The Justice Department on Friday unveiled a multi-count indictment against Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, his wife, and three business associates on charges of being so comically corrupt that all jokes anywhere involving stereotypes about shady New Jersey politicians and Sopranos characters and sad middle-aged gold diggers whiling away their lives in McMansions in South Orange or wherever must now and forever vanish from the discourse. Just as soon as we get our shots in, anyway.
Because hoo boy, is there comedy gold in this 39-page indictment. Exploiting your position as a powerful United States senator to do favors for a foreign government (Egypt in this case)? Check. A businessman giving a no-show job to the senator’s wife? Check. That same businessman buying you and your wife a $60,000 Mercedes, for which he handed over the down payment to the wife in a parking lot? Check. (Was it at the Bada Bing? Please let us find out it was the parking lot of the Bada Bing.) Well over half a million dollars in cash and gold bars salted away in a safe deposit box and around your house, including stuffed in the pockets of your suits?
Check, check, and fucking check.
One of the three businessman even allegedly has ties to the Genovese crime family, because like we said, this is the most New Jersey indictment ever.
Possibly the section of this indictment that most made us LOLSOB has to do with the no-show job given to Nadine Menendez, wife of the senator and model for a mob wife in a future Lifetime Channel movie.
One of the defendants, a man named Wael Hana, had been a friend of Nadine when she met and started dating Menendez in 2018. Not long after that, Hana and Nadine arranged a meeting between Menendez and several Egyptian officials, during which the senator agreed to “use his power and authority to facilitate such sales [of military equipment] to Egypt.
In return, among other things, Hana promised Nadine Menendez a “low-or-no-show job” through his company IS EG Halal Certified, Inc. IS EG Halal’s business was to certify US food exported to Egypt as halal, or permissible under Islamic law. At the time (2018), Hana had no experience in this area, his company had no revenue, and there were several other US companies that already provided this service to Egypt.
But in 2019, Nadine complained to multiple people that Hana had yet to pay her, causing at least one of those people to get the impression that if Nadine didn’t get paid, her husband would stop doing favors for the Egyptian government. Not long after that, Egypt granted IS EG Halal a monopoly on certifying all of America’s food exports to Egypt. This gave the company a “revenue stream” through which Hana could pay Nadine Menendez, and he cut her at least three $10,000 checks starting in August of 2019.
In short, Menendez agreed to keep doing favors for Egypt’s military so long as his wife got to wet her beak or get her taste or whatever the current parlance is for taking payoffs.
Hana went on to use IS EG Halal’s money to buy the Menendezes not just the brand new Mercedes, but expensive exercise equipment and an air purifier and other items worth thousands of dollars, which he had delivered right to their house. Which was very thoughtful of him, since presumably fancy exercise machines probably wouldn’t fit in Nadine Menendez’s Mercedes if she wanted to drive over to Dick’s and pick it up herself.
Old hands around here might recall that Bob Menendez was once acquitted of corruption charges stemming from his relationship with a wealthy dentist who had provided him with flights on a private jet and getaways to resorts in Florida, the Dominican Republic, and even Paris. (Sadly for the Daily Caller, the dentist had not provided Menendez with teenaged Dominican hookers as the website initially alleged.)
Menendez beat those charges in 2018. If the timeline of the new indictment is right, he almost immediately started engaging in the schemes for which he was indicted on Friday. That is a Trumpian commitment to grifting and corruption that quite frankly impresses us. Lots of people would have looked at the close call that almost derailed their re-election campaign that year and learned a lesson.
Not Bob Menendez, though. He apparently took the acquittal as a green light to keep on criming. He’s diligent, we’ll give him that.
Anyway, congrats to Cory Booker, who by next week might very well be the senior senator from New Jersey.
[The DOJ]
Like the senator from New Jersey, Wonkette is also supported by bribes…er, donations.
Well thank you very much, Gary, I now have the long instrumental from "Layla" going through my head, imagining Bob Menendez watching out for helicopters.
8 repub senators voted to not certify the election results on Jan. 6. Before that, 7 repub senators went to Moscow on the 4th of July and returned with gift bags. Menendez is dirty and corrupt but nothing is more corrupt than treason.