Defiant NJ Sen. Bob Menendez pleads not guilty to new foreign agent charge in NYC federal court
A defiant Sen. Bob Menendez pleaded not guilty Monday to a new federal charge that he acted as an agent of the Egyptian government while chairing the Senate’s powerful Foreign Relations Committee.
The New Jersey Democrat, who was asked to stand during a brief hearing in Manhattan federal court, spoke clearly and slowly when asked by Judge Sidney Stein to enter a plea to the new charge.
“Not guilty,” said the longtime lawmaker, wearing a navy blue pinstriped suit and pink tie, during the five-minute proceeding.
Menendez, 69, didn’t answer questions from reporters on his way in and out of the lower Manhattan courthouse.
The veteran Democrat is charged in a rewritten version of his bribery indictment first unsealed in September with conspiring with his wife and an Egypt-born businessman to secretly work on Cairo’s behalf between 2018 and 2022.
All members of Congress are barred from acting as agents of a foreign government.
Menendez has already pleaded not guilty to charges that he and his wife, Nadine, pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of gold bars and other bribes in exchange for a slew of alleged favors to Egyptian officials and New Jersey businessmen.
FBI agents who raided the Menendezes’ Englewood Cliffs home in June 2022 found wads of cash stuffed inside windbreaker jackets emblazoned with the senator’s name, more than $150,000 worth of gold bars, and a 2019 Mercedes C-Class that the couple allegedly bought with a down payment received as a bribe.
Menendez has vehemently denied the allegations against him, claiming that he stockpiled large sums of cash out of a habit inherited from his Cuban ancestors.
“Piling new charge upon new charge does not make the allegations true,” he said in a statement issued after the new indictment was announced on Oct. 12.
Menendez — who stepped aside from his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month — has faced growing calls to resign from his senate post.
The senator has yet to provide an explanation for why the fingerprints for one of the alleged bribers’ drivers were allegedly found on an envelope stuffed with money inside his home, or why he googled “kilo of gold price” shortly after receiving an alleged bribe in gold bars.
Among the most alarming charges that Menendez is facing is that he allegedly secretly pushed his colleagues to unfreeze $300 million in military aid earmarked for Egypt while helming his powerful committee.
The new indictment that Menendez pleaded not guilty to on Monday includes explosive new details regarding his alleged meetings with Egyptian officials during this time period.
Days after one May 2019 meeting, an Egyptian intelligence agent texted alleged middleman Wael Hana that the senator “would sit very comfortably” if he helped assuage his colleagues’ concerns about funding the Egyptian military in light of a 2015 Egyptian airstrike on a tourist group that seriously injured an American citizen.
“Consider it done,” Hana replied, according to the indictment.
Nadine Mendendez and Hana both pleaded not guilty to the new conspiracy to act as a foreign act charge at a separate hearing last week.
The senator was able to push his hearing back to Monday by citing official Senate duties that he needed to take care of.