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The senior senator from New Jersey and former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was an illegal unregistered operative for the Egyptian government, an updated criminal complaint alleges.
The document, which prosecutors filed in Manhattan federal court Thursday morning, accuses Sen. Bob Menendez of acting not just on behalf of the businessmen who they say bribed him, but of the regime in Cairo itself. The superseding indictment marks a dramatic escalation of the severity of the corruption charges filed against Menendez, his wife,Nadine Arslanian, and three accomplices last month—and to which they have all pleaded not guilty.
Menendez, the Justice Department alleges, not only violated the Foreign Agent Registration Act by facilitating the flow of aid and information to the regime in exchange for bribes that ranged from cash to furniture to gold bars, but broke the Senate rules barring members from working for overseas interests. And like the initial iteration of the complaint, the new one uses Menendez’s own words—namely, letters he penned in 2020 urging the feds to investigate former GOP Rep. David Rivera for FARA-related crimes.