Menendez’s relationship with Melgen and allegations that the senator accepted free travel and other favors in exchange for undue influence remain the subject of a federal grand jury investigation.
A Breitbart reporter caught up with U.S. Senator Bob Menendez at Newark Penn Station last night. She asked him where he spent Easter last year and if he traveled on Dr. Salomon Melgen’s private jet over the holiday.
Menendez dodged the question. “Basically, the people who have all said that have all filed affidavits saying they lied.”
Three Dominican women have signed affidavits saying that they were paid to lie about having sex with Menendez in exchange for money. No one has alleged that those women piloted Melgen’s plane
A federal grand jury in Miami is investigating Menendez’s relationship with Melgen. Melgen, who contributed $700,000 to Menendez’s campaign coffers is under investigation for Medicare fraud. Menendez intervened with Medicare officials. He also put pressure on the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to help Melgen’s Dominican port security company collect on a $500 million contract with the Dominican government.
As a United States Senator, Menendez is required to disclose and get Ethics Committee approval for expensive gifts like travel on a private jet. Prompted by NJ State Senator Sam Thompson’s ethics complaint, Menendez admitted in January of this year that he had traveled twice on Melgen’s jet in 2010. He then reimbursed Melgen $58,500 for those flights.
But Thompson’s complaint included an allegation that Menendez flew to the Dominican Republic on Melgen’s jet on Sunday April 8, 2012. Menendez has not accounted for that flight. He hasn’t denied being on that flight.
Will Senate Democrats continue to give Menendez cover if he lied to them?
The reporter who first broke the Menendez sex scandal storyposted an eyewitness account of Senator Robert Menendez dining with Dr. Salomon Melgen one mile from Teterboro Airport on Easter morning of 2012, while Melgen’s private plane was being refueled for a direct flight to the Dominican Republic.
Menendez has admitted to taking three flights to the DR on Melgen’s jet. One was paid for by the Democratic Senatorial Committee. The other two were reported and paid for personally by Menendez…almost three years after the fact…as a result of NJ State Senator Sam Thompson’s ethics complaint filed in November of 2012. Menendez paid $58,500 for the two flights last month.
The Dominican prostitutes who first fingered Menendez said they met him during Easter of 2012. Menendez’s and Melgen’s friend, Dominican politician Vinicio Castillo Seman admitted that the senator was the Dominican Republic on Easter of last year, according to Breitbart.
In addition, Menendez’s and Melgen’s friend–powerful Dominican politician Vinicio Castillo Seman–recently slipped up and admitted the senator was in the Dominican Republic on Easter Sunday in 2012, at the scene of where the original alleged wrongdoing took place. “I’ve known Menendez as a friend and of my cousin Salomon Melgen,” Castillo said while attempting to defend Menendez amid the scandalous allegations that currently plague him. “No one has come forward on the allegations and evil accusations, we spend every Easter together in Casa de Campo.”
Though it is now known Menendez spent Easter in Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic with Melgen and Castillo, it is unclear how he got there. He and his staff have continually refused to answer that question.
But it has appeared for a long time that Menendez got there via Melgen’s plane. Flight path data obtained by Breitbart News and published in early February shows Melgen’s plane flew from Melgen’s home city West Palm Beach, Florida, to Teterboro, New Jersey, on Easter Sunday morning. It stayed there at Teterboro from its landing at 11:30 a.m. until taking off to head straight to the Dominican Republic at 12:50 p.m.
It is during this timeframe Melgen’s plane was on the ground in New Jersey, refueling and preparing for the flight to the Dominican Republic, that Breitbart News’ eyewitness in the area said he saw Menendez and Melgen brunching together at Arena Diner a mile or so away from the airport.
If Menendez was on the Melgen’s flight to the Dominican Republic last Easter, he’s been lying to the American people, and the Senate Ethics Committee, since early January when he paid $58,500 for the flights he’s admitted to belatedly.
Menendez and his office continue to refuse to answer whether the senator was on that flight, or if he got to the Dominican Republic that Sunday another way.
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.
The FBI’s investigation into allegations that U.S. Senator Robert Menendez was provided prostitutes by his benefactor, Dr. Salomon Melgen, has hit a dead end. Now the feds are trying to find out who made the allegations, according to a report in The Washington Post.