U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey and his wife have been indicted on charges of bribery.
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00:00 Today I'm announcing that my office has obtained a three-count indictment
00:03 charging Senator Robert Menendez, his wife Nadine Menendez, and three New Jersey businessmen,
00:10 while Hanna, Jose Uribe, and Fred Dabies for bribery offenses. The investigation that led
00:16 to these charges has been run out of the Southern District of New York. The indictment alleges that
00:22 between 2018 and 2022, Senator Menendez, the senior U.S. Senator from New Jersey and the chairman of
00:30 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and his wife Nadine Menendez engaged in a corrupt relationship
00:37 with Hanna, Uribe, and Dabies. The indictment alleges that through that relationship,
00:43 the Senator and his wife accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes in exchange for
00:49 Senator Menendez using his power and influence to protect and to enrich those businessmen and to
00:56 benefit the government of Egypt. The indictment alleges that Hanna, Uribe, and Dabies provided
01:01 bribes in the form of cash, gold, home mortgage payments, a low show or no show job for Nadine
01:09 Menendez, a Mercedes Benz, and other things of value to the Senator and his wife. First,
01:17 the indictment alleges that Senator Menendez used his power and influence, including his leadership
01:22 role on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to benefit the government of Egypt in various ways.
01:27 Among other actions, Senator Menendez allegedly provided sensitive, non-public U.S. government
01:34 information to Egyptian officials and otherwise took steps to secretly aid the government of Egypt.
01:42 We also allege that Senator Menendez improperly pressured a senior official at the U.S. Department
01:48 of Agriculture to protect a lucrative monopoly that the government of Egypt had awarded to Hanna,
01:53 a lucrative monopoly that Hanna then used to fund certain bribe payments.
01:58 Second, the indictment alleges that Senator Menendez used his power and influence to try to
02:05 disrupt a criminal investigation and prosecution undertaken by the New Jersey Attorney General's
02:11 office related to an associate and a relative of Uribe. Third, the indictment alleges that
02:18 Senator Menendez used his power and influence to try to disrupt a federal prosecution of
02:24 Dabies in the District of New Jersey in two ways. First, by seeking to install a United States
02:32 attorney who he thought could be influenced with respect to Dabies. And second, by trying to
02:38 influence that office to act favorably in Dabies' case. And as we allege in the indictment, the
02:44 senator agreed to do these things and use his power in this way because Hanna was paying bribes,
02:50 because Uribe was paying bribes, and because Dabies was paying bribes. Fortunately, the public
02:57 officials the senator sought to influence did not bend to the pressure. That's a good thing.
03:04 Now as part of this investigation, special agents with the FBI executed search warrants on the
03:09 residence and safe deposit box of Senator Menendez and Nadine Menendez in New Jersey.
03:14 When they got there, they discovered approximately $500,000 of cash stuffed into envelopes and
03:21 closets. Some of the cash was stuffed in the senator's jacket pockets. Some of the cash,
03:28 some of the envelopes of cash contained Dabies' fingerprints, Dabies' DNA. That's not all.
03:34 Agents also discovered a lot of gold, gold that was provided by Dabies and Hanna. And the FBI,
03:42 of course, found the Mercedes-Benz that Uribe had provided them. First, my office remains
03:48 firmly committed to rooting out public corruption without fear or favor and without any regard to
03:54 partisan politics. That's in our DNA. Always has been, always will be. And second, this investigation
04:02 is very much ongoing. We are not done.