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Justice Dept Charges Against Menendez to Come Amid Standoffs With WH
Friday, March 6, 2015 10:00 PM
By: Todd Beamon
Sen. Robert Menendez has often been at odds with the Obama administration. And it appears the stakes are about to get significantly higher.
Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who has opposed Obama on Iran, war powers authorization, Cuba, and Tuesday's speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu, will soon face corruption charges from the Justice Department.
Although the investigation into Menedez's alleged quid-pro-quo relationship with a Florida ophthalmologist has been ongoing for more than two years, the charges would come after the senator has leveled sharp criticism against President Barack Obama and his policies.
"Senator Menendez has been on the outs already," Patrick Murray, founding director of the Monmouth University Polling Center in New Jersey, told Newsmax on Friday. "It was clear that the Obama administration was not taking their cues on foreign policy from him, particularly with their stance on Cuba and Iran.
"There was an indication that he was not the power player in Washington that he had been anyway before this had happened," Murray said.
Menendez, 61, now the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has clashed vocally and publicly with the White House as Obama seeks to solidify his foreign policy legacy.
In recent months, the senator has:
Labeled Obama's efforts to open diplomatic relations with Cuba after more than a half-century a "bad deal." The son of Cuban immigrants, Menendez has charged that Obama has "vindicated the brutal behavior of the Cuban government."
Skeptically greeted Obama's request for new war powers authorization against the Islamic State. "I think it can pass, but certainly not in its present form," he told Jake Tapper on CNN last month. "There's a tough needle to thread here from the Democratic side."
Endorsed Netanyahu's speech to Congress, which Obama panned as offering "nothing new." Menendez was among several congressional leaders who escorted the prime minister through the House chamber.
Slammed the negotiations with Iran over its nuclear arsenal, saying that such an agreement "is not a good deal if it leaves Iran as a threshold nuclear state, or if Iran decides to kick out inspectors." He has co-sponsored legislation to impose new sanctions against Iran if the White House shows significant progress in its talks with Iran over its nuclear program by March 24.
"It’s not a good deal if Iran proceeds on a covert path and we have no more than a year to respond," Menendez told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Monday. At a Foreign Relations Committee hearing last month, Menendez blasted the administration's talking points on Iran as coming "straight out of Tehran."
Though Menendez's opposition could easily raise speculation that the pending Justice Department charges might smack of retaliation, Murray wouldn't go that far to Newsmax.
"I'm not going to speculate on the attorney general's motivations for doing this at this point," he said. "Obviously, there has been a number of accusations against Senator Menendez.
"It's not like that this was out of the blue," Murray added. "In some ways, it's not a surprise at all, but I would be hard-pressed to say that this is some kind of retribution for Senator Menendez opposing Obama's policies."
At a news conference in the Garden State late Friday, Menendez vowed that "I am not going anywhere" and said that he had always behaved appropriately while in office.
"Let me be very clear. I have always conducted myself appropriately and in accordance with the law," the senator said. "Every action that I and my office have taken for the last 23 years that I have been privileged to be in the United States Congress has been based on pursuing the best policies for the people of New Jersey and this entire country."
Menendez, who served for more than a decade in the House of Representatives before joining the Senate in 2006, is expected to be indicted by the Justice Department in the coming weeks, according to news reports. Attorney General Eric Holder, in South Carolina with President Barack Obama on Friday, declined to say whether he had authorized criminal charges against the senator.
The charges stem from the Justice Department's investigation into Menendez's relationship with Salomon Melgen, a Florida ophthalmologist, friend, and political donor whose medical office was raided by state authorities two years ago.
Prosecutors are nearing a deadline under the statute of limitations on some of the allegations.
The scrutiny has focused on trips the senator took to the Dominican Republic aboard Melgen's private plane. He has acknowledged actions that could have appeared to benefit Melgen, including lobbying the federal Medicare agency for changes to a payment policy that had brought Melgen millions of dollars.
In 2012, Melgen billed the federal Medicare program $20.8 million, according to data released by the administration the following year, The Miami Herald reports. This included $11.7 million for treatments involving Lucentis, a costly medication used to treat macular degeneration.
Melgen used the drug in more than 37,000 treatments in 2012, according to the Herald.
Menendez's failure to reimburse Melgen for flights between New Jersey and the Dominican Republic on the eye doctor's luxury jet was the first serious signal of his legal troubles in early 2013. The senator and Melgen had flown at least twice in 2010 between New Jersey to the Dominican Republic, but the trips had gone without reimbursement for more than two years.
Menendez has reimbursed Melgen $58,000 for three plane trips, including two round-trip flights. Under Senate ethics rules, flights for private purposes require reimbursements to the provider.
Last year, the senator disclosed that his campaign accounts had paid a law firm $250,000 for legal costs related to investigations by the Justice Department and the Senate Ethics Committee of his ties to Melgen.
The flights were just one vestige of the close relations between Menendez, who headed the Foreign Relations committee until Democrats lost control of the Senate in the November elections, and Melgen, a multimillionaire who was willing to lavish campaign donations on his friend and allied causes.
The men often appeared together at Democratic Party and Hispanic political functions from Washington to Miami. Menendez is one of the highest-ranking Hispanic legislators in Congress.
Melgen also contributed nearly $200,000 to Democratic Party candidates since 1998, including $14,200 directly to Menendez.
And in 2012, during Menendez's re-election campaign, Melgen gave $700,000 to the Majority PAC, a super political action committee for Democratic Senate candidates; the PAC spent more than $580,000 to aid Menendez' campaign.
Menendez led the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 2009 to 2011.
Murray told Newsmax that Menendez has weathered many of the accusations over the years. "It hasn't affected his ability to get elected. It hasn't affected his public opinion rating."
However, "an indictment is a different story," he said. "An indictment is certainly going to change public opinion here in New Jersey.
"The question is whether it is enough to bounce him from office, and it's probably not enough. It would take an actual conviction or being removed from the Senate or the threat of being removed for Menendez would actually step down — and he's not the kind of a person who runs away from a fight."
While prosecution and conviction may be far off, Krista Jenkins, director of Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind poll, told Newsmax that the Menendez case could further crystalize the state's "reputation for corruption."
Referencing Gov. Chris Christie and the Bridge-gate scandal, she said that "to have another public official fall under investigation for illegal behavior, it reinforces the stereotype that a lot of people have for the state.
"At a time when politicians are in such disfavor, among both Democrats and Republicans, it's unfortunate when the stereotype of a politician is reinforced," Jenkins said. "The reports are premature, nothing official has happened — but if it's true, it does reinforce that stereotype of New Jerseyans having corrupt people at its helm."
