Sen. Bob Menendez took advantage of an ethics loophole to amass the nearly $500,000 in cash that federal agents found stuffed in jacket pockets, envelopes and a safe when they raided his home last year, The Post has learned.
The embattled New Jersey Democrat, who was charged with bribery last week, said Monday that he had withdrawn cash from his savings accounts throughout his 30-year career, first in the House and then in the Senate.
Disclosure rules require senators to file annual forms listing liabilities, interest-bearing assets and donations worth more than $100. But they don’t have to list the cash they have, although they could if they wanted to.
That means that if Menendez – as he claims – made personal bank withdrawals and hoarded the cash at home, he didn’t have to tell voters, although he could have. Years of his ethics disclosures reviewed by The Post never mentioned a pile of cash.
Menendez made the astonishing claim Monday that he hoarded large amounts of cash because his parents were Cuban.
New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez told reporters that nearly $500,000 in cash found in a federal raid on his home was money he had quietly withdrawn from his savings accounts over the past 30 years. He refused to answer questions. KEVIN C DOWNS Federal agents found more than $480,000 in cash stuffed in envelopes, pockets and a safe at Menendez’s New Jersey home. The senator claimed that it was cash that he had withdrawn from the bank over 30 years.AP
“Over 30 years I have withdrawn thousands of dollars in cash from my personal savings account that I have saved for emergencies and because of my family’s history of facing confiscation in Cuba,” Menendez said at a news conference in his hometown of Union City. .
“This may seem old-fashioned, but this was money taken from my personal savings account based on the income I have legally earned over those 30 years.”
Menéndez, 69, was born in New York to impoverished Cuban immigrants Mario and Evangelina Menéndez in 1954.
The senator says his mother Evangelina (top row) and father Mario escaped the Batista regime in Cuba in 1953, six years before Fidel Castro’s communists seized private property. Menéndez was born in New York after he arrived in the United States. Senator Bob Menéndez/Facebook Fulgencio Batista of Cuba was a corrupt, center-right strongman who was deposed from his government in Cuba in 1959, when the communists began confiscating private property. Universal Images Group via Getty Images
He has proudly told how his parents left Cuba in 1953, six years before Fidel Castro came to power and began confiscating personal property on the communist island, in search of a better life.
Among those who ridiculed his claim was Democratic Senator John Fetterman (PA), who tweeted: “We have an extra flashlight for our home emergencies.”
Menendez’s news conference prompted a number of top Democrats, including Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi and fellow New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, to tell him to resign.
The extraordinary loophole that allows lawmakers to secretly keep piles of cash has been used before, when federal authorities found $90,000 in cash in the freezer of then-Louisiana Democratic Congressman William Jefferson.
Although Jefferson was convicted of bribery in 2009, a House ethics committee quietly shelved an investigation into whether he had reported the cash on his disclosure forms.
A judge overturned the conviction in 2017 and Jefferson was released, halfway through his 13-year sentence.
Federal agents found $90,000 in cash in the freezer of former Louisiana Democratic Congressman William Jefferson during a raid on his home in 2005. A House ethics investigation into the cash was quietly shelved. FBI Former Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson was released from prison after a judge dismissed his request for a 2009 bribery conviction in 20017.Getty Images
In Menendez’s case, federal prosecutors said in their indictment against him that some of the cash they seized from his Englewood Cliffs home was in envelopes containing the DNA and fingerprints of his co-accused political benefactor Fred Daibes, a businessman. from New Jersey.
Menendez’s defense will now have to present 30 years of bank records to show cash withdrawals totaling more than $480,000 (the exact amount has not been disclosed) that the FBI found, and which prosecutors allege were bribes.
“The problem for Menéndez is that there are fingerprints on the envelopes and prosecutors can verify the serial number of the bills to know when they were issued,” said a campaign finance expert who did not want to be identified.
Prosecutors included footage of how they found cash, some of it stacks of $20 bills, inside the senator’s jackets. Menendez claimed that he had been withdrawing cash from his savings account and adding to his stack for 30 years. He joined the House in 1992 and is seen here in 1998.CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
“If you were withdrawing cash over the years, there has to be a paper trail from the banks involved.”
The accusation against Menéndez is the second. He was charged in a bribery scandal in 2015, but after a jury was hung up in his first trial, federal prosecutors in New Jersey abandoned plans for a new trial in early 2018.
Menendez’s disclosures about his assets have shown the same pattern for years, detailing between $100,001 and $250,000 in bank deposits at Senator Federal Credit Union, and up to $50,000 deposited at M&T Bank in Hoboken, New Jersey.
However, in March 2022, he made a significant change to that pattern, declaring that his wife Nadine Arslanian Menéndez had “personal assets” of up to $250,000 in gold bullion, which were sold in four separate transactions between April and June 2022. 2022, according to federal filings.
Along with the money, gold bars were also seized. Menendez did not comment when he spoke Monday. U.S. Attorney’s Office How Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman, the first senator to tell Menendez to leave, ramped up the pressure by mocking his claims about the cash pile. @JohnFetterman/Twitter
Gold first appeared on the senator’s financial statements in an amended filing for 2020, when he married Nadine Arslanian. That report was sent to the Senate ethics office in March 2022.
During his press release on Monday, Menendez did not comment on the gold bars, worth more than $150,000, that federal agents seized during the raid of his home in June 2022.
Abbe Lowell, a Washington, D.C., attorney representing Mendez, did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
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