Hugin camp: FBI fingered Menendez with underage girls

The Bob Hugin for U.S. Senate campaign today released its hardest hitting video ad against Senator Bob Menendez yet.

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New Menendez Scandal Emerging

U.S. Senator Bob Menendez has another sex and influence scandal brewing.

This time Menendez is alleged to have had an affair with Cecilia Reynolds, the married publisher of the Freehold based Spanish language newspaper, Nosotros, and to have used the power of his office in an attempt to thwart the federal investigation into his friend, Anibal Acovedo Vila, while Vila was the governor of Puerto Rico, according to a report in The New York Post.

Menendez and Reynolds traveled to Vila’s isolated beach retreat on Puerto Rico in 2007, according  NYPost, who report they are in possession of a nude photograph of Reynolds on the beach and another of the couple dressed in shorts with Menendez wrapping his arms around her waist.  The photographs and other documentation were provided to NYPost and other media outlets by an anonymous tipster who Reynolds said is a former disgruntled business partner.

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Another Escort Fingers Menendez

You probably won’t read about it in The Star Ledger or The Asbury Park Press, unless The Washington Post or The New York Times picks it up.

The Daily Caller posted another Bob Menendez pay for play story last night. A women in her 30’s, a “professional escort” who travels between Miami and Boston to service her clients told DC that Menendez and several other U.S. senators paid her for sex.

A professional escort who travels the East Coast seeing clients in cities from  Miami to Boston has identified a photo of Senator Bob Menendez as a man who paid her for sex. The  woman, in her late 30s, told The Daily Caller prior to seeing Menendez’s photo  that she had been paid to provide sexual favors to several U.S. senators,  including a New Jersey Democrat and other politicians who are no longer living.

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Menendez, she said, is “quite a hobbyist. He sees a lot of girls and doesn’t  seem to have the skills to have a relationship.”

“Hobbyists,” she explained, are men who “‘hobby’ in seeing many girls, as  many as they can,” referring to escorts who offer companionship and sexual  favors in exchange for what they euphemistically call financial “donations.”

If the allegations are true, Menenedez has set a high standard for what should happen:

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NY Times calls for Menendez’s removal as Chair of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ethics Investigation

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.

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Menendez-Melgen Relationship: It’s more than plane trips and hookers.

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.

Maybe Reid will take The New York Times more seriously.

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.

Menendez abusing the powers of his office on the behalf on campaign contributors or out of personal vengeance is not news to regular MMM readers. Over the years we’ve written about how he and other Democrats in the New Jersey congressional delegation pressured the FDA to approve a faulty medical device, how he blocked the appoinment of a federal judge whose boyfriend investigated him as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and how he used Senatorial Courtesy to end the career of a distinguished diplomat at the behest of campaign donors.

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

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Despite scandals, Menendez’s star is rising

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.

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