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U.S. Senator Robert Menendez has been charged with conspiring to act as a foreign agent on behalf of the Egyptian government, raising the stakes of a criminal case accusing the former chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee of taking bribes to benefit Cairo.
In a superseding indictment filed Thursday, federal prosecutors accused Menendez, a Democrat, of “providing sensitive U.S. government information and taking other covert steps to aid the Egyptian government.”
Court documents show the New Jersey senator, his wife Nadine and an Egyptian-American businessman allegedly conspired between 2018 and 2022 to have Menendez serve as a foreign agent for a Middle Eastern country that was the U.S. One of the largest recipients of military aid.
The country “often faces resistance” to receiving more military funding or sales because of lawmakers’ concerns about human rights and democracy, the indictment said. But the document said that as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Menendez “has significant influence over Egypt’s foreign arms sales and foreign military financing.”
Prosecutors say he exercised that influence on several occasions, including one when he “secretly edited and ghostwritten” a letter on behalf of Egypt asking other senators to lift their hold on $300 million in aid. An unnamed Egyptian official requested help drafting the letter, which Nadine Menendez forwarded to the senator, the indictment said.
The latest charges expand on an indictment filed last month that alleged a “corrupt relationship” between the couple and three New Jersey businessmen involving gifts of cash, gold bars, mortgages and a Mercedes-Benz convertible.
That has put pressure on the senator, who has given up his post as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee but has so far resisted growing calls from Democratic lawmakers to resign.
John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania who was one of the first lawmakers to call for Menendez’s resignation, called on the Senate on Thursday to vote to expel him. “There can be no so-called foreign agents in the United States Senate,” Fetterman said in a statement. “This is not a close call.” Expelling a sitting senator requires a two-thirds majority.
The accusations cast a pall over a high-profile Democratic member who served on Capitol Hill for decades and served six terms in the House before being appointed to the Senate in 2006.
A representative for Menendez did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The senator denied the allegations in the original indictment, accusing “behind-the-scenes forces” of “repeatedly trying to silence my voice and dig my political grave” and promote an “aggressive smear campaign.”
He also accused prosecutors of misrepresenting “the normal work of a congressional office” and “attacking” his wife “who had a long-standing friendship before I met her.”
According to the original indictment, Menendez allegedly pressured an Agriculture Department official to protect a monopoly related to Egypt’s halal food export certification granted to a co-defendant.
Prosecutors also said the senator used his influence to obstruct a criminal investigation and prosecution by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office of a co-defendant’s associates.
The initial indictment included photos showing some of the alleged bribe proceeds that were discovered during a raid on Menendez’s home and safe last summer. The indictment states that authorities found more than $480,000 in cash in a box belonging to Menendez’s wife, “much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets and safes,” as well as a bank account belonging to Menendez. More than $70,000 in cash was found in Si’s wife’s box.
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