Octopus Overlords

Sen. Menendez should resign. If he doesn’t, a Senate Ethics Committee investigation must go forward immediately.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Tue Sep 26, 2023 7:04 pm Senate Ethics Committee? Have they voted on whether to implement ethics yet?

Pursuant to Senate Rule 25, the committee is limited to six members, and is equally divided between Democrats and Republicans. This effectively means that either party can veto any action taken by the committee.

Federal prosecutors on Thursday announced an additional charge against New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife, alleging they conspired to have the senator act as a foreign agent of Egypt.

The superseding indictment filed against Menendez, who was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time of the alleged actions, adds a new dimension to the case by alleging a US senator was working on behalf of another country.

Menendez and his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, were indicted last month on corruption-related offenses, and are accused of accepting “hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes” in exchange for the senator’s influence.

hepcat wrote: ↑Thu Oct 12, 2023 1:42 pm Menendez, Soprano. Tomato, Tomatoh.

The New Jersey attorney general’s office has opened an inquiry into how local law enforcement handled an investigation into a fatal car crash that involved the then-future wife of U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the review.

Nadine Menendez had been dating the New Jersey Democrat for just under a year when she hit a man with her car on Dec. 12, 2018, in the town of Bogota. Richard Koop, 49, died almost instantly when he was hit while crossing the street in the dark near his home.

Menendez, then known by her maiden name Nadine Arslanian, wasn’t tested for drugs or alcohol at the scene and Bogota police quickly concluded she wasn’t at fault and allowed her to leave the scene.

The [recent] indictment said Nadine Menendez needed that new car because she had wrecked hers in an “accident.” A New Jersey businessman is accused of buying her a $60,000 Mercedes in exchange for the senator trying to influence a criminal case involving one of his employees.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) will not be attending an all-senators classified briefing on Israel on Wednesday, after some of his colleagues aired concerns that his presence would risk national security.

The former chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee faces federal charges of bribery and conspiring to act as a foreign agent for the Egyptian government.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 10:39 am Like Santos, like Gaetz, like any number of other politicians he's only been charged. There aren't any regulations that state elected officials charged with specific crimes need to do [x], with the exception of (I think) him losing a chair position while being charged.

On the one hand, it's insane. On the other, you can kind of understand why the act of charging someone with a crime shouldn't then result in complete removal from the position (even temporarily) as it's pretty clear that would be politically weaponized.

So instead, we get to treat our politicians like "special citizens" that are mostly above the law.

U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez returns to court Monday to enter an expected not guilty plea to a conspiracy charge alleging he acted as an agent of the Egyptian government when he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Menendez, 69, was scheduled to appear in the afternoon before Judge Sidney H. Stein at federal court in Manhattan.

...

Prosecutors said the senator and his wife, Nadine Menendez, accepted bribes of cash, gold bars and a luxury car over the past five years from three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for a variety of corrupt acts.

The other defendants entered not guilty charges to a superseding indictment last week. The senator was permitted to delay his arraignment so he could tend to Senate duties.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Mon Oct 23, 2023 10:03 am Can't have you rushing to court to address charges you're conspiring with other nations while you have pressing duties in the Senate - no rush; when it works for you we'll be happy to help.

malchior wrote:Right and it's hard to not think that the Democrats are missing an opportunity here. They could be highlighting that they hold their own accountable since exactly 0 GOP Senators have made a comment on it. Why? They can't because of Trump / Santos / etc. Seems like an easy way to do the right thing and make it a stand out moment.

The GOP’s partisan interest in capitalizing on Democratic failures is less powerful than the GOP’s partisan interest in fighting for corruption. Republicans have become a party that believes in blanket impunity for the powerful

Walled off and under renovation for nearly six years, the governor’s wing in New Jersey’s 231-year-old State House reopened in April after a gut rehab that was years overdue.

The Democratic governor, Philip D. Murphy, moved into a hub of elegantly appointed rooms on the first floor. His wife, Tammy Murphy, took over a maze of offices roughly as large, one flight up. Her prominent spot in the State House underscored their close partnership, a bond each has said propels their 30-year marriage and has helped to define Mr. Murphy’s two terms in Trenton.

Still, that did not stop some capitol staff members from wryly dubbing it the his-and-her suite and noting that her expansive new work space dwarfed the office she had been using before.

Now, Ms. Murphy is preparing to expand her reach even further, laying the groundwork to run for the U.S. Senate seat held by New Jersey’s embattled senior senator, Robert Menendez, next year.

...

By many measures her campaign would be even less traditional than most.

She would run as a Democrat in a blue state, but she regularly voted as a Republican until 2014, even as her husband was finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee and the ambassador to Germany appointed by President Barack Obama.

She has been a champion for improving New Jersey’s poor maternal and infant mortality rates and played key roles in both of her husband’s campaigns. But she describes herself as a homemaker on tax forms and has never held elected office.\

...

Some Democrats were quick to pan news of Ms. Murphy’s possible candidacy as a bald display of nepotism.

“I was incensed,” said Patricia Kennedy, 70, who is active in Democratic politics in Waretown, N.J., on the Jersey Shore, and said she twice voted for Mr. Murphy. “I ask myself one question: If she were not married to Phil Murphy would she be running? The answer is a resounding, ‘No.’”

...

In New Jersey primary races, it is often political leaders from the state’s densely populated northern counties who have the most say. That is because they control who gets to run on the so-called line — a ballot placement that is often tantamount to victory.

It is these party leaders whom Mr. Murphy and his wife have been courting most aggressively, according to three people familiar with the conversations who did not want to be identified saying anything that could be considered critical of the governor.

The leaders of two northern counties, Essex and Middlesex, have jobs as lobbyists with business before the state, limiting the likelihood that they might openly oppose a governor with two years left in his term — and control over the next two multibillion-dollar state budgets.

The Democratic chairman in Bergen County, the state’s most populous county, was chosen by Mr. Murphy in February for a coveted job leading the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority. And a Democratic candidate for Hudson County executive recently posted a picture with Ms. Murphy on social media.

At least four gold bars found in the FBI search of Sen. Robert Menendez’s home had been directly linked to a New Jersey businessman now accused of bribing the state's senior senator, Bergen County prosecutor records from a 2013 robbery case show.

The businessman, Fred Daibes, reported to police he was the victim of an armed robbery in 2013, and he asked police to recover the gold bars stolen from him. In the 2013 robbery, Daibes reported $500,000 in cash and 22 gold bars were stolen, Edgewater police records show. Police later caught four suspects with the stolen goods.

...

"Each gold bar has its own serial number," Daibes said to investigators in a 2014 transcript made by prosecutors and police who recovered — and returned to Daibes — the stolen valuables. "They’re all stamped…you’ll never see two stamped the same way."

A decade later, the FBI said it found four gold bars with unique serial numbers in the Clifton home of Menendez and his wife Nadine.

In the 2023 bribery indictment against the Democratic senator and Daibes, prosecutors included photos of some of the alleged bribes found in Menendez’s home, including four gold bars. The serial numbers of the four gold bars in the bribery indictment appear to be an exact match to four of the gold bars Daibes certified as stolen and returned to him in the 2013 robbery case.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) on Tuesday delivered a defiant and at times emotional speech, denying he had received lavish gifts in exchange for aiding the Qatari government and showing no signs he is prepared to resign.

The New Jersey Democrat said on the Senate floor, a week after federal prosecutors filed a second superseding indictment against him, he received “absolutely nothing” from Qatar and intensely criticized what he argued is a relentless campaign by prosecutors to get him to resign.