Menendez Pleads not Guilty to Latest Charge Accusing Him of Acting as Foreign Agent

In that first indictment, prosecutors said the senator and his wife accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and payments, as well as gold and a Mercedes-Benz, in exchange for him using his office to help three businesspeople and the Egyptian government. Menendez, his wife and the three businesspeople pleaded not guilty to the original charges.

The indictment drew swift condemnation from New Jersey’s top Democrats, and over half the Senate called for his resignation. But Menendez has refused to step down, only giving up his position as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Then prosecutors unveiled a superseding indictment about two weeks ago alleging Menendez, his wife and one of the businesspeople charged in September, Wael Hana, acted as unregistered foreign agents.

The indictment said that Menendez, as Senate Foreign Relations chair, “promised to take and took a series of acts on behalf of Egypt, including on behalf of Egyptian military and intelligence officials.” The charging document also said Nadine Menendez and Wael Hana “communicated requests and directives from Egyptian officials” to the senator.

In May 2019, for example, the three met with an unnamed Egyptian intelligence official and discussed an American citizen who’d been injured in a 2015 airstrike by the Egyptian military, according to the indictment. A week later, the Egyptian official told Hana that if Menendez helped resolve the matter, he’s “sit very comfortably.” Hana told the official to “consider it done.” The official then sent a statement from the American citizen’s attorney, which Hana sent to Nadine Menendez. She then forwarded it to her husband, according to the indictment.

She had arranged another meeting between Bob Menendez and the Egyptian official in 2020 about a Nile River dam regarded as one of the most important policy issues for Egypt, according to the indictment. Menendez wrote a letter to top administration officials urging them “to significantly increase the State Department’s engagement on negotiations surrounding the [dam],” the indictment said.