The scrutiny that his relationship with Dr. Salomon Melgen was getting didn’t keep U.S. Senator Bob Menendez from using his power as an advocate for his benefactor last month.
Menendez intervened with the Department of Homeland Security in January, asking that they not provide port security equipment to the Dominican Republic. Menendez was concerned that the advanced screening equipment would undermine the efforts of Melgen’s company that has a $500 million contract with the DR for port security operations. Dominican customs officials have been trying to cancel the contract with Melgen, citing its excessive cost, over the objections of Menendez.
Melgen has been a friend and contributor of Menendez’s for over 20 years. After being caught failing to disclose flights to the Dominican Republic on Melgen’s private plane, Menendez paid Melgen $58,500 in January for two flights that occurred in 2010. Melgen’s eye care clinic was raided by the FBI in January. Media reports say the eye doctor is being investigated for $8.9 million if Medicare/Medicaid fraud and that he owes the IRS $11 million.
Menendez has also intervened with federal health care officials regarding Medicare/Medicaid billing on behalf of Melgen.
U.S. Senator Bob Menendez told The Star Ledger last night that he will not step down from his new appointment as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as the NY Times has called for him to do.
“I have no intention of doing that whatsoever because I don’t believe anything rises to the need to do so,” Menendez said tonight at a ball for D.A.R.E. New Jersey.
Menendez said he forgot to pay the $58,500 for two flights on his friend Dr. Salomon Melgen’s private jet because he was busy.
He said his intervention with the State Department on behalf of Melgen’s Dominican port security company…..he held a Senate Sub-Committee hearing for Melgen’s company…was no different than his advocacy on the port security issue domestically and abroad.
“The bottom line is I was advocating for ports to have screening just as I’ve advocated and helped pass amendments here in the United States,”
Menendez said his intervention on Melgen’s behalf with federal health care officials was a matter trying to clear up ambiguities on the governments part in how Melgen’s eye care clinic should submit bills for Medicare and Medicaid patients.
On the Medicare billing, Menendez said he was telling officials “there are ambiguities in the process by which you are telling providers what you should or should not do.”
“I would just also note that nothing of the questions that have been raised ended up being of any benefit – of any benefit – to the doctor.”
Melgen is accused of defrauding $8.9 million of government health care payments and owes the IRS $11 million.
The Senator said that the allegations that he had sex with prostitutes and teenagers at Melgen’s Dominican Republic mansion were politically motivated “smears.”
“It is no coincidence that it was being pedaled before the elections. No coincidence that it gets pedaled again as I assume the chairmanship. No coincidence that we have someone who’s never willing to meet anyone in the press or otherwise… You have to question what is the nature of the drive,” said Menendez.
Another Star Ledger article posted early this morning outlines how Melgen’s political contributions to Menendez coincided with the senator’s actions on behalf of his friend.
In a scathing editorial that did not mention the prostitution and pedophilia allegations against U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, The New York Times has called for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to remove New Jersey’s junior senator from his newly acquired post as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Senator Robert Menendez was never a distinguished choice for chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the position he ascended to this month by virtue of seniority. Concerns about that quality gap have sharply escalated amid new disclosures about Mr. Menendez’s use of his position to advance the financial interests of a friend and big donor. Instead of trying to protect Mr. Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, needs to remove his gavel, at least pending credible resolution by the Senate Ethics Committee of the swirling accusations of misconduct.
The editorial goes on the summarize how Menendez abused his power as a Senator on the behalf Dr. Salomon Melgen, his friend and benefactor. Menendez held a Senate Sub-Committee hearing, where he was the only senator present, to pressure the State Department to prevail on the Dominican Republic to enforce a contract for port security with a company that Melgen has an ownership interest in. In 2009 and 2012, Menendez contacted federal health care officials to question their rulings that Melgan had over-billed the government $8.9 million in Medicare and Medicaid payments to his Florida eye care clinic.
The editorial concludes,
It appears Mr. Menendez has learned little from his own previous ethics issues or from the fall of a former New Jersey senator, Robert Torricelli, who decided not to run for re-election in 2002 amid allegations that he had inappropriately aided a big donor and accepted expensive gifts. It is unclear whether the Senate Ethics Committee has initiated a formal inquiry into Mr. Menendez’s conduct, but a prompt and thorough review is surely called for. In the meantime, Mr. Menendez needs to relinquish his leadership role, at least temporarily.
When Robert Menendez arrived in the U.S. Senate in 2006, he was a relative pauper in a chamber often called a millionaires’ club. The New Jersey Democrat ranked 97th out of 100 senators in terms of his personal wealth, according to financial records filed that year and compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
So Menendez’s decision last month to use his personal funds to reimburse a prominent political contributor $58,500 for two flights to the Dominican Republic came at a major cost. The repayment amounts to between 32 percent and 87 percent of the assets Menendez reported holding in bank accounts and stock, according to his latest financial-disclosure form, which was filed last year.
Menendez repaid Florida eye doctor and political donor Salomon Melgen only after his free flights aboard Melgen’s plane became public and the subject of a Senate ethics complaint. A local New Jersey Republican group filed a complaint last November, alleging the senator had broken Senate rules by “repeatedly flying on a private jet to the Dominican Republic, and other locations.” Menendez reimbursed Melgen the $58,500 two months later, on Jan. 4, according to his office.
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Government watchdogs are dubious. They say Menendez’s financial situation adds fuel to questions about his motives and whether the free flights he accepted were a simple oversight.
“For a senator that’s not a Rockefeller, that’s real money,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. “It kind of makes you wonder.… If he knew in advance that the trips were going to cost him $60,000, would he have done it?”
In the years after the Jack Abramoff scandal, which involved trips abroad for politicians, McGehee said it “stretches credibility” that Menendez was unaware he was receiving a gift while boarding a private flight to a Caribbean island. “You’re about to walk on a private plane, and you’re a public official—and that doesn’t occur to you?” she said.
Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, another watchdog group, was even less charitable.
“He waited until he was caught to pay them back,” she said. “If you rob a bank—and you’re caught—you don’t say, ‘Take the money back and forget about it.’ ”
NY Times exposes Menendez using his power to steer millions to donor
In defending his friend, Senator Bob Mendendez, against the salacious charges of sleeping with underage Dominican girls for money, Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid dismissed the allegations because they originated with the conservative website, The Daily Caller.
Two years ago, Dr. Melgen, despite an apparent lack of experience in border security issues, bought an ownership interest in a company that had a long-dormant contract with the Dominican Republic to provide port security. Mr. Menendez, who is chairman of the Senate subcommittee that holds sway over the Dominican Republic, subsequently urged officials in the State and Commerce Departments to intervene so the contract would be enforced, at an estimated value of $500 million.
We’ve been little more than an annoyance to Menendez. But now that the mainstream media is putting the senator under a microscope, he could be in real trouble. Yesterday I wrote that Menendez would probably survive his recent scandal unless he was indicted or convicted. Now I’m not so sure. At the very least, his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Commitee could be at risk. There is one Democrat, Barbara Boxer of California, with more seniority than Menendez on the committee. Two Democrats, Robert Casey, Jr of Pennsylvania and Ben Cardin of Maryland have the same Senate seniority as Menendez. They must have ambitions and friendships with Harry Reid too
U.S. Senator Bob Menendez was interviewed by ABC’s Martha Raddatz yesterday on the stations weekly Sunday morning talk show, ‘This Week.’
Raddatz, who you might remember as the moderator of the vice presidential debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Congressman Paul Ryan, asked Menendez about immigration reform Benghazi, former Senator Chuck Hagel’s nomination as Secretary of Defense and whether or not Senator Frank Lautenberg should give Newark Mayor Cory Booker a spanking.
The tragic news in Connecticut knocked the latest scandal involving U. S. Senator Bob Menendez out of the news. In case you missed it, last week the news broke that an 18 year old intern in the senator’s New Jersey office was arrested on December 6 for being an illegal immigrant eligible for deportation because he is also a registered sex offender. The initial report said that the Department of Homeland Security instructed ICE not to arrest the intern before the election. DHS strongly denied that allegation.
A week after the arrest, Menendez told MSNBC, that he had just heard about the situation prior to the interview and blamed the lack of screening of the intern on the college that recommended him:
The intern story was broken by the Associated Press and well covered by the mainstream media prior to the Newtown, CT massacre.
What wasn’t covered by the mainstream media where the ethics and sex scandals that broke in late October and early November. In case you missed those, the right-wing news site, The Daily Caller, reported that Menendez accepted free travel to the Dominican Republic from a campaign contributor for a sex party that included the services of young Dominican escorts who were promised $500 to party with the senator but only received $100. The left-wing news site GAWKER followed the Daily Caller story with a report of the senator’s frequent late night antics “with different women every night” that kept his Washington DC neighbors awake.
Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House oversight subcommittee on homeland defense has launched an investigation into the delay in arresting Menendez’s intern. But no one seems to be investigating how an illegal immigrant sex offender became an intern to a U.S. Senator or Menendez’s sexploits funded by campaign contributors.
Menendez is on deck to become the Chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee should Senator John Kerry be named Secretary of State.
Menendez has a history of interfering in foreign affairs to forward his personal and political agenda . His power to do so will naturally increase if he becomes Chairman of the committee that recommends the ratification of ambassadors and treaties and influences the economics of our relationships with our allies and enemies around the world.
MMM asked two prominent New Jersey mainstream journalists why Menendez was getting a pass over the sex scandals. “No body cares,” said one of the journalists. “The story is too thin,” said the other. Now that Menendez is on the verge of having real power, hopefully the media will get a more rigorous in how they cover him.
In defending his friend, Senator Bob Mendendez, against the salacious charges of sleeping with underage Dominican girls for money, Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid dismissed the allegations because they originated with the conservative website, The Daily Caller.