Sen. Bob Menendez exploited an ethics loophole to collect nearly $500,000 in cash that federal agents found in jacket pockets, envelopes and safes when they raided his home last year, The Post has learned.
The embattled New Jersey Democrat, who was indicted on corruption charges last week, said Monday that he had withdrawn cash from his savings account throughout his 30-year career, first in the House and then the Senate.
Disclosure rules require senators to file an annual form listing liabilities, beneficial assets and gifts worth more than $100. But they don’t have to list the cash they hold — although they can if they want to.
That means if Menendez — as he claims — is making personal bank withdrawals and hoarding cash at home, he doesn’t have to tell voters about it, even if he could. His ethics disclosures over the years reviewed by The Post never mentioned the cash pile.
Menendez made a shocking claim on Monday that he kept large amounts of cash because his parents are Cuban.
New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez told reporters that the nearly $500,000 in cash found in a federal raid on his home was money that had been quietly withdrawn from his savings account over the past 30 years. He declined to answer questions.KEVIN C BAWAHEfederal agents found more than $480,000 in cash stuffed into envelopes, pockets and safes at Menendez’s New Jersey home. The senator claimed that it was cash he had withdrawn for 30 years from the bank.AP
“For 30 years I have withdrawn thousands of dollars in cash from my personal savings account that I have saved for emergencies and because of my family’s history of facing confiscation in Cuba,” Menendez said at a news conference in his hometown of Union City.
“Now this may seem old-fashioned, but this is money taken from my personal savings account based on my legitimately earned income over those 30 years.”
Menendez, 69, was born in New York to poor Cuban immigrants Mario and Evangelina Menendez in 1954.
The senator said his mother Evangelina (top row) and father Mario fled Cuba’s Batista regime in 1953, six years before Communist Fidel Castro seized private property. Menendez was born in New York after they arrived in the US. Senator Bob Menendez/FacebookCuba’s Fulgencio Batista was a corrupt center-right strongman who was ousted from ruling Cuba in 1959, when Communists began confiscating private property. Universal Images Group via Getty Images
He has proudly told how his parents left Cuba in 1953 – six years before Fidel Castro came to power and began confiscating private property on the Communist island – for a better life.
Among those who poked fun at his claims was fellow Democrat senator John Fetterman (PA) who tweeted: “We have extra flashlights for our house emergencies.”
Menendez’s press conference prompted a series of prominent Democrats including Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and fellow New Jersey senator Cory Booker to tell him to resign.
The unusual loophole that allows lawmakers to keep secret piles of cash has been used before, when federal authorities found $90,000 in cash in then-Democratic Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson’s refrigerator.
Although Jefferson was convicted of bribery in 2009, the House ethics committee quietly suspended an investigation into whether he had declared the cash on his disclosure form.
A judge overturned the conviction in 2017 and Jefferson was released from prison, halfway through his 13-year sentence.
Federal agents found $90,000 in cash in former Louisiana Democratic Congressman William Jefferson’s refrigerator during a raid on his home in 2005. A House ethics investigation into the cash has been kept quiet. conviction for corruption in 20017.Getty Images
In Menendez’s case, federal prosecutors said in their indictment against him that some of the cash they seized from his Englewood Cliffs home was in an envelope containing the DNA and fingerprints of his co-accused political philanthropist Fred Daibes, a New Jersey businessman.
Menendez’s defense will now have to produce 30 years of bank records to show cash withdrawals add up to more than $480,000 – the exact amount has not been disclosed – the FBI found, and prosecutors allege bribery.
“The problem for Menendez is that there are fingerprints on the envelopes, and prosecutors can check the serial numbers on the bills to see when they were issued,” said a campaign finance expert who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Prosecutors included images of how they found cash, some of it a stack of $20 bills, in the senator’s jacket. US District Court Menendez alleged that he had been withdrawing cash from his savings account and growing his hoard over 30 years. He joined the House in 1992 and is seen here in 1998. CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
“If he’s been withdrawing cash for years, there must be a paper trail from the banks involved.”
The indictment against Menendez is the second. He was indicted in a corruption scandal in 2015, but after a hung jury in his first trial, federal prosecutors in New Jersey abandoned plans for an early 2018 retrial.
Menendez’s disclosures about his assets have shown a similar pattern over the years, detailing between $100,001-$250,000 in bank deposits at Senate Federal Credit Union, and up to $50,000 deposited at M&T bank in Hoboken, NJ.
However in March 2022, he made a significant change in that pattern, declaring that his wife Nadine Arslanian Menendez had “personal property” of up to $250,000 in gold bars, which were sold in four separate transactions between April and June, 2022, according to federal filings.
Also confiscated along with the cash were gold bars. Menendez had no comment on them when he spoke on Monday. US Attorney’s Office How Pennsylvania Democrat john Fetterman, the first senator to tell Menendez to leave, piled on the pressure by mocking his claims of piles of cash.@johnFetterman/Twitter
The gold was first listed in the senator’s financial disclosure in an amended filing for 2020 — when he was married to Nadine Arslanian. The report was sent to the senate ethics office in March, 2022.
During his press release on Monday, Menendez did not comment on the gold bars, valued at more than $150,000 that federal agents seized during a raid on his home in June, 2022.
Abbe Lowell, a Washington DC attorney representing Mendez, did not return a request for comment Tuesday.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
