Free Republic

Democrat Sen. Bob Menendez (NJ) held a meeting in his Washington, DC, office in 2018 with a New Jersey businessman who is at the center of a federal corruption probe into the senator, the Wall Street Journal reported. Southern District of New York prosecutors are investigating Menendez as part of a corruption probe, which reportedly stems from facts similar to a 2015 U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) case against Menendez and Democrat donor Salomon Melgen for conspiracy and bribery. According to the Wall Street Journal: The meeting, which hasn’t been previously reported, came months before the businessman, Wael Hana, secured...

Frances Robles reports in the New York Times that an ex-aide to Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) stood to benefit from a Dominican port security deal, along with Menendez benefactor Salomon Melgen. From the Times: Mr. Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, has pushed United States government officials to help enforce a contract that a company owned in part by one of his major donors, Dr. Salomon E. Melgen, has with the Dominican government, which has refused to honor it. A top executive at Dr. Melgen's security company will be Pedro Pablo Permuy, a former national security adviser and senior legislative aide...

The Justice Department is slamming Sen. Bob Menendez’s push to get corruption charges against him dropped, saying that the “quid pro quo outlined in the indictment is clear and unmistakable.” “The charges in this case are the result of a careful and professional investigation,” federal prosecutors said in court documents submitted Monday. The DOJ filed the documents in response to a push by Menendez’s legal team to have the case against him dismissed. The New Jersey Democrat's lawyers have raised questions about the government's tactics in the investigation. Prosecutors fired back that Menendez's legal motions "do nothing to dilute...

It’s been almost a month since the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial titled “The Menendez Indictment.” We responded in a letter to the editor that has not been published. It’s a safe bet it never will be, so we post it here. The Journal got to the point in its opening paragraph: Ill-defined federal laws now reach into virtually every sphere of human behavior, and thus prosecutors can destroy almost anyone they choose. The recent indictment of Senator Robert Menendez on 14 counts of corruption and “honest services” fraud is a troubling case in point that deserves more...

Dr. Salomon Melgen is being held in a Florida jail without bond on a second set of charges. The Florida ophthalmologist is one of three men involved in an August 2012 meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. That gathering is at the center of criminal charges of corruption brought by a New Jersey federal grand jury against Melgen and one of the other two key players, Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ). The third key player, the man who actually organized that August 2012 meeting, is Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). He’s being protected by a selective Department...

A controversial donor with ties to prominent Democrats who is under investigation by the FBI may not have the qualifications he claims. The resume of Dr. Salomon Melgen, a Florida-based ophthalmologist and controversial Democratic donor, boasts medical education and experience at Harvard University, Yale University, and the University of Missouri. But none of those schools says it can find any record of Melgen, who claims to be a Harvard alumnus, the former chief resident of the University of Missouri’s ophthalmology department, and a former Yale intern. Questions concerning Melgen’s background are also coming to light. According to his biography, posted...

Hey, remember when President Obama crusaded against Medicare fraud and vowed to crack down aggressively on scammers who've bilked the program out of an estimated $90 billion? Like Archie and Edith Bunker used to sing: Those were the daaaays. While Democrats pretend to protect the elderly and disabled, leaders of the People's Party have pocketed gobs of campaign contributions from fat-cat donors tied to massive Medicare rip-off schemes. Let's talk some more about Dr. Salomon Melgen, shall we? We now know that the jet-setting Florida eye doctor who flew beleaguered Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., to several alleged sex romps in...

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin said on Sunday embattled Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) should keep his chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee despite an investigation into his dealings with a top donor. "Sen. Menendez has given us an assurance that there is no substance to these charges," the Democratic senator from Illinois said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "It's being looked at by the Ethics Committee. Of course, I can't comment beyond that." The Senate Ethics Committee is looking into Menendez's interaction with Salomon Melgen, a Florida eye surgeon who has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Menendez and...

The New York Times has called on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to remove New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez from his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Under the editorial headline “Mr. Menendez’s Ethics Problem,” the newspaper said 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,” the Times wrote. “Instead of trying...

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) defended his relationship with Florida doctor and political donor Salomon Melgen in an interview with Univision on Friday, saying he didn’t do anything on his friend’s behalf that he doesn’t regularly do for others. Melgen, a close friend of Menendez’s, reportedly overbilled the U.S. government by almost $9 million in Medicare payments, inviting a federal audit. Menendez acknowledged contacting officials to complain that the Medicare billing rules were unclear, but the senator denied that his close ties to Melgen had anything to do with him raising the issue. “The fact that someone is a donor does...

Remember when Anthony Weiner got busted for sending a picture of his penis to a woman who was not his wife? He sure does. And remember how he claimed his Twitter account was hacked or pranked or spammed or whatever?

A cloud of scandalous allegations is rapidly growing over Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), putting Democratic leaders in a difficult position as the integrity of their immigration point man in the Senate falls under question at a critical time. The bad news keeps coming: a Senate Ethics probe, allegations involving underage prostitutes, an FBI investigation of a key campaign donor, undisclosed flights on the donor’s private plane, and now, reports linking Menendez to a multi-million dollar contract he helped obtain for the disgraced donor. Menendez denies nearly all of it. But it couldn’t come at a worse time for the new...

The Daily Caller has been doing the job the Obama State Media just won't do- journalism- and they are on fire in the Menendez investigation. Emails show FBI investigating Sen. Bob Menendez for sleeping with underage Dominican prostitutes Documents published online for the first time Thursday indicate that the FBI opened an inquiry into New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez on August 1, 2012, focusing on repeated trips he took to the Dominican Republic with longtime campaign contributor and Miami eye doctor Salomon Melgen. TheDC reported in November that Menendez purchased the service of prostitutes in that Caribbean nation at...

Bob Menendez ducks out of NJ Chamber of Commerce event, ditches reporters at elevator Posted By David Martosko On 9:11 AM 02/01/2013 @ 9:11 AM Bob Menendez, the combative New Jersey senator beset by allegations that he had sex with at least one underage prostitute in the Dominican Republic, hurried out of a Marriott ballroom in Washington, D.C. after a speech Thursday night, out-dashing a gaggle of reporters and ignoring questions all the way to a welcome elevator. The senator was speaking to an annual gathering of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce, but members of the media weren’t interested...

January 31, 2013 Women against Bob Menendez? How about a Democratic woman? Michelle Malkin Conservatives are always told they don't do enough to reach across the aisle. We're divisive, obstructionist and hostile to bipartisanship. So in the spirit of unity and comity, I'm announcing the formation of a new social justice group: Ladies Against Senator Sleaze-Bob. Now all I need are some principled Democratic ladies and liberal media lionesses to step up to the plate with me to protest the vulgar, sexist behavior of Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J. Surely, Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Cher, Sandra Fluke, Eva Longoria and...

U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez did not pay for two flights provided by Salomon Melgen – his friend and campaign donor whose office was raided by the FBI Tuesday night – until more than two years later, and after a New Jersey Republican asked the Senate ethics committee to look into his travels. Menendez spokesman Paul Brubaker today said the senator reimbursed Melgen for the flights on January 4 of this year. Both were round trips– one between Florida and the Dominican Republic in August 2010, and one between Teterboro and the Dominican Republic in September 2010. The total amount Menendez...

FBI agents raid South Florida office of eye doc tied to gift, prostitution controversy with Sen. Bob Menendez Source link. FBI agents raided the West Palm Beach business of an eye doctor accused in the conservative press of providing free trips and even Dominican Republic prostitutes to New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez — 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, late Tuesday night to start hauling away potential evidence in about a dozen white vans. The exact focus of the...

The media are not covering this story despite the FBI agent in the emails saying that most of the information has been confirmed. If the allegations are true Menendez could be prosecuted under the 2003 PROTECT ACT making travel and having sex with minors knowingly or not a federal offense with up to 30 years in prison. DOCUMENTS published online for the first time Thursday indicate that the FBI opened an inquiry into New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez on August 1, 2012, focusing on repeated trips he took to the Dominican Republic with longtime campaign contributor and Miami eye...