Menendez Hooker Says She Faked It

One of the Dominican escorts who said she was stiffed by Senator Bob Menendez now says she was paid to read a fabricated script and that in truth she has never met Menendez, according to a Washington Post report. (hat tip Star Ledger)

The woman identified a lawyer who approached her and a friend to make the videotape, according to affidavits obtained by the Post. That man has in turn identified another lawyer who gave him a script for the tape and paid him to find women to fabricate the claims, the affidavits say.

The escort was one of two women who taped videos that seems to support a tipster’s allegations that Menendez had patronized prostitutes while vacationing in the Dominican Republic.

FBI agents conducting interviews in the Dominican Republic have found no evidence to back up the tipster’s allegations, according to two people briefed on their work.

Daily Caller, the site that first broke the Menendez prostitution story has yet to report on this latest development.  Breitbart, the site that now employs the reporter who broke the story, posted a wire service piece on the escort’s latest claims.

UPDATE March 5, 8:35 am. Daily Caller Stands By Menendez Hooker Story. Washington Post Confused.

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Menendez says he won’t step down as Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair

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.

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Menendez Sex and Ethics Scandal Widens

Daily Caller says FBI is investigating NJ Senator for exploiting underage Dominican prostitutes, ABC News covering up scandal

Senator Bob Menendez should be kicking back and celebrating his accomplishments this weekend.  He took over the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee just in time to preside over Hillary Clinton’s high profile testimony regarding the September 11 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya and he scored a 51% approval rating among New Jersey voters in a Quinnipiac poll this week.

But the stories about Menendez’s inappropriate foreign relations in the Dominican Republic just won’t go away.

Early this morning Daily Caller, the conservative website that last October broke the story about Menendez stiffing Dominican prostitutes, posted a story reporting that the FBI opened an investigation into the Senator for victimising underage Domincan girls, in exchange for money, last August.

DC links to documents indicating that ABC News Senior Investigative Producer Rhoda Schwartz was on to Menendez’s exploits last May and that Citizens for Responsibilty and Ethics in Washington (CREW) was alerted to Menendez’s foreign pay to play last April.

New Jersey’s mainstream media has ignored the story because it is considered “thin,” according to one reporter and becauses “nobody cares and we’re too busy” according to another.

USNews reported in November that the story “wouldn’t stick”, in part, because it involved a Democrat.

“You would see a little more digging if he were a Republican. It is the slightest of the factors, but it is still a factor,”

State Senator Sam Thompson, in his capacity as chairman of the Middlesex GOP, wrote to the Senate Ethics Committee in November asking that they investigate Menendez.  So far, there has been no investigation reported.

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