Embattled Sen. Bob Menendez is facing the perfect legal and political dilemma — parting ways with the top lawyer who defended him against corruption charges, facing speculation that one of his co-accused’s closest allies could indict him to federal prosecutors, and watching his polls plummet.
The New Jersey Democrat has quietly parted ways with her longtime lawyer Abbe Lowell – who was previously acquitted of corruption charges – and instead signed on with Washington-based lawyer Robert Luskin.
Ironically for a defendant fighting charges that he accepted bribes in gold bars, Luskin himself was once paid in gold bars by another client — earning him the nickname “Gold Bar Bob,” just like the senator’s name.
Menendez, 69, who has been in the political arena for half a century and has been a member of the US Senate since 2006, is now facing low poll numbers with 70 percent of Garden State voters saying he should resign.
The Democrat’s latest troubles began in June 2022, when federal agents raided his home in Englewood Cliffs, NJ and found gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash stuffed into Menendez’s jacket pocket.
Sen. Robert Menendez is facing a low-key election storm and his super lawyer’s withdrawal from his federal corruption case is seen here months before his impeachment with wife Nadine at a state dinner at the White House earlier this year. REUTERS US Attorney’s Office
Menendez, his second wife Nadine Arslanian, and three associates — one of them a developer named Fred Daibes — were indicted in October on charges of bribery and conspiracy to act as foreign agents for Egypt. All five of them denied all the charges.
Now The Post can reveal that one of Daibes’ former business partners, who is also a Menendez donor, has been cooperating with Manhattan prosecutors since February 2022, four months before the raid.
Gazmend Lita, an Albanian-American who quietly cut a plea deal that month, agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in an undisclosed investigation while pleading guilty to one count of being part of an illegal gambling ring, according to court documents.
Gazmend Lita, who is now a federal criminal cooperating with Manhattan federal prosecutors, once posed for pictures with Pres. Joe Biden before his time in the White House. The condition of the picture posted by Lita’s brother is unknown. Korab Lita/Facebook
In return he got 3 years of probation and agreed to forfeit more than $111,000 for his crimes, according to federal court records — compared to the 5 years he could have faced.
But Lita — who once posed for pictures with Pres. Joe Biden long before his time in the White House — was closely associated with Daibes, who in turn was accused of bribing Menendez.
The 53-year-old Albanian-American owns Le Jardin restaurant in Edgewater with Daibes, while Lita Bros. His Construction has offices in the same Edgewater corporate building that houses Daibes’ own construction firm.
Fred Daibes, accused of bribing Menendez with gold bars, is a prominent Palestinian-American developer in Edgewater, NJ, who had business with Lita. Daibes denies all charges in the Menendez case. Chris Marksbury/Special to NorthJersey.com
He also lives in an apartment in a luxury riverfront residential tower, The Alexander, developed by Daibes.
And Lita is also a member of the board of directors of the Indian branch of IS EG Halal, a halal certification company at the center of the Menendez allegations.
The New Jersey-based firm was run by Egyptian-American Wael Hana, who was also charged in the Menendez bribery case. He also denied all the charges.
Prosecutors allege Hana was introduced by Arslanian to Menendez in 2020, before the couple married.
Litas lives in The Alexander, one of Daibes’ developments in Edgewater. His construction firm is in the Daibes building. And he is a member of the board of directors of Halal company Wael Hana India branch, Google Maps
Wael’s company, which also runs out of Daibes’ Edgewater office building, is operated with financial support from Daibes, according to court records.
Lita has her own relationship with Menendez. He and family members have donated $11,000 to Menendez’s Senate campaign.
And Lita lobbied the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2019 — when Menendez was the ranking Democrat — on behalf of Albanian prosecutors who had been barred from entering the US, according to Open Secrets.
A New Jersey attorney for Lita did not respond to The Post’s request for comment Thursday.
For his part, Menendez has close ties to the Albanian-American community, with one newspaper calling him “America’s Voice of Reason and Justice” for his commitment to urging Serbia to recognize the independence of Kosovo, its former southern province with ethnic Albanians. ethnic majority.
Wael Hana, who heads IS EG Halal and has also been indicted in a corruption scandal, had dinner with Menendez and Nadine Arslanian in 2018. New York Post
Menendez and Arslanian attended an event sponsored by the Albanian American Civic League which has lobbied Menendez during his tenure as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He resigned after the first federal indictment charging him with corruption in September.
However, he has rejected demands from his Democratic Senate counterparts and some of New Jersey’s most powerful party members, including Governor Phil Murphy, to resign entirely. Murphy’s wife, Tammy, has announced she will run against Menendez in the 2024 Democratic primary for his seat.
In October, a Fairleigh Dickinson University poll found that 80 percent of Republicans support the senator stepping down, along with 71 percent of Democrats and 67 percent of independent voters. Only 16 percent said he should remain in office. Menendez has said he will not resign.
He now faces political and legal battles without Lowell, the bare-chested Washington power attorney who also represents Hunter Biden, by his side.
Menendez had split with Abbe Lowell, who helped secure his previous corruption conviction. The attorney declined to comment to The Post. Getty Images
On Nov. 16, two attorneys working for a Chicago-based law firm including Lowell withdrew from Menendez’s case, court documents said.
No explanation was given for Lowell’s withdrawal. Lowell did not respond to The Post’s request for comment this week, and Luskin declined to comment Wednesday.
But Lowell guided Menendez’s defense when he was tried in Newark federal court in 2017 on charges of conspiracy, bribery, honest services fraud and false statements in connection with alleged payments from Medicare fraudsters. That ended with a hung jury and prosecutors chose not to try him again.
Now Luskin will represent him when he next appears in federal court in Manhattan. His wife has her own legal team.
Robert Luskin, Menendez’s new lawyer, earned the nickname “Gold Bar Bob” after he accepted $500,000 in gold bars from a client convicted of money laundering for a Colombian drug cartel. CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images
Luskin, 73, was himself once paid in 45 gold bars by a precious metals dealer convicted of money laundering for Colombian drug cartels.
The Harvard graduate earned the nickname “Gold Bar Bob” after receiving $500,000 in legal fees while appealing the 1993 conviction of Stephen Saccoccia, a Rhode Island precious metals dealer who laundered hundreds of millions of dollars for Colombian drug cartels in the 1980s.
Saccoccia was sentenced to 660 years in prison, while in 1998 Luskin agreed to forfeit $245,000 in fees to settle the case brought against him by federal prosecutors.
“While I was settling with the government, without any admission of liability or wrongdoing, my colleagues opposed the government’s efforts and the US Court of Appeals twice ruled that the government had no right to forfeit these assets,” Luskin told The Post last week.
Robert Luskin, Menendez’s new lawyer, represented disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong during his doping trial. Reuters
Luskin, who owns homes in Washington DC and Martha’s Vineyards, also represented Lance Armstrong in the disgraced cyclist’s doping case as well as a number of White House insiders from both sides.
They include Pres. George W. Bush’s poll guru Karl Rove, and Mark Middleton, former aide to Pres. Bill Clinton with relationship with billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Middleton committed suicide at her home in Arkansas last year
In addition to Luskin, Menendez will also be represented by Adam Fee and Avi Weitzman, who represented then-New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in the independent investigation into the Bridgegate affair.
The 2013-14 political scandal saw political appointees Chris Christie conspire to create traffic jams in Fort Lee, NJ by closing lanes on the George Washington Bridge.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
