Was Senator Menendez just helping his constituents? That may be his defence strategy

The website northjersey.com published an article devoted to the investigation into the pro-Armenian senator from New Jersey Bob Menendez. Caliber.Az reprints the article.

A patriot is generally defined as someone who loves his country and is willing to do anything for it.

I have no reason to doubt that the embattled Sen. Bob Menendez, New Jersey's senior senator, loves his own country. But, as federal prosecutors charge, he’s also been willing to do just about anything on behalf of other countries in the past few years — all while allegedly reaping lucrative bribes in exchange for his efforts.

The question of Menendez’s patriotism was brought to the fore last week, when his lawyer, Adam Fee, issued a blistering defence of his client after the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York appended the bribery indictment against Menendez with the outlines of a new cash-for-influence scheme, this time to secure an investment from Qatar for a Bergen County developer.

In September, authorities accused him of being on the take for Egypt. This time, he allegedly moved over to the Persian Gulf for profit. Bob Menendez, a Middle East envoy, Jersey style.

Fee said there was nothing inappropriate about “interactions” Menendez had with officials from Qatar, Egypt and other countries during his tenure as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“Those interactions were always based on his professional judgment as to the best interests of the United States because he is, and always has been, a patriot," Fee asserted.

Are patriots often accused of being foreign agents?

I’m sure Menendez will assert that he is exercising his patriotic duty as a duly elected member of the U.S. Senate, participating in the slow but vital work of democracy. In defending his actions, he will no doubt list his work on immigration reform, health care and natural disaster relief as important for the long-term health and viability of the nation — and New Jersey.

But the portrait of Menendez that emerges from the Southern District's 50-page indictment is not likely to leave the reader swelling with national pride but rather with disgust.

It's hard to see what’s so patriotic about handing Egyptian intelligence officials “sensitive” information about the personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, information that could pose “significant operational security concerns if disclosed to a foreign government.” How is that helping the home team?

It’s equally hard to imagine Old Glory wafting in the breeze while reading allegations of how Menendez secretly ghost-wrote a lobbying letter on behalf of Egyptian officials seeking to convince his fellow senators to release a hold on $300 million in aid.

The Founding Fathers didn’t imagine senators running interference on criminal investigations of allies. Nor did they envision senators protecting a monopoly of an inexperienced U.S. certifier of halal meat bound for Egypt — a certifier who just also happened to be friendly with Menendez and his wife, Nadine Arslanian, and who is also charged in the scheme.

And you won’t find any suggestion in the Federalist Papers that it was OK to accept $480,000 in cash, gold bars and other items of value as compensation for the services, as alleged by prosecutors. This is far afield from the Patrick Henry “Give-me-liberty-or-give-me-death” school of patriotism.

Fee's "statement is the kind of verbal barrage in which criminal defence attorneys specialize, and as the accusations pile up they will become more elaborate, more baroque and more extravagant," said Ross Baker, a Rutgers University political scientist.

A glimpse of Menendez's defence strategy?

Despite its bombast, the statement does offer what could be an early glimpse of the Menendez defence if he faces trial in early May, as scheduled.

Fee’s “stinks of desperation” comment was in response to the latest update in the case against Menendez — the senator is now accused of using his power and influence to help notable North Jersey developer Fred Daibes secure crucial financing from officials in Qatar.

The expanded indictment alleges that the now-infamous gold bars found in Menendez’s Englewood Cliffs home were payment for helping Daibes get a Qatari investment company with ties to that country’s government to invest in a Daibes property by doing things that were viewed as favourable to the government of Qatar.

Prosecutors say Menendez allegedly made public statements supporting the government of Qatar. After attending a private event in Manhattan hosted by the Qatari government, Daibes sent Menendez a picture of a luxury watch website with models priced up to $23,990 and asked, “How about one of these,” before messaging the senator again two days later about a Senate resolution in support of Qatar.

Menendez’s lawyer suggests a defence that has echoes of his 2017 trial that ended in a hung jury. In that case, Menendez was accused of taking bribes in the form of free travel, campaign donations and stays at a luxury resort from a south Florida ophthalmologist, Salomon Melgen, in exchange for Menendez’s help in resolving a dispute with Medicare and in protecting a port contract in the Dominican Republic.

In that case, Menendez’s attorney’s argued that they were not bribes but gifts from a close friend of 20 years. Maybe not the greatest look, but nothing criminal about a couple of friends helping each other out, they argued at the time.

Will “routine” be enough to justify alleged conduct?

This time around, Menendez may be laying the groundwork for a defence that argues that his “routine” conduct also doesn’t rise to criminality.

Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, said the details about Menendez’s conduct are “unseemly,” such as being consulted for a possible luxury wristwatch as a possible reward for his help.

“Terrible optics, but is there something illegal about that? I don't know. But I begin to see … where they're going to defend him," Rasmussen said. “Of course, this doesn't make any of this worthy of what a U.S. senator should be doing with [his] time.”

Nor will any of this diminish the public’s disgust with Menendez's alleged conduct, Rasmussen said.

Rutgers’ Baker, an expert on Congress, suggests that the defence is going to be a hard sell.

“Constituent service is never rendered with the expectation of gratuities," he said. “Acting on behalf of a constituent is normal. Menendez’s interventions on behalf of Fred Daibes that involve a quid pro quo is distinctly out of normal channels.”

Menendez has rejected the calls to resign, and his colleagues in the Senate do not seem in any rush to show him the door. For now, he’ll remain in office carrying out his patriotic duty — with a trial date on his calendar.