Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Getty
Embattled Sen. Bob Menendez cashed in on pro-Egypt actions in more ways than one, campaign finance filings and the latest indictments in his federal corruption case indicate.
The updated criminal complaint prosecutors filed last week describes a meeting between the New Jersey Democrat and several alleged co-conspirators—including his wife, Nadine Arslanian—on May 21, 2019 held with a member of Cairo’s military intelligence agency. This was one in a string of in-person and electronic interactions which the Justice Department presented as evidence that the then-chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his accused accomplices served as operatives for the Egyptian government in exchange for bribes.
But in this particular engagement, the feds allege Menendez, his associates, and his Egyptian contact discussed the opposition the Trump administration’s $1 billion sale of Apache military helicopters to the Middle East nation faced from some members of Congress, including then-Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT). At the core of their objections was the authoritarian regime’s use of these same model choppers four years earlier to attack a tour group it mistook for militants, an assault that left several dead and one American citizen injured.