Democrat U.S. senator and his wife indicted on bribery charges

Today federal prosecutors indicted Democrat senator Robert Menendez (New Jersey), charging him with taking bribes, including solid gold bars and over half a million dollars in cash.  The bribers were also paying his wife $10,000 per month for a no-work job. (You DID hear about this indictment, right?) 

Until today Menendez was chairman of the powerful senate Foreign Relations Committee.  After the indictment was announced, he resigned that position, but not his senate seat.

Many conservatives viewed the Menendez indictment as an attempt to distract voters from...something.  No one could recall what that something was, because there had been almost no mention of the something in the Mainstream Media, but many Americans felt this whole situation sounded oddly familiar.

A few Democrats called on Mr. Menendez to resign, but Menendez dismissed the calls, saying “I’m not going anywhere.”  He said he was confident the matter would be “successfully resolved once all of the facts are presented.”

The feds also indicted the senator's wife, who was the go-between conveying the bribes.  See, Menendez was far too smart to personally take bribes.

In June of last year investigators searched Menendez's home and found $100,000 worth of gold bars and over half a million dollars in cash "stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets and a safe."  Some of the cash-filled envelopes contained the fingerprints and DNA of the people bribing Menendez.

Investigators also found a brand new Mercedes convertible, which had been given to Menendez by a man who had two "associates" facing unspecified state charges.  The indictment says Menendez pressured a senior prosecutor to go easy in the case of the two associates.

(The New York Times article was totally vague about who the men were or what charges they faced, which is usually a sign of the fix being in, though the indictment says the senior prosecutor didn't "agree to intervene."  But how could that be verified without taking dozens of hours to comb thru the trial transcript?)

Now the sense of deja vu was becoming stronger:  Some Americans dimly recalled that some time ago a foreign agent give a brand-new $130,000 Porsche to a relative of a powerful politician, but since the Mainstream Media barely mentioned it, no one could remember who the politician was.

It was like the wealthy foreign agent was tryin' to bribe 'em.  SO odd that this Menendez thing sounds so familiar.  If only the Media had said more about the earlier case, maybe we could recall, eh?  Oh well, must not be very important or the media would say something like "The case is much like...."

The indictment says Menedez accepted over half a million dollars in cash, and another $100,000 in gold, in exchange for using his influence as a senator to benefit a foreign nation--in this case the Arab Republic of Egypt.  

Wow, powerful politician taking bribes to benefit a foreign nation--that is sounding SO oddly familiar somehow!

Unnamed Democrats defended the senator, saying lots of people keep hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash at home because they don't like to use credit cards.  And the gold bar could have been a birthday gift from the senator to his elegant wife.  They said that since none of the cash was found in envelopes saying "To senator Menendez, from your friends, for bribe," there was no proof of any wrongdoing.  

Others said it would have been perfectly legal for Egypt to have given gifts to the senator's wife.  However, a few haters like Jonathan Turley said the law doesn't permit that.  But Democrats say if Menendez didn't know that law, the government can't charge him for breaking it.

(We checked, and U.S. law on bribery of public officials explicitly states that the bribe does not have to be given directly to the politician for the crime to have occurred; being given to a family member is enough to trigger charges.)

Okay, seriously:  The charges against Menendez so closely parallel the case against biden as to defy coincidence.  But in the Menendez case we're looking at bribes totalling less than a million dollars, whereas the known wire transfers to Hunty biden's shell companies are closing in on $40 million, not including that new $130,000 Porsche.

If Menendez insists on his innocence and demands a trial, it's going to be virtually impossible to prevent Americans from seeing that biden has done exactly the same thing--which will presumably cost the Dems a few votes next year.

So here's what's going to happen:  biden's handlers have to keep this from going to trial at all costs.  So Merrick Garland's prosecutors will offer Menendez a plea deal that's so sweet he can't refuse.  That "deal" will be much like the incredibly generous one garland's lackeys offered Hunty biden: no fine, no prison time, just promise not to do it again, and maybe five years probation (to show how serious the feds regarded his crime).  They won't even demand that he resign from the senate.

But unlike the Hunty biden case, in this case voters will never learn the terms of the plea deal because the judge will "seal" them, claiming that Menendez's position as chairman of the powerful senate committee means he had access to Top Secret information, and they'll imply that this has something to do with not revealing the terms of the plea deal.

Of course that will be utter horseshit, but every Dem voter will believe it, and only a few thousand conservative voters will ever hear about it--and no one listens to them anyway, eh?  And they weren't voting for biden anyway.

Ace (of "Ace of Spades") thinks the Democrats (not the DOJ) will pressure him to resign his seat so that the Democrat governor of New Jersey can replace him--with another Democrat.  That's possible, but I don't think he'd agree.  After all, just eight years ago he was indicted for taking a million dollars in bribes.  That case went to trial in 2017, but despite solid evidence the trial ended in a hung jury.  Later a judge dismissed several charges, and the "DOJ" dismissed all the rest.  

A DO"J" spokeslackey gave no meaningful rationale for dismissing the remaining charges, merely word-salad.  Interesting.

Menendez has been re-elected since then, so he's confident that a quiet, no-penalty guilty plea in this case ("I only pled guilty to put the matter to rest without forcing the expense of a costly trial") will convince voters he was really innocent, and his senate career can continue for 20 more years.

But in any case, the Democrat Party will ensure that the case never goes to trial.  If they had to PAY Menendez to plead guilty and take the plea deal, it would be worth it to 'em.  They can't let this case go to trial--because it's virtually identical to the case against Porridgebrain.

Source.

For how a Leftist Dem-loving rag sees this case, click here.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/22/nyregion/robert-menendez-indicted.html