A federal grand jury has filed a second superseding indictment against Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., following previous allegations of accepting bribes.
The new allegations say Menendez made positive statements about Qatar to help a New Jersey developer get a multimillion-dollar investment from a company tied to the country. The developer cited in the indictment is Fred Daibes, who has also been charged in the case.
During the time of the discussions in late 2021 into 2022 for the investment in the deal, Menendez allegedly made a number of statements supportive of Qatar.
“Menendez provided Daibes with these statements so that Daibes could share them with the Qatari Investor and a Qatari government official associated with the Qatari Investment Company,” the indictment says.
Prosecutors allege that Daibes exchanged text messages with Menendez about the alleged scheme. In September 2021, Daibes sent Menendez, via an encrypted app, photos taken from Daibes' computer of luxury watches valued from $9,990 to $23,990 and asked Menendez “how about one of those,” according to prosecutors.
Adam Fee, a lawyer for Menendez, said the new allegations "stink of desperation." He said prosecutors assembled a string of baseless assumptions and bizarre conjectures based on routine, lawful contacts between a Senator and his constituents or foreign officials. They are turning this into a persecution, not a prosecution."
Menendez and Daibes have both pleaded not guilty in the case. Prosecutors alleged in an indictment in September that Menendez and his wife used his influence to pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, including “cash, gold bars, payments toward a home mortgage, compensation for a low-or-no-show job, a luxury vehicle and other items of value.”
The new indictment indicates that federal prosecutors reviewed web searches by Menendez after he returned in October 2021 from a trip to Qatar, where, they allege, Menendez searched “how much is one kilo of gold worth.”
It was Menendez who introduced Daibes to the unnamed Qatari investor, who is a member of the Qatari royal family, according to the indictment.
The Qatari company struck a deal to invest with Daibes after a May 2022 meeting with him and Menendez, and Daibes gave Menendez "at least one gold bar" afterwards, the indictment said.
By 2023, the “Qatari Investment Company entered into a joint venture with a company” controlled by Daibes and “invested tens of millions of dollars into the project,” the indictment said. Menendez, meanwhile, “continued to receive things of value from the Qatari Investment Company,” including tickets to the 2023 Formula One Grand Prix in Miami.
The indictment noted a search warrant of Menendez's home in 2022 turned up "two one-kilogram gold bars and nine one-ounce gold bars that had serial number indicating they had previously been possessed" by Daibes.
The new allegations in the superseding indictment are wrapped into the existing charges against Menendez, including conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud and conspiracy for a public official to act as a foreign agent. The original indictment charged Menendez, then the chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of taking “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in payoffs in return for the use of his influence to enrich Daibes and two other New Jersey businessmen and to benefit the Egyptian government.
A superseding indictment in October alleged Menendez “provided sensitive U.S. Government information and took other steps that secretly aided the Government of Egypt."
Menendez has denied those allegations, saying at the time that they fly “in the face of my long record of standing up for human rights and democracy in Egypt and in challenging leaders of that country."
Fee said Tuesday that his client "acted entirely appropriately with respect to Qatar, Egypt, and the many other countries he routinely interacts with. Those interactions were always based on his professional judgment as to the best interests of the United States."
Menendez temporarily stepped down as Foreign Relations chair after he was charged but is still on the committee. More than two dozen Senate Democrats, including fellow New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, have called on Menendez to resign from Congress.
CORRECTION (Jan. 2, 2024, 6:46 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the estimated amount of the alleged investment described by prosecutors. It was millions of dollars, not billions.
