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Officials Detail Bribery Charges Against Dem Sen. Robert Menendez. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired September 22, 2023 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[11:02:02]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: A symbolic and strategic strike, Ukraine hits what might be Russia's most important naval base.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: And the UAW is expanding its strike today against, here's the interesting bit, two of the three Big Three automakers. Progress is now said to be happening in negotiations with Ford. What does this all mean for this drawn out fight?

BERMAN: And we're standing by for a news conference laying out, the federal indictment against Democratic Senator Bob Menendez. The charges involved bribery, stacks of cash, and get this, gold bars. I'm John Berman with Kate Bolduan. CNN News Central starts now.

All right, this is the breaking news. Any minute we will hear from federal prosecutors who just moments ago issued an indictment for New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez on bribery charges. You can see the live pictures right there. The news conference begins in any minute.

BOLDUAN: We're going to learn a lot more. But what we know so far is there's a lot already, Menendez, his wife, they have been accused of accepting bribes from three businessmen. The indictment details those bribes coming in the forms of cash, mortgage payments, a luxury vehicle, and as John has pointed out, gold bars.

And there are images of this throughout the indictment. And here's another thing to remember, this is the second time in the past decade that Bob Menendez has faced corruption related charges. Evan Perez, Lauren Fox, Elliott Williams all standing by who follow us -- follow along with us once we hear from this press conference. But Evan, what are you learning about this? What are you seeing in this indictment?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is some pretty stunning allegations by prosecutors. We're going to hear a lot more from the U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in just a few minutes. But as you guys laid out, these charges began according to prosecutors back in 2018. I should note 2018 is also the day -- the year that Bob Menendez emerge from the last time he was indicted. A jury ended up with a hung -- with a mistrial in that case and the charges were dismissed. The Justice Department chose not to retry Bob Menendez. And this one, according to prosecutors, he began having these interactions. Back in 2018, him and his wife and these three New Jersey businessmen, according to prosecutors, Menendez received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes. He got cash, he got gold bars, which you saw in these pictures of which are shown in the indictment that he had home mortgage payments, a luxury vehicle.

This was all some stuff that was found when the FBI did a 2022 search of Menendez home as well as a safety deposit box. They found $480,000 in the home. Some of it was stuffed in jackets, you see depicted right there with the senator's name. They also found $70,000 in a safety deposit box. According to prosecutors, there's a lot of things that Menendez was doing for this money among which he was pressuring a Department of Agriculture official to help one of these businessmen who had an exclusive contract to provide Halal certified -- Halal products to Egypt.

[11:05:37]

They also say that he was passing along information to Egyptian government officials, including related to the effort for Egyptian officials to get millions of dollars in military aid that is provided by the United States. Again, Menendez is a powerful person in the U.S. Senate. He's a chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

According to prosecutors, what he was doing was parlaying and using that power in the Senate to benefit the government of Egypt, which wanted information over the types of aid that they were going to be able to get given the fact that there's a number of human rights concerns in Egypt. I'll read you just a one part of this, though, that really sticks out guys. One part that prosecutors are alleging here, they say that Menendez provided non-public information, including details about the number of Americans and other local staff at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo stuff that according to prosecutors, the Egyptian intelligence agencies and government officials in Egypt wanted from him.

So again, we're going to hear a lot more from Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney and the FBI there momentarily there at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan.

BERMAN: Evan standby for a moment. Again, we are waiting for this news conference to begin at any minute. We could get new details about this already pretty remarkable indictment. I want to quickly go to Capitol Hill. CNN's Lauren Fox is there. And Lauren, what I want to hear from you is explain how important Senator Bob Menendez is, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at a time when the U.S. is deeply committed to aiding Ukraine and its efforts against Russia.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, they are usually tasked with meeting with foreign dignitaries, when they come to the Capitol, obviously they have a ton of insight and communication with foreign governments about what the U.S.'s role in perhaps helping various military operations around the world. All of that is what kind of information that Bob Menendez would have been privy to. And I just want to point out that under Senate rules, he is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But if he is indicted, which is what has happened here, he does have to step aside in that position.

And back in 2014, when he was indicted on corruption charges then, he did move aside on the Committee. He was not the chairman then he was the ranking member. But Ben Cardin, who was the next in line was the one to step up and be sort of an intermediary Democratic leader on that committee while Menendez was in during his trial.

So that is sort of what has played out over the last 10 years when this had happened before expect that someone else would likely step up. I have reached out to Senator Cardin's office to find out if it will indeed be Senator Cardin again who takes the gavel while this all plays out. But a very important role that Bob Menendez had here on Capitol Hill.

And we also talked to one Democratic senator, lawmakers are back home for the weekend. But our colleague, Morgan Rimmer, caught up with Tammy Baldwin, and asked her, you know, what do you think about the fact that your colleague is now indicted? She said, these are very serious accusation. She wants to wait and learn more. But obviously Democrats have a lot of questions about their colleagues, the position he held, and what it means about any other information given the facts of this indictment.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. All right, Lauren is going to be listening into this as well. And while we're waiting for this press conference to begin, Elliott, I mean, this is a 39-page indictment. What on its face, what do you see here?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It's as Evan said, it's stunning in the number of allegations that are put forward. And I think, look, big picture. The challenge for prosecutors here will be to establish that what Senator Menendez engaged in was not the typical chumminess and favors that are common in Washington and actually represented the exchange of things of value for taking official action.

Now, a lot of it just doesn't look good for the Senator. So case in point, we've talked already about the bars of gold, about the stacks of cash being held in a personal closet and so on, but also even text messages, a series of them that are laid out in details such as one from Senator Menendez's wife. Anytime you need anything you have my number and we will make everything happen.

[11:10:11]

Now those words on their face aren't unlawful, but they're suspicious at best, and when laid out over dozens of pages of allegations, that's the best way to put it, it just does not look great for the senator. And I'm really quite curious to see what the U.S. attorney says when he lays out, perhaps even further information about this.

BERMAN: And I do expect that a lot of the language he will use will be to explain why this gets passed, Elliot, what is now a very high bar to convict on public corruption charges because of decisions the Supreme Court has made in throwing out a conviction about former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell. They have to be official acts that you commit here. And in your quick scanning of this indictment, Elliot, this idea of official acts, I mean, yes, we see gold bars and wads of cash, literally wads of cash in Bob Menendez's jacket, but what do you see where the U.S. Attorney here is trying to get above that high bar to convict for public corruption?

E. WILLIAMS: OK. There's a number, number one, there's at least one instance, I have rose really quickly right before we went on, so we're still digesting but where he's having conversations outside of the presence of his staff with officials that are linked to or in the Republic of Egypt, that's one. You know, there was questions about the appointment of the U.S. attorney in New Jersey, which is an official act of a senator. Senators weigh in on appointments and so on. So I believe we might be starting, oh, no, I'm sorry.

BOLDUAN: No. But one thing you can see, Elliot, as you continue that what they did is they came in and they turned around the, you know, poster board, if you will, to show some of the evidence that is depicted in the indictment. That is a jacket that says Senator Menendez with cash, literally, cash was in the pocket is what they allege. And these are the gold bars that they allege were given as a bribe to the senator and his wife. I mean, that's, I don't know, there's something about the gold bar thing that is just so out there, Elliot.

E. WILLIAMS: It's not, look, it's not unlawful to possess blocks of gold. And frankly, it's not unlawful, as the Senator is alleged to have done in the indictment to Google how much money is a block of gold worth? That said, it is inherently suspicious, I don't have any blocks and gold on me right now. And I would assume most Americans do not. And these are the kinds of facts that when presented to a jury at least raised suspicions. Even the use of high amounts of cash for transaction, cash that I will note is noted in the indictment has fingerprints and DNA for some of the other defendants on them.

Again, not itself per se evidence of a crime. But it just when mounted together, bates a picture of a senator that is alleged to have used his influence in order to engage in official acts.

BERMAN: Elliot, standby for a second, if you will. And Evan Perez, as we've been saying, you know, convictions against public officials for public corruption is hard, you know, who knows that, Bob Menendez, because charges were brought against Senator Menendez before, this is back in 2017, there was a mistrial, a hung jury there, and ultimately, a federal judge threw out some of the rest of the charges there. But the actions which he's charged for now all allegedly took place after the last time he was in a federal courtroom, correct?

PEREZ: Right. Exactly. That's one of the things that certainly sticks out to me is that having gone through that, which, you know, he has certainly described as being a very, very challenging and difficult time for him personally. That right about then 2018 is when this alleged corruption in this case begins, according to prosecutors. And look, one of the frustrations that you hear from voters and that you hear certainly during the campaigns is that there's a lot of corruption people believe is happening in Washington, and that it's not really done, that there is not much done about it. And part of the issue for the Justice Department and one of the struggles for the Justice Department has been trying to nail some of these politicians who do things that are sometimes right on the border, right on the line.

And certainly the protection that John Robertson, the Supreme Court have now given to a lot of political acts, right. They've made it very difficult for the Justice Department to go after some of these cases and, look, what is alleged here, and one of the things that I got to tell you, I'm reading this and I have to go through it again. You know, I think prosecutors are going to have a bit of a time trying to explain the official acts because again, that's the standard right, they have to show that there were official acts that were being done in exchange for these hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes.

[11:15:05]

And you can see what the Senator is doing, you know. He's having these meetings. He's discussing aid to Egypt. And so the question is, you know, does Bob Menendez, you know, talking to the State Department about the military aid to Egypt, does that constitute the official act? You know, again, a jury will have to decide that. But these are very, very serious charges. And there's a lot of information as Elliot pointed out. I mean, they went so far as to dust the fingerprints of the cash to find the DNA and fingerprints of the alleged defendants who are providing some of this money to the senator and his wife, guys.

BOLDUAN: Yes. And Lauren --

E. WILLIAMS: If I can --

BOLDUAN: Go ahead Elliot. No, you go ahead.

E. WILLIAMS: No, I was going to, you know, I was going to make one point about the fingerprints, we in the world of television shows like CSI and NCIS, and so on, get really wrapped up in seeing whether fingerprints or DNA are on something. And it's not often you don't get prints, you don't get usable prints, you don't get usable DNA off of evidence. What that does, though, is it establishes sort of a chain of custody from one person to another.

And it is clear when you do find prints on something that maybe not ironclad evidence of guilt, but it did transfer hands, likely from that first person alleged to the defendant.

BOLDUAN: It's a good point. Lauren, we're just trying -- I was trying to remind myself when it came to Bob Menendez is where he was in his term. He's up in '24, right. I mean, he won reelection after he beat the after he had the -- there was a mistrial, there was a hung jury and mistrial after his first round of corruption charges, and now he's up in '24. FOX: Yes. I mean, there's obviously political implications to the fact that you are indicted as a sitting U.S. senator. I want to read you something though, Kate. We are just getting a new statement from the spokeswoman for Jim Risch. Jim Risch is the top Republican who serves alongside Bob Menendez on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She's tells me quote, Democratic leadership of the Committee is the responsibility of Democratic leadership in the Senate.

There's a precedent on these types of issues in their conference, Senator Risch hopes to hear from the Democratic leader as soon as possible on what's next. So the Committee's important work can go on uninterrupted because as we said, this is a really important job in the Senate being an chairman of any committee is obviously very important and essential to the work of the Senate.

But being the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at a time where we just had President Zelenskyy on Capitol Hill yesterday asking for more funding for Ukraine, you can see why that is such an important position, such a timely position. So the spokeswoman for Jim Risch saying here, it's going to be very important to have a seamless transition, and very quickly so that we can move on with the work of the Committee.

BOLDUAN: And Lauren to that point, John, you were in the middle of an interview with Chrissy Houlahan, when we had that shot inside, the cameras shooting inside so we could see inside the meeting with senators. And as they were all walking out, Lauren, I'm sure you saw this as well, as you saw Bob Menendez standing with President Zelenskyy shaking hands and talking. I mean, this shows how important not -- every senator is, but especially the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the responsibilities upon that person as well.

BERMAN: It also Lauren shows that he's been doing his work right up until this point. I mean, he had to have known that this indictment was coming, yet, he still let himself yesterday be front and center very publicly, when Zelenskyy was there. Yes, actually, let's go to New York for this news conference.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're not going to take any questions today. We'll start in about a minute. OK. Thanks.

BERMAN: All right, we got one minute left here. Elliot, counselor, since we have you with us, what specifically are you going to look for here? Yes, we have the indictment. But what more detail could these prosecutors, including the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District provide?

E. WILLIAMS: For better or for worse, prosecutors are pretty tight lipped when it comes to these press conferences. As you notice, they said they're not going to be taking any questions. So really, I mean, I think we ought to just unpack the indictment. I have a hard time believing they're going to provide any more information here. You know, perhaps they could lean into the nexus, and this is what we've been talking about here. The nexus between the official acts as alleged and sort of, you know, statements that were made or promises that were made by Senator Menendez.

We should also note, it's not just the bribery, there's an extortion charge in here as well, which involves, at least by the statute, the use in effect of threats, not -- the use of threats to gain things of value from others. So on top of all of this merely the sort of the influence peddling being a portion of it there's also --

[11:20:02]

BOLDUAN: And here we go Elliot, let's all listen in. This is the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

DAMIAN WILLIAMS, U.S. ATTORNEY, SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NY: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming. My name is Damian Williams and I'm the United States Attorney here in the Southern District of New York.

Today, I'm announcing that my office has obtained a three count indictment charging Senator Robert Menendez, his wife, Nadine Menendez, and three New Jersey businessmen, Wael Hana, Jose Uribe and Fred Daibes for bribery offenses. The investigation that led to these charges has been run out of the Southern District of New York.

The indictment alleges that between 2018 and 2022, Senator Menendez, the senior U.S. senator from New Jersey, and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and his wife, Nadine Menendez, engaged in a corrupt relationship with Hana, Uribe and Daibes. The indictment alleges that through that relationship, the senator and his wife accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes in exchange for Senator Menendez using his power and influence, to protect and to enrich those businessmen and to benefit the government of Egypt.

The indictment alleges that Hana, Uribe and Daibes provided bribes in the form of cash, gold, home mortgage payments, a low show or no show job for Nadine Menendez, a Mercedes Benz and other things have value to the senator and his wife. Now, constituent service as part of any legislator's job, Senator Menendez is no different. And as we explained in the indictment, there are things that Senator Menendez says he can do for his constituents and things that he says he cannot do for his constituents. He put it all on his Senate website.

So for instance, it says he cannot compel an agency to act in someone's favor. It says he cannot influence matters involving a private business. It says he cannot get involved in criminal matters, or cases, period. But we allege that behind the scenes, Senator Menendez was doing those things for certain people, the people who were bribing him and his wife. And let me say a little bit more about the conduct that's alleged in the indictment. The indictment alleges that Senator Menendez took several actions as part of this corrupt relationship.

First, the indictment alleges that Senator Menendez use his power and influence including his leadership role on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to benefit the government of Egypt in various ways. Among other actions, Senator Menendez allegedly provided sensitive, non-public U.S. government information to Egyptian officials, and otherwise took steps to secretly aid the government of Egypt. We also alleged that Senator Menendez improperly pressured a senior official at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to protect a lucrative monopoly that the government of Egypt had awarded to Hana, a lucrative monopoly that Hana then used to fund certain bribe payments.

Second, the indictment alleges that Senator Menendez uses power and influence to try to disrupt a criminal investigation and prosecution undertaken by the New Jersey Attorney General's Office related to an associate and a relative of Uribe.

Third, the indictment alleges that Senator Menendez use his power and influence to try to disrupt a federal prosecution of Daibes in the district of New Jersey in two ways. First, by seeking to install a United States Attorney who he thought could be influenced with respect to Daibes. And second, by trying to influence that office to act favorably in Daibes case.

And as we alleged in the indictment, the senator agreed to do these things and use his power in this way, because Hana was paying bribes, because Uribe was paying bribes, and because Daibes was paying bribes.

Fortunately, the public officials the senator sought to influence did not bend to the pressure. That's a good thing. That was part of this investigation. Special agents with the FBI executed search warrants on the residence and safe deposit box of Senator Menendez and Nadine Menendez in New Jersey.

When they got there, they discovered approximately $500,000 of cash stuffed into envelopes and closets. Some of the cash was stuffed in the senators jacket pockets. Some of the cash, some of the envelopes of cash contain Daibes fingerprints and Daibes DNA. That's not all. Agents also discovered a lot of gold. Gold that was provided by Daibes and Hana. And the FBI of course, found the Mercedes Benz that Uribe had provided them.

[11:25:02]

Now the items that the FBI uncovered are discussed in the indictment which I encourage all of you to read carefully. Let's take a look at just some of the items.

So as you can see here, this is the Mercedes Benz that we allege that Uribe provided as part of the scheme. What you see here are three kilograms of gold, these three kilograms together are worth approximately $150,000. And of course, here you can see just a fraction of the cash that was uncovered as part of the scheme.

Now I want to make a couple of things very clear. First, my office remains firmly committed to rooting out public corruption, without fear or favor and without any regard to partisan politics, that's in our DNA. Always has been, always will be.

And second, this investigation is very much ongoing. We are not done. And I want to encourage anyone with information to come forward and to come forward quickly. And they can do that by reaching out to the FBI's tip line at 1-800-CALLFBI. Now a case of this magnitude requires tremendous partnership. And I want to thank our partners at the FBI who have been with us since day one, and have been absolutely incredible every step along the way. I also want to thank our partners at the IRS for their assistance in this investigation.

I want to thank our colleagues from around the Department of Justice who are far too many to name here and to think specifically, but they've also been invaluable. And of course, I want to thank the career prosecutors from my office who are handling this investigation. They have done tremendous work.

Eli Mark, Laura Pomerantz, Dan Richenthal, Paul Monteleone, and their supervisors, Rebekah Donaleski and Maurene Comey, the chiefs of our Offices Public Corruption Unit.

I now want to invite up to the podium FBI Assistant Director in Charge, James Smith. Jim?

JAMES SMITH, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR IN CHARGE, FBI NEW YORK: Good morning. So I'm not going to go any further into the case, as the U.S. Attorney, Damian Williams explained. But what I want to talk about more or less is, hey, the FBI is public corruption, excuse me, the FBI investigating public corruption is one of our top priorities. And we will continue to investigate public corruption cases.

I want to thank the agents, the team over here from the FBI, the IRS, for their hard work into this investigation. They've spent many hours and days and weeks and months working on this investigation. I would also like to thank all the prosecutors from the Southern District of New York. I like to thank Damian Williams for his support in this particular case. I'd like to thank the IRS for all their investigators who work tirelessly, along with the team here to investigate this case.

Then I would also finally like to thank, excuse me, DOJ's Public Integrity section. So thank you very much for all your support in this.

D. WILLIAMS: All right, thank you, everyone.

BERMAN: All right. You were just listening to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams lay out the three count indictment against Democratic Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey and his wife, Nadine. He accused Menendez of using his power and influence to benefit the government of Egypt providing sensitive non- public information to public officials.

You know, he said he used his job to try to influence some of the Department of Agriculture to protect a monopoly for a businessman there.

BOLDUAN: The time period here is also, this that he said between 2018 and 2022. This is a long time period when this is going on. And really just after the last, his last go around with law could have been put aside when his last -- the last charges that Menendez was facing ended with a hung jury in his last case. They listed out conduct that Menendez took several actions to use his power, influence and leadership in order to pull this off all with the motivation of being, he was getting paid by these men, these three businessmen that he said they were benefiting.

Let's talk more about this. Elliot Williams. Talk to me about your reaction to this. Specifically, I'm really interested in we're talking about a sitting U.S. senator who is the chair of the Senate Foreign Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and you're talking about you just heard a U.S. attorney say that he was working to benefit the government of Egypt.

[11:30:07]

D. WILLIAMS: Not good. And more.