Even the liberal media is smelling blood in Senator Bob Menendez’s water. Sometimes a week really is a lifetime in politics.
MSNBC political analyst Steve Kornacki went on the Rachel Maddow Show to talk about the potential political fallout of Menendez scandal.
Kornacki said that Jets owner Woody Johnson would likely be Governor Christie’s choice to fill Menendez’s seat should the senator leave office this year in time for a special election in November.
Don’t count on it happening. Senator Bob Mendendez as already survived a recall effort, an FBI investigation while Chris Christie was U.S. Attorney, Tom Kean JR and Joe Kyrillos. There’s little reason, so far, to think Menendez won’t survive his latest scandals involving illegal campaign donations and gifts, a sex offender illegal immigrant intern and allegations of engaging with prostitutes and underage girls in the Dominican Republic.Why would Menedez resign? It’s not as if he tweeted nude pictures of himself, or anything as bad as that.
For a senator to be expelled requires a 2/3 vote in the Senate. The Senate Select Committee on Ethics has not responded to State Senator Sam Thompson’s complaint about Menendez filed last November. There is no reason to think the Democratically controlled Senate will even consider censuring Menendez, much less expelling him, unless the FBI’s current investigation results in an indictment and/or conviction.
But if Menendez’s seat in the Senate were to become vacant this year, it would put New Jersey politics into a fabulous turmoil that would be fun to cover and generate unprecedented blog traffic. “Peter Williams,” if you’re reading, please cooperate with the FBI and bring the Domincan girls with you to the USofA!
Embattled U.S. Senator Bob Menendez reimbursed his friend and campaign contributor, West Palm Beach eye doctor Salomon Melgen $58,500 for two flights to the Dominican Republic on Melgen’s private jet almost three years after the flights took place, according to reports in The Star Ledger and The Daily Caller.
Menendez’s spokesman Paul Brubaker told the Ledger that the senator, prompted by the ethics complaint filed by NJ State Senator Sam Thompson last November, reviewed his travel and discovered that he should have paid Melgen for an August 2010 flight between Florida and the Dominican Republic and a September 2010 flight from Teterboro to the DR. Menendez paid Melgen $58,500 for the flights on January 4, 2013.
Menendez’s chief of staff, Dan O’Brien told NBC News that the over two year gap in paying for the flights was an office mistake, according to Daily Caller.
“This was sloppy,” O’Brien conceded about two 2010 flights. “I’m chalking it up to an oversight.”
No one has reported what, if anything, Menendez reimbursed Melgen for his food, lodging and party favors on the trips. Senate rules prohibited members from accepting gifts valued at more the $250 without prior permission from the ethics committee. We’d call Brubaker, but he stopped returning our calls last summer during the senator’s campaign.
Menendez finally denied he had sex with prostitutes while in the Dominican Republic, saying the charges were manufactured by a right-wing blog. Presumably he’s referring to Daily Caller.
FoxNews reported last night that Menendez cleared his Washington schedule yesterday. He cancelled a meeting with Treasury Secretary nominee Jack Lew and skipped John Kerry’s fare well speech on the Senate floor.
On the home front however, it was politics as usual for Menendez. Yesterday afternoon he sent out a fundraising email asking his supporters to thank Hillary Clinton for her years of service.
Roll Call is reporting that Senator Bob Menendez’s office has issued a statement denying any wrongdoing on the senator’s part related to the FBI raid last night on his friend and campaign contributor’s West Palm Beach, Florida office:
“Dr. Melgen has been a friend and political supporter of Senator Menendez for many years. Senator Menendez has traveled on Dr. Melgen’s plane on three occasions, all of which have been paid for and reported appropriately,” Menendez’s office said in a statement. “Any allegations of engaging with prostitutes are manufactured by a politically-motivated right-wing blog and are false.”
The Menendez statement appears to conflict with information included in State Senator Sam Thompson’s ethics complaint filed with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics last November. Thompson alleged that Menendez appeared to have accepted free travel to the Dominican Republic on Dr. Soloman Melgen’s private jet, and failed to disclose the gift traffic as required by Senate rules. The Senate Select Committee had not responded to Thompson as of Monday
Maybe Now New Jersey’s Mainstream Media Will Report The Story
Late last night the FBI raided the office of the West Palm Beach eye doctor who allegedly provided New Jersey’s junior U.S. Senator Bob Menedez with free travel to the Dominican Republic on his private jet where the men engaged in sex parties with prostitutes and underage girls, according to reports in The Miami Herald and FoxNews.
FBI agents late Tuesday night raided the West Palm Beach business of an eye doctor suspected of providing free trips and even underage Dominican Republic prostitutes to U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J. — who has denied what he calls the “fallacious allegations.”
Agents gathered at the medical-office complex of Dr. Salomon Melgen, a contributor to Menendez and other prominent politicians, to start hauling away potential evidence in several vans.
The investigation is believed to be focusing on Melgen’s finances and the allegations about Menendez’s trips and contact with prostitutes. A spokesman for Menendez could not be reached for comment, nor could Melgen.
Menendez’s appointment as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee became official just hours before the raid when former Senator John Kerry, the previous chairman, was confirmed by the Senate as U.S. Secretary of State.
Yesterday afternoon Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid dismissed the allegations against Menendez because the story was first reported by the conservative website, The Daily Caller. “I always consider the source,” Reid told Roll Call. Maybe Reid will take these allegations more seriously now, since The Miami Herald endorsed President Obama over Mitt Romney in last year’s presidential election.
Since The Daily Caller broke the story of Menendez’s activity with prostitutes in the Dominican Republic at Melgen’s largess last October, just days before the election where the Senator won his second full term, New Jersey’s mainstream media outlets have not covered the story. One prominent reporter told MMM that the story had been shopped to a prominent New Jersey newspaper prior to the initial Daily Caller report. The paper’s editors considered the story too thin both before and after Daily Caller reported it. Another prominent reporter said “no body cares and we’re too busy.”
Academy Award winning actress Mira Sorvino and John Morton, the Director of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will be among the keynote speakers at an Anti-Human Trafficking Symposium held at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
MMM is promoting the symposium and embedding the livestream video in the hopes that Senator Bob Menendez will either watch or stop by the hilltop.
News of the allegations that U.S. Senator Bob Menendez sexually exploited Dominican teen aged girls during his trips to the DR on a campaign contibutor’s private jet slipped into New Jersey main stream media coverage last weekend when Bob Ingle blogged about the sentor’s spokesperson telling FoxNews that the allegations were “unsubstantiated garbage.”
Yesterday, Brietbart caught up with Menendez who said he would not dignify the story. Click here to listen to Mendendez refusing to dignify.
“Unsubstantiated garbage” and “I’m not going to dignify that” are not denials. I can not imagine a dignified substantiation.
New Jersey State Senator Sam Thompson, in his capacity as Chairman on the Middlesex GOP, wrote to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics last November asking that they investigate Menendez’s accepting illegal travel for his DR sexcapades. Thompson tells MMM that he has not heard from the committee.
It would seem that Mendenez, who officially becomes Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee upon John Kerry’s confirmation as Secretary of State, is getting a pass from the Select Committee on Ethics. The FBI won’t confirm or deny that they are investigating him.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Late last night the FBI raided the office of the West Palm Beach eye doctor who allegedly provided New Jersey’s junior U.S. 