The Real Robert Menendez Story: Foreign Relations Indeed
Why I wasn't wrong about the corrupt senior senator from New Jersey
One of the things that makes life difficult to talk about is that I sometimes seem like a nut. We don’t know each other well enough, dear reader, for you to realize that I’m not crazy, though I suspect over time you’ve learned that I have a trick or two.
In the Bible the way you could tell if a prophet was a real prophet or a false prophet is if the prophecy came true. But “predictions are hard, especially about the future,” to quote the great Yogi Berra. And, of course, Man plans—and God laughs.
You can be right but still make the wrong trade. Or you can be right eventually and never get the credit. This is the way for those of us who are driven to that line betwixt prophecy and madness, peering over it. I wouldn’t have it any other way, especially seeing as I don’t know how to live any other way.
****
So yes, of course I have seen the news that once more Senator Robert Menendez is under FBI investigation. I’m a little older now and yet it’s still on my Wikipedia page that I got that one wrong. I didn’t and that’s just how these things go, I guess. Once upon a time, I’d get upset about these sort of things but now, it’s more or less whatever. (I got some white in this here magnificent white beard so I chin stroke a bit more than I once did. I mull things a bit more…)
Here’s how Wikipedia does me:
Johnson was involved in the creation of a Daily Caller story that accused U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) of soliciting underage prostitutes in the Dominican Republic.[11] A criminal investigation of the case found no evidence, and the women making the allegations later admitted they had been paid by a local lawyer to make the claims.[13][14][15][16]
In point of fact I was involved in translating some of the documents in question. Se habla español. Menendez was absolutely implicated in having sex with underaged prostitutes whom he met through a donor and co-collaborator of his — Salmon Melgen — and the Obama Justice Department agreed.
The girls disappeared — that’s the sort of thing which happens in the Dominican Republic — and later Melgen was charged by the Department of Justice with corruption. Prosecutors alleged Melgen stole $73 million from Medicare over several years by persuading elderly patients to undergo unnecessary eye treatments. As one does. Melgen was sentenced to 17 years in prison but Trump commuted Melgen’s sentence on his last day in office at the behest of his son-in-law, the wunderkind Jared Kushner.
Senator Menendez was tried and there was a mistrial. But why was there a mistrial? Well turns out there was some corruption around that, too.
What this fight was all really about was the Iran deal. Menendez opposed it; the CIA favored it and I (shockingly enough) was on Team CIA. For what it’s worth I favor normalizing ties with Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and Russia. We will need them to contain China. It won’t be easy but then you make peace with your enemies not your friends.
Naturally this came up during the jury selection.
I spoke with the FBI — and shall we call them “other three letter agencies”, yes let’s — at length about the material we unearthed in the Dominican Republic. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Let’s focus on the corruption around the pardon for Melgen and the mistrial. Abbe Lowell was Menendez’s attorney. Here is Lowell in 2017 discussing the “mistrial.” He claimed, with all the chutzpah in the world, that “gifts to cultivate a friendship are not bribes.”
Lowell has since gone on to be Jared Kushner’s attorney — nothing suspicious there! — and to be implicated in a bribery scheme involving Emirati and Chinese spy Elliott Broidy, who Trump also pardoned — also at Jared Kushner’s request.
In fact Jared recommended pardoning lots of Medicare fraudsters — a last minute move that career prosecutors described as a “kick in the teeth.”
Here’s the New York Times:
Roger H. Stefin, the lead prosecutor on the Melgen case, said that he considered it to be the most important conviction of his nearly 32-year career at the Justice Department — and that he was outraged at what Mr. Trump did.
“It is an insult and slap in the face to everybody,” said Mr. Stefin, 67, who retired last month, including “the patients who are getting needles stuck in their eyes and lasers blasting their retinas for treatments they did not even need.”
He remains baffled at why Mr. Trump acted in this case. “Why do these rich and well-connected people — really bad people — get this special treatment?” he said. “Why do they deserve it when other people are languishing in the jails?”
Well, counselor, it’s because they paid bribes to Jared and his friends. But I think you already knew that, sir.
Let’s continue.
Dr. Melgen’s case had become particularly high-profile because of his friendship with Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, who was accused of bribery and corruption for accepting gifts from Dr. Melgen while intervening in his case with federal officials. Mr. Menendez’s trial ended with a deadlocked jury; a judge subsequently dismissed some of the charges and the Justice Department decided not to retry him.
Would that be the Trump Justice Department, New York Times? The same Trump Justice Department populated exclusively by the Federalist Society lawyers? You know, the Federalist Society? The same den of lawyers funded by Chinese-Israeli friendly billionaire Barre Seid who gave $1.3 billion to the head of the Federalist Society? Yeah…
Gee, I can’t possibly figure out why the Trump Justice Department populated by Chinese-Israeli friendly lawyers decided not to prosecute a U.S. Senator who was super helpful to the Chinese-Israeli cause of keeping Iran sanctioned and therefore only selling oil to China. Really it’s a total mystery.
If that wasn’t obvious enough to you let’s look at all the Jewish Republican donors to Robert Menendez’s legal defense fund. You’ll notice that the Adelsons donated heavily to Menendez — the same Adelsons who were super close to Netanyahu and who ran casinos in China.
Happy hunting Department of Justice! Maybe you can win this one.
As for Mr. Menendez, I’m sure he found true love with his Armenian-American “international business woman” he married in 2020. You can listen to her talk about her close relationship with her husband.
