Amid the gold bars, Mercedez-Benz, and meat-related allegations, it’s easy to miss a central charge in the indictment of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ): it’s about foreign influence.
Whether Menendez is convicted or not should be irrelevant. He clearly sold his position to the highest bidder and, if his actions don’t quite meet the rather unrealistic standard for bribery according to the Supreme Court, so what? He’s obviously corrupt and shouldn’t be a Senator. He needs to be pushed out of the Senate by any means possible.
PFFT… it was deceptively easy; simply give him bags of cash.
I’m now wondering if Nadine Arslanian is a foreign operative. It appears as though she was playing a long game of ingratiating herself into the Mendendez circle, had the good fortune to marry him, and is now implicated in the foreign influence and corruption.
“Nadine Arslanian, who took Menendez’s last name after they wed in 2020, has a mystifying status in the indictment. Prosecutors portray her as acting aggressively to help Hana and Egyptian officials ingratiate themselves with Menendez.”
Some of the stuff suggests Menendez felt he had to sell the egyptians on his power and abilities. Weird.
What a guy will do for a blow job from a pretty woman. I read an article that quoted her as saying she thinks he’s hot. Mmm…kay.
They may or may not nail Menendez on the charges, but the “perceived appearance of impropriety” should be enough to take him out of the next election. Dems seem to be implementing due process in a reaction to the way Franken was shit-canned for no good reason.
Overall, Congress should rid themselves of the casual acceptance of bribery, and go to government funded elections. Yeah, hahahaha.
After reading Josh’s latest EdBlog, “Menendez is Defiant. It Probably Won’t Matter”, it occurs to me that while New Jersey may be fine with crooks, they don’t much care for dumb crooks.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/menendez-is-defiant-it-probably-wont-matter
If only the Senator had thought with his big head…
Some Egyptian officials might have begun to wonder whether it was worth paying him if they were going to get the goods anyway. Not only did it cost money but there was the probability of real damage to the Egyptian/U.S. relationship if they were caught doing it.
The bottom line has always been, if you want favors from the government you have to pay the gatekeepers who man the toll booths.
While I would love to see Trump get the gas chamber, it appears to me that as an agent for Egypt, Menendez did some real treasonous stuff for real (monetary) gain whereas Trump, in his normal stupid way, simply acted as though national security laws didn’t apply to him. In a nutshell, Menendez was a paid spy for the government of Egypt. However, no one seems interested in this aspect of his crimes. Sad!
No Repüb will censure Menendez because soon, as the calls from Dems become louder, he will try to switch parties. Consistently, the Repubs welcome nogoodniks and mendacious Menendez will find, like Joe L did some time ago…
No question about it, no matter how many ways you look at it, Menendez is seriously compromised. He can blame his wife for that. He married a foreign agent. He must resign, file for divorce and tremendously downsize his lifestyle. It’s over.
Though it seems like there are parts of the world still where graft is the expectation. The bribe is baked into the plan and no one gives it a second glance. That places like the United States claim to hold themselves to a different standard is often viewed as propaganda (which people like Menendez help prop up with antics like these). They might not think that we would actually try to hold people to account (or perhaps only if they get caught this blatantly).
My working theory is that Nadine Arslanian was a honeypot operation directed by Egyptian foreign intelligence through her Egyptian acquaintances in New Jersey and one or more of IHOP’s Egyptian-born franchisees.
That was my thought too. She seems to have shown up in his life immediately after he beat the rap in 2017/2018, which showed good evidence that he was corruptible. The timing seemed far from coincidental.
Politicians marry lobbyists all the time. That’s who they meet. What he wants to do about their marriage is up to him.
It does indeed look a whole lot like the Maria Buttina op for the Russians. So do all powerful men as they get old and ugly turn either into serial sexual predators like Trump and Giuliani or targets of foreign intelligence ops? Or I suppose in some cases both?
As an amateur etymologist, I wonder if Menendez and mendacious have the same root.