Nadine Arslanian, and she had just started dating the senator. The charging documents say she and Mr Hana arranged the meeting. It included discussions about foreign military financing to Egypt. It did not include staff from Senator Menendez's office or the foreign relations committee. Over $480,000 in cash — much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing — was allegedly found at the couple's home.(Supplied: US Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York) Two months later, the senator and his girlfriend allegedly met with Mr Hana again. According to prosecutors, that same day the senator asked the US State Department for some information. It wasn't classified but was highly sensitive due to security concerns. He wanted to know the number and nationality of people serving at the US embassy in Egypt's capital, Cairo. The next day, Senator Menendez allegedly texted the information to Ms Arslanian, who then forwarded it on to Mr Hana, who sent it to an Egyptian government official. The same month, after dinner at a high-end restaurant with Senator Menendez, Mr Hana allegedly texted another Egyptian official with some more "non-public information". This time, it was that a ban on sending small arms and ammunition to Egypt had been lifted. "That means sales can begin. That will include sniper rifles among other articles," said one of the texts. The players Bob Menendez, the senior US senator from New Jersey, is a lawyer who was elected to the seat in 2006. He is perhaps best known in Australia as a prominent supporter of the AUKUS military alliance between Australia, the US and the UK. He and Nadine Menendez married in October 2020. He had proposed with a performance of a song from The Greatest Showman outside the Taj Mahal while the couple were holidaying in India. According to prosecutors, she was unemployed before she met Senator Menendez in a pancake restaurant and began dating him in February 2018. For years beforehand, she'd been friends with the businessman Wael Hana, who operated a halal certification company. US senator Bob Menendez has previously been charged with bribery.(Reuters: Joshua Roberts) Jose Uribe, a business associate of Mr Hana's, worked in trucking and insurance after previously being convicted of fraud and having his insurance broker's licence revoked. He's accused of giving Ms Menendez a Mercedes-Benz convertible, in exchange for her husband's efforts to influence a criminal insurance fraud investigation targeting one of Mr Uribe's associates. Ms Menendez later allegedly texted her husband: Congratulations mon amour de la vie, we are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes. The fifth defendant, Fred Daibes, is a real estate developer and long-time fundraiser for Senator Menendez. Prosecutors say Senator Menendez agreed to try to influence a pending federal prosecution of Mr Daibes, including by recommending the US president nominate a candidate for US attorney that Senator Menendez believed could be influenced. The 'corrupt agreement' Prosecutors allege Nadine Arslanian and Wael Hana worked for years to introduce Egyptian military and intelligence officials to the senator, in order to establish "a corrupt agreement". It meant receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of bribes in exchange for "acts and breaches of duty" to benefit the government of Egypt and Mr Hana himself, and others. The first alleged bribe was a 2018 promise to put Ms Arslanian on the payroll of Mr Hana's company in a "low- or no-show" job. In exchange, the couple allegedly promised Senator Menendez would use his authority to facilitate military sales and financing to Egypt. Damian Williams, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, outlined the indictment at a New York press conference.(Reuters: Shannon Stapleton) The alleged meeting in Senator Menendez's Senate office occurred a few months later. Around the same time, Ms Arslanian allegedly passed on a request from an Egyptian official. The official wanted Senator Menendez's help to draft and edit a letter lobbying US senators to support American aid to Egypt. According to the charges, Senator Menendez "secretly edited and ghost-wrote the requested letter … seeking to convince other US senators to release a hold on $US300 million in aid to Egypt". He then sent it to his girlfriend from his personal email account, and then deleted it. A meat monopoly pushes up prices The following year, Mr Hana's company was granted an exclusive monopoly on the certification of US food exports to Eygpt. That's despite neither Mr Hana nor his company having any experience with halal certification, and the company making "little to no revenue" between 2018 and early 2019, according to the indictment. "The monopoly … advanced the scheme by, among other things, providing a revenue stream from which Wael Hanna could make good on the bribe payments he had promised," the indictment said. "The monopoly also resulted in increased costs for various US meat suppliers and others." After the Department of Agriculture raised concerns about the monopoly with the Egyptian government, Senator Menendez allegedly called a high-level official to insist the department drop its opposition. Nadine and Bob Menendez both deny wrongdoing.(AP: Jacquelyn Martin) Around the same time, prosecutors allege Nadine Arslanian formed a business consultancy used to receive bribe payments. She later texted a relative: "Every time I'm in a middle person for a deal (sic) I am asking to get paid and this is my consulting company." A long list of bribery claims In 39 pages of allegations lodged in court, several other meetings between Senator Menendez and Egyptian officials are outlined. They include one in 2020 about negotiations between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan over a dam Ethiopia was building on the Nile River – an important foreign policy issue for Cairo. It's alleged Senator Menendez then wrote to secretaries of treasury and state, urging the State Department to get more involved in the issue. The charging documents also detail a range of benefits the couple allegedly received, including a $US23,000 payment to keep Ms Arslanian's mortgage current when her bank was threatening to foreclose on her property. This Mercedes-Benz C-300 converitble was allegedly given to the couple.(Supplied: US Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York) Prosecutors allege gold bars, cash and furniture were given to the couple in exchange for Senator Menendez's attempts to influence the pending federal prosecution of Fred Daibes. Senator Menendez allegedly went as far as meeting a candidate for the position of the US Attorney for the New Jersey and raising Mr Daibes's case. When the candidate later indicated they might have to recuse themself from the case, Senator Menendez allegedly said he'd recommend someone else for the position. But the senator says prosecutors have "misrepresented the normal work of a congressional office". "On top of that, not content with making false claims against me, they have attacked my wife for the longstanding friendships she had before she and I even met," he said. 'Forces behind the scenes' Senator Menendez said he was the victim of a smear campaign run by people unable to accept that a first-generation Latino-American could rise from humble beginnings to the Senate. "For years, forces behind the scenes have repeatedly attempted to silence my voice and dig my political grave," Senator Menendez said. Envelopes of cash were found in jackets emblazoned with Senator Menendez's name, hanging in his cupboard.(Supplied: US Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York) In 2015, Senator Menendez was indicted on bribery charges in New Jersey, relating to an alleged scheme with a wealthy eye doctor. A corruption trial ended in a mistrial in 2017, with the jury unable to reach a verdict. A lawyer for Nadine Menendez said she would "vigorously defend" against the allegations in court. A spokesman for Wael Hana said: "We are still reviewing the charges but based upon our initial review, they have absolutely no merit." Senator Menendez has temporarily stepped down from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The Senate Majority Leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, said he had a right to due process and a fair trial. All five of the defendants are due in court in Manhattan next week.
Amazing how much influence and good morals and good judgement can be derived from reading the 'Word of God'.
Menendez gets biblical “I was listening to the prayer and he talked about may God give us enough challenges that we learn to lean on him and ultimately find our way through him,” the senator said. | AP Photo By Matt Friedman 02/05/2018 https://www.politico.com/states/new-jersey/story/2018/02/05/menendez-gets-biblical-235784 HACKENSACK — Sen. Bob Menendez’s first name is Robert. But on Monday, he suggested in a biblical reference that it might as well be David after having fought federal corruption charges and come out on top. “I can personally tell you that ... sometimes God puts a Goliath in your path to find a David within you,” Menendez said at a reelection kickoff rally for Bergen County Executive Jim Tedesco. “I was listening to the prayer and he talked about may God give us enough challenges that we learn to lean on him and ultimately find our way through him,” the senator said, referring to a message from the invocation by the Rev. Greg Jackson. Menendez, a Democrat and New Jersey’s senior senator, learned last week that the Department of Justice would not retry him and his co-defendant, Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen, on the 13 charges filed against them in 2015, even though the department had announced less than two weeks earlier that it would. The decision means Menendez will run for reelection this year without the prospect of a retrial hanging over him. After a two-and-a-half-month trial last year, a jury deadlocked, with 10 of 12 jurors favoring acquittal. During and after the trial, Menendez, a Roman Catholic not previously known for his public professions of faith, talked a lot about God. Interdenominational clergy frequently visited the Newark courtroom during his trial, often holding prayer circles in the hallway. When Judge William Walls at one point hinted he might toss many of the charges, Menendez sang “Amazing Grace” in the courthouse elevator. “I’m a firm believer in God, and to have all of those leaders of different faiths together at that moment, and to bring for me what I feel is the holy spirit at that moment was a blessing,” Menendez told reporters about two months into the trial. Prosecutors, frustrated with Menendez’s prayers in the courthouse, suggested it might influence jurors during a retrial and asked Walls to allow jurors in through a back entrance so they wouldn’t be exposed to the clergy. That led to a public protest from a progressive clergy group that supports Menendez — a gathering clergy members insisted was not organized by the senator. Menendez said Monday he’s always been religious. “I have always walked by faith. Sometimes you are challenged in a public way about it. But it’s always been the case,” he said as he left the Tedesco event. Menendez got a loud round of applause at the packed room in Bergen County Democratic headquarters, where the party chairman, Lou Stellato, called him a “warrior.” “I’m really a lover, not a warrior,” Menendez said. Menendez spokesman Steve Sandberg said in an email that the senator attends church regularly “whether he’s in New Jersey, [Washington, D.C.] or even when he’s traveling abroad.” “He certainly tries his best to go each day. Has for quite some time,” Sandberg said. “It’s that important to him.”
Amazing how many people who call themselves christian and believe in 'Gods Word' are so fucked up in the head, jeesus christ!
Menendez’s Bribery Trial Puts Scrutiny on His Motives and His Marriage Senator Robert Menendez is charged with steering aid to Egypt and meddling in criminal inquiries in return for gold, cash and a fancy car. His wife is charged too. Prosecutors have depicted Senator Robert Menendez and his wife, Nadine Menendez, as collaborators who took bribes in exchange for the senator’s willingness to steer weapons and aid to Egypt and meddle in criminal investigations involving allies.Credit...Jefferson Siegel for The New York Times By Tracey Tully and Benjamin Weiser May 12, 2024 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/12/nyregion/robert-nadine-menendez-corruption-trial.html It had been a busy Thursday for Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey. He was in Washington presiding over the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as it heard testimony about the need for sustained aid to Ukraine, and then preparing to travel to Philadelphia with his wife, Nadine Menendez, to accept an award from an Armenian-American organization. Back at home, the F.B.I. was watching. An agent, conducting surveillance near the couple’s modest, split-level house in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., snapped a photo of a Mercedes-Benz convertible parked out front, a court filing shows. Several weeks later, investigators searching the home would find 13 bars of gold bullion and more than $480,000 in cash, much of it stashed in coat jackets, boots and a safe. On Monday, almost two years to the day after that agent was watching the senator’s house, Mr. Menendez, a Democrat, is to go on trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan, charged with taking part in an elaborate, yearslong bribery scheme. It will be his second corruption trial in seven years, but unlike the first, which ended in a hung jury, there is a volatile and surprising new element: charges against Mr. Menendez’s wife. The case, prosecutors have indicated, is as much about Ms. Menendez as it is about her husband. The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York has depicted Mr. Menendez and his wife as collaborators who took bribes in exchange for the senator’s willingness to steer weapons and government aid to Egypt, prop up a friend’s halal meat monopoly and meddle in criminal investigations involving allies. “What else can the love of my life do for you?” Ms. Menendez asked at a Washington steakhouse dinner during one of the many meetings that prosecutors say she arranged between her husband and Egyptian officials. Together, prosecutors contend, the couple were entangled in corrupt schemes that began even before their marriage in October 2020. The bribes, which also included a diamond ring and home furnishings, helped Mr. and Ms. Menendez live above their lawful means, prosecutors say. But that partnership may now be fracturing, as the senator’s lawyers appear to be preparing a defense that pins much of the blame on his wife. Who Are Key Players in the Menendez Case? Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and his wife, Nadine Menendez, are accused of taking part in a wide-ranging, international bribery scheme that lasted five years. Take a closer look at central figures related to the case. Separate Trials Nadine Menendez will be tried separately. Her case was postponed until July after her lawyers said she had a medical condition that would require surgery and a potentially prolonged recovery.Credit...Yuki Iwamura/Associated Press Ms. Menendez was to have been on trial with her husband this week, but a judge postponed her trial until July after her lawyers said she had a “serious medical condition” that required surgery and a potentially prolonged period of recovery. Although she will not be at the defense table, she is expected to loom uncomfortably over the proceedings. By the government’s telling, Ms. Menendez, 57, was an essential cog in a wheel of corruption. She served as a conduit for bribes and as a go-between who relayed messages in emails and texts, sometimes using what she and her husband called her “007” phone. The senator’s lawyers have said in legal papers that Mr. Menendez may, if he testifies, say he was duped by the woman he married less than four years ago, that she “withheld information” and that she “led him to believe that nothing unlawful was taking place.” Such a tactic presents challenges, given the couple’s public persona as loyal partners who traveled and attended events together, said Tatiana R. Martins, a former chief of the Southern District’s public corruption unit who is now in private practice. Ms. Martins said the senator’s lawyers might argue that his wife “did this all on her own; he had no idea; she kept it from him,” but prosecutors could seek to rebut that by introducing evidence of how close the two were and how they shared everything. “They have this great relationship, yet she’s keeping all this from him?” Ms. Martins said. As for Ms. Menendez, even if her husband’s strategy is to try to shift blame, such testimony would almost certainly be inadmissible at her trial, said Jonathan Kravis, a defense lawyer in Washington and former trial attorney with the Justice Department’s public integrity section. The postponement of Ms. Menendez’s trial will also give her and her lawyers a preview of the full scope of the government’s case and enable them to make strategic adjustments as needed, he said. “This is obviously not how the government wants to do it,” Mr. Kravis said. But, he added, the separate trials were “not a death blow, for either case, by any means.” ‘A persecution’ Federal prosecutors said they found cash hidden inside jackets at the home of Senator Robert Menendez.Credit...U.S. Attorney's Office/EPA-EFE, via Shutterstock Mr. Menendez will be tried alongside two New Jersey businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, who were also charged in the bribery conspiracy. All three have pleaded not guilty, as has Ms. Menendez. Mr. Menendez, who is near the end of his third full term, has consistently maintained his innocence and has left open the possibility of running for re-election in November. On the Senate floor in January, he attacked the Southern District prosecutors, saying they were engaged “not in a prosecution but a persecution” and were seeking “victory, not justice.” The charges, disclosed in a September indictment, shook Washington and prompted even Mr. Menendez’s most stalwart Democratic allies to call for his resignation. The brazen nature of the charges has also fueled a backlash against so-called machine politics in New Jersey, which has, in turn, significantly increased the challenges his son, Representative Robert Menendez, faces as he seeks a second House term. The trial is expected to delve into issues of political intrigue at home and abroad at a moment of heightened scrutiny over legislative self-dealing. Two weeks ago, Representative Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas, and his wife were charged with taking bribes from companies controlled by the government of Azerbaijan, intensifying interest in the role played by foreign agents. Mr. Menendez’s lawyers have argued in court that by charging the senator, who has represented New Jersey in Congress since 1993, prosecutors are seeking to criminalize routine legislative actions. In one filing, the lawyers said “the government’s apparent zeal to ‘get back’ at Senator Menendez for defeating its prior prosecution has overwhelmed its sound judgment.” The senator’s lawyers have also asked the judge, Sidney H. Stein, to allow them to present the jury with the testimony of a psychiatrist, Karen B. Rosenbaum, who has examined the senator. She has concluded, they said, that “fear of scarcity” stemming from Mr. Menendez’s father’s death by suicide and his parents’ history as Cuban refugees led to a “longstanding coping mechanism of routinely withdrawing and storing cash in his home” — a theory that defense lawyers will presumably use to explain the money seized by investigators. In summarizing the psychiatrist’s findings, the senator’s lawyers also disclosed that Mr. Menendez’s father, a compulsive gambler, died after Mr. Menendez stopped paying off his gambling debts, contributing to what they called “intergenerational trauma.” Federal prosecutors oppose allowing Dr. Rosenbaum’s testimony, questioning the scientific basis for her conclusions and arguing that the defense is trying to “engender sympathy” from the jury improperly. Gin and cigars hopscotched around the world with congressional delegations, attended state dinners at the White House and entertained often. In one legal filing, prosecutors noted Mr. Menendez’s preference for “luxury items such as Bombay Sapphire gin, cigars and upscale meals.” The detail prompted a tart response from the senator’s lawyers, who noted that Bombay sells for $23.99 at Target. “Hardly a top-shelf liquor, nothing about Bombay Sapphire gin smells of excess or is beyond Senator Menendez’s financial abilities as a lifetime public servant,” they wrote. Judge Stein ruled this month that he would permit the introduction of the evidence, saying it was “inextricably intertwined with the evidence of the charged crimes.” The indictment is filled with references to money, and to its absence. Ms. Menendez, who divorced her first husband in 2005, was unemployed when she began dating Mr. Menendez in early 2018. Ten months later, she was involved in a fatal pedestrian motor vehicle accident that left her without a car, a need that prosecutors say led to one of the first bribes, the Mercedes-Benz convertible. admitted in court in March that he had given Ms. Menendez the $60,000 convertible in return for the senator’s help in trying to disrupt an insurance fraud investigation in New Jersey. “I knew that giving a car in return for influencing a United States senator to stop a criminal investigation was wrong, and I deeply regret my actions,” Mr. Uribe told Judge Stein. When Ms. Menendez nearly lost her home to foreclosure in 2019, Mr. Hana used his halal meat certification company to pay $23,569 to erase her mortgage debt and he and Mr. Uribe continued to “facilitate the payments,” prosecutors say. Ms. Menendez and her first husband bought the house, built in 1960, when their two children were young. The plan was to tear it down and rebuild, according to two former close friends. Instead, over time, the small house with faded white paint began to appear run-down and out of place in a neighborhood of knockdowns replaced by mansions with three-car garages and conspicuous stone facades. After the senator moved in, in 2020, messages relayed on cellphones seized by investigators and included in court filings showed Ms. Menendez beckoning handymen to the house to trim trees, lay carpet, deliver a power washer and repair the garage door. In an interview with the F.B.I., one person said he had given Ms. Menendez a lawn mower, but when the senator learned of it, “he became angry” and told her that “she had to pay.” But by 2022, after the couple’s house was searched, they were working together to try to cover their tracks, prosecutors said. Mr. Menendez wrote his wife a check for the amount Mr. Hana had paid toward the mortgage, adding a handwritten memo indicating it was “to liquidate loan,” prosecutors said. She then reimbursed Mr. Hana, through his lawyer, noting it was “full payment of Wael Hana loan,” according to the indictment. The Menendezes also refunded the car payments. The money, prosecutors said, was not a loan, but a bribe payment — “as Menendez and Nadine Menendez well knew.” In March, prosecutors announced a new charge against the Menendezes: obstruction of justice.
Ex-New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez sentenced to 11 years in prison for bribery conviction By LARRY NEUMEISTER and MICHAEL R. SISAK January 30, 2025 https://apnews.com/article/bob-mene...rsey-bribery-fc8720f8b74fd431b40b1f7b4dcd5ac7 NEW YORK (AP) — Former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez was sentenced Wednesday to 11 years in prison for accepting bribes of gold and cash and acting as an agent of Egypt -- crimes his own lawyer said earned him the nickname “Gold Bar Bob.” U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein in Manhattan announced the sentence after Menendez tearfully addressed the judge, saying he’d lost everything he cared about, except for his family. “You were successful, powerful, you stood at the apex of our political system,” the judge said. ”Somewhere along the way, and I don’t know when it was, you lost your way and working for the public good became working for your good.” Menendez’s actions, the judge said, feed the cynicism of voters. “What’s been the result?” he said, noting a lengthy investigation of a five-year crime. “You lost your senate seat. You lost your chairmanship and you lost your good name.” Prosecutors had requested a 15-year prison term for the Democrat who was convicted of multiple charges including acting as an agent for Egypt for selling his once-considerable clout in Washington for bribes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
OK, we get your point. Mr. Menendez was all talk no rock when it came to his "religion". That's what made me severely attracted to Jesus Christ when I first read Matthew, Mark, Luke & John. He cut down the religious hypocrites lording it up over what was left of Judah with a tongue like a sharp two edged sword! You are much closer to the person of Jesus than you realize, but you keep confusing the weak followers of the fake church for the Son of God!