How Bob Menendez Came By His Gold Bars

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Speaker 2 This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

Speaker 3 This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Speaker 3 In the through-the-looking glass world of Donald Trump, he's the guy who drained the swamp of corruption, even as he orders the Department of Justice to drop corruption cases and stop investigating new ones.

Speaker 3 The situation with New York City Mayor Eric Adams is a case in point.

Speaker 3 The Justice Department suggested they would drop serious federal charges if Adams would just assist the feds on the immigration issue.

Speaker 3 The mayor's attorney insisted there was never any deal, but even so, a pack of federal prosecutors quit their jobs. in disgust.

Speaker 3 So this too is surprising, but maybe not too surprising.

Speaker 3 Weeks ago, Bob Menendez, the former New Jersey senator known as Gold Bar Bob for the gold and cash tucked away in his house, was sentenced to 11 years in prison on corruption charges.

Speaker 3 Menendez walked out of the courtroom and directly made a plea to guess who.

Speaker 4 President Trump is right. This process is political and it's corrupted to the core.

Speaker 4 I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system.

Speaker 5 You

Speaker 3 How did Bob Menendez, who voted to impeach Donald Trump, end up begging him for a get-out-of-jail card?

Speaker 3 We turn to WNYC's reporter Nancy Solomon, who's been covering New Jersey politics for many years. So, Nancy, ipso facto, knows a thing or two about corruption.

Speaker 2 One morning in June of 2024, during the trial of Bob Menendez, I was sitting in the hallway finishing a cup of coffee outside the courtroom.

Speaker 2 There was only one other person there, standing next to the bench, looking out at the spectacular Manhattan view from the 23rd floor, Bob Menendez.

Speaker 2 He was singing, and it was killing me that I couldn't record it.

Speaker 6 In that courthouse, you have no phones. Nobody has recording devices.

Speaker 6 So there developed this sort of cocoon-like space where the defendants, the reporters, the lawyers, we were all kind of existing together for nine weeks.

Speaker 2 This is Tracy Tully. She's a reporter for the New York Times, and she was in court almost every day.

Speaker 6 He would sing during breaks in court, sometimes in the courtroom.

Speaker 6 Often outside in that vestibule that you described. And I remember riding down an elevator with a crowd of people at one point, and one of the lawyers said, I think it's a form of prayer.

Speaker 2 Bob Menendez grew up in Union City. His parents had come from Cuba.
His father was a carpenter and a gambler, and his mother, a factory seamstress.

Speaker 2 He's often told the story about how he qualified for an honors program when he was a senior in high school, but he couldn't afford the books.

Speaker 8 And I couldn't understand for the life of me in a public high school that I'd be barred from being in the honors program.

Speaker 2 This is from a public TV interview in 2012.

Speaker 8 So I created such a ruckus that they gave me the books, told me to shut up, and put me in the honors program.

Speaker 8 But I didn't feel right about that because I had friends who had the ability and the grades and not the money.

Speaker 8 So I started a petition drive at 19 to change the school board, put a referendum on the ballot, passed a referendum at 19, and then ran at the age of 20 the first school board elections in my hometown.

Speaker 2 It wasn't long before Menendez developed a brand.

Speaker 9 I grew up in a tough neighborhood. We had a bully in the neighborhood.

Speaker 2 The fighter you don't want to mess with.

Speaker 10 My mom and she said, avoid him.

Speaker 2 And this stuck with him.

Speaker 2 From the Union City School Board in 1974. Got a piece of wood and whacked the bully and that was a matter of

Speaker 2 top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations nearly 50 years later.

Speaker 9 I never got whacked again.

Speaker 10 I didn't really get to know him until I went to work for the city of Bayon.

Speaker 2 This is Nicholas Charavallati.

Speaker 10 Former state legislator. Been in and around Hudson County politics since I was about 14 years old.

Speaker 2 We had a meeting in City Hall at a

Speaker 2 long time ago. Really loud.
Chara Vallati was working for the city of Bayonne. The small working class town was in a fight over a piece of land that had been an old army installation.

Speaker 10 And truth be told, Nancy, I was way over my head.

Speaker 2 And Charavallatti ended up in a meeting with Menendez, who was then the local congressman.

Speaker 10 We had been making the case that the Army and the Port Authority were not dealing with us truthfully. And the moment that the Army reiterated the lie to him, I remember it's clear as that.

Speaker 10 He got up, kicked his chair over, and basically told them, there's no freaking way you're getting this land.

Speaker 10 That was the moment that, you know, quite frankly, I was like, that's the type of guy I want representing me.

Speaker 2 I mean, when he was young, Menendez stood up to his political mentor, a popular mayor, who ended up getting convicted for allowing town contracts to go to a business with connections to the mob.

Speaker 2 Menendez even had to wear a bulletproof vest into the courthouse. Chara Vallatti was impressed with Menendez, and he ended up going to work for him.

Speaker 10 And, you know, he had a very different style than I did. We got into an argument once.
He wanted me to deliver a message to an elected official, but he wanted me to deliver it in his manner.

Speaker 10 And I delivered the message in my manner. And he actually said to me,

Speaker 10 I thought I was hiring a Rottwald and not a poodle.

Speaker 2 A representative for Senator Menendez said that story is not true.

Speaker 2 And what would you say, like some of the elements that make up his success?

Speaker 10 So I think intelligence was one. Two was work ethic.
I mean, he he just would work all the time, especially back then,

Speaker 10 he was a beast. Three was loyalty, right? Because once he was your friend, he would stick with you, even if it was against his interest.

Speaker 2 Menendez opposed the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, despite the large number of Italians in his district that supported the New Jersey native. And he voted against the Iraq war.

Speaker 10 Being from Hudson County in New Jersey, where it was,

Speaker 10 if you remember, it was like, let's just do it. And it's like, look, politically, it's expedient just to vote for it, right? I mean, people want revenge.

Speaker 10 And like, Bob Menendez, despite sort of the intensity of his personality in that moment, and this is like repeated throughout his career, could sit back and say, okay, but I looked at everything.

Speaker 10 It's not there.

Speaker 2 But there is a subset of people, a large one, who believe Menendez has been corrupt from the beginning. They don't buy the hero testifying against the machine narrative.

Speaker 2 Jay Booth used to be a political operative in Hudson County who opposed Menendez from the start.

Speaker 2 Booth says, look at the charges in the current case, where Menendez tried to pressure state and federal prosecutors.

Speaker 7 He says that's part of a long pattern.

Speaker 11 Menendez,

Speaker 11 in his larger-than-life quest for political power, as I watched it, was always the first priority seemed to always be judges and prosecutors

Speaker 11 trying to appoint people that are going to protect him and harm his enemies in the criminal justice system.

Speaker 2 Booth says he witnessed Menendez in action many years ago. He happened to walk into the kitchen of Puccini's, a legendary restaurant on Jersey City's west side that was a hangout for politicos.

Speaker 2 And there, at the stainless steel prep counter, was a meeting happening, presumably on the down low.

Speaker 11 I saw Menendez, who was then a congressman,

Speaker 11 sitting in a corner in the kitchen where no one could see him, having lunch with the then Hudson County prosecutor.

Speaker 11 which of course would be perceived as unethical or more particularly something they were eating in there so that no one could see them clearly.

Speaker 2 Elected officials are not supposed to hold back-channel meetings with prosecutors. A representative from Menendez says that one didn't happen.

Speaker 2 But either way, meals in a restaurant kitchen didn't seem to help Menendez the first time the feds came after him in 2015.

Speaker 12 Private jets, weekend getaways in the Dominican Republic, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cannabis.

Speaker 2 This case involved a wealthy Florida eye doctor who had been under investigation for Medicare fraud. The doctor had given Menendez expensive gifts and trips to the Dominican Republic and Paris.

Speaker 2 Menendez allegedly reached out to help the doctor's Medicare problems go away. He insisted the charges were unfair.

Speaker 13 Prosecutors at the Justice Department don't know the difference between friendship and corruption and have chosen to twist my duties as a senator and my friendship into something that is improper.

Speaker 2 Was it corruption or business as usual in Washington? It depends who you ask.

Speaker 14 Maybe I drank the Kool-Aid, but I really thought it was sort of unfair. They were criminalizing behavior that maybe wasn't wonderful, but certainly didn't deserve a federal indictment.

Speaker 2 This is Brad Lawrence.

Speaker 2 He creates messaging for political candidates.

Speaker 4 These are all Menendez files.

Speaker 2 And Lawrence has worked for nearly every major Democratic candidate in New Jersey for the past 40-odd years. He worked for Menendez the longest.

Speaker 14 That's like 18 inches of files. Well, and there's boxes.
I mean, don't forget this goes on for since 1982.

Speaker 2 And he was working for Menendez when the senator ran into trouble with the gifts from the eye doctor.

Speaker 14 I believe he legitimately felt he had done nothing wrong, certainly nothing illegal. And I think he was very angry about that.
I know he was very angry about that. And I don't know that he moved on.

Speaker 14 No, but it's an interesting idea that

Speaker 14 was that a breaking point where he felt like, okay, they're going to treat me like this, that I'm going to really get everything I'm due. I'm going to,

Speaker 14 you know.

Speaker 14 I don't know who was that literally transactional about it, but I have a feeling that it certainly made him feel like

Speaker 14 playing by the rules certainly didn't get him anything. And so you'd be angry.

Speaker 14 I mean, I think most people would be angry about being indicted and put through the wringer for something that they felt certainly didn't merit that.

Speaker 14 It's how you come out of that, maybe the more interesting question.

Speaker 2 The case ended in a hung jury, and Menendez walked out of the courthouse defiant, as if he'd been entirely exonerated.

Speaker 9 To those who were digging my political grave so that they could jump into my seat, I know who you are, and I won't forget you.

Speaker 2 The trial was also a pretty pivotal time in the senator's personal life. He and his fiancée broke up right before the trial began.

Speaker 2 And soon after the hung jury, he fell for someone new.

Speaker 2 He had met Nadine Arslanian at his usual breakfast spot, the IHOP in Union City.

Speaker 16 I just wanted to hear your voice.

Speaker 2 Voicemails from Nadine were entered as evidence in the second trial.

Speaker 16 I can't wait for you to hold my hands and go to sleep.

Speaker 3 A message from Nadine Arslanian to then-Senator Bob Menendez used by prosecutors as evidence. Our story continues in a moment.
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Speaker 3 This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Speaker 3 We're hearing the story today of Robert Menendez.

Speaker 3 He's the first senator or a former senator sentenced to prison for crimes in office in more than 40 years, which might tell you that political corruption is extremely rare, or in fact, it might tell you how rarely corruption is prosecuted.

Speaker 3 WNYC's reporter Nancy Solomon has been explaining Menendez's rise as a powerful New Jersey Democrat and then his fall.

Speaker 3 The evidence in the trial included gold bars, literal gold bars, and heaps of cash that were squirreled away in the house he shared with his wife Nadine, who is also being prosecuted in the case.

Speaker 2 Nadine Narslanian was born in Beirut. Her parents were Armenian.
They moved to New York in the late 1970s. She studied French culture and civilization at NYU and speaks French and Arabic.

Speaker 2 Nadine was a stay-at-home mom, raising her kids in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and she liked a a certain lifestyle.

Speaker 2 She drove her kids to a private French school in Manhattan and has been spotted with cast members of the Real Housewives of New Jersey.

Speaker 2 By the time she met Bob Menendez, she was long divorced, and by all accounts, it was a whirlwind romance.

Speaker 2 20 months after they began dating, Bob proposed to Nadine in front of the Taj Mahal.

Speaker 2 He's known for his crooning, and the YouTube video of this one has been viewed 86,000 times.

Speaker 2 Nicholas Charavalati, who recalled Menendez kicking his chair over in a meeting, understands what it might have felt like when Menendez began dating Nadine.

Speaker 2 As a former elected official himself, he gets the financial strain. Unlike plenty of politicians, Menendez is a guy who has never had a lot of money.

Speaker 10 I think that puts some pressure on you and causes you some doubts about what you should be earning. I think that does have an impact because you can't really do the things

Speaker 10 that I think other people can do.

Speaker 2 Bob Menendez had a new girlfriend and Nadine needed money. She had financial problems and would soon face foreclosure of her home.

Speaker 2 Tracy Tully, the New York Times reporter, says the bribery case began with a friendship between Nadine and an Egyptian-American who was just as broke as she was. One of the co-defendants, Will Hanna.

Speaker 6 Will Hanna is kind of a serial entrepreneur. He started a bunch of businesses and he lost his house in Bayonne.
He's got no money.

Speaker 6 And he becomes friends with Nadine Arslanian, who becomes Nadine Menendez.

Speaker 2 They both speak Arabic and were part of what you could call a lonely hearts club that often spent multiple nights a week hanging out in Bergen County restaurants.

Speaker 6 And somewhere along the way, somebody comes up with the idea to create this halal certification company.

Speaker 2 Halal meat certification. These companies inspect meat butchering facilities to ensure that the process is done according to Muslim rules.
It's like kosher, but it's halal.

Speaker 2 The Egyptian government chooses the businesses that certify meat imports into their country. And Will Hanna, Nadine's friend, was trying to work his connections in Egypt to get one of those contracts.

Speaker 2 But for a couple of years, prosecutors say he couldn't get any traction until Nadine started dating Menendez, the top Democrat of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

Speaker 16 Hi, it's me calling my very handsome senator.

Speaker 2 And within weeks, Nadine asks Menendez for a favor. Hopefully you could do it.
That he meet with a high-level Egyptian official.

Speaker 16 Just got off with the general. Since he has not met you before, he needs to have some kind of clearance from Egypt as to why he's needing a U.S.
senator out of his the embassy.

Speaker 2 And many meetings did happen. There were meetings with the Egyptian general and with Egyptian intelligence officers.
Many of them included Hama, the halal meat guy.

Speaker 6 And,

Speaker 6 you know, trial testimony showed that then

Speaker 6 the company took off and ultimately won a monopoly. Hanna's company was the gatekeeper to all of that product, so it made him a very wealthy man.

Speaker 2 But Larry Lusberg, Hannah's defense attorney, says his client was able to get the Egyptian monopoly on the strength of Hannah's own connections and business acumen. He's appealing the conviction.

Speaker 4 I will go to my grave believing that the government did not prove its case here.

Speaker 2 Regardless, Hanna and another co-defendant were convicted of bribing Menendez in part with the money made by the lucrative halal business. And the senator was convicted of three main things.

Speaker 2 One, he made calls to an official at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help Hanna maintain the monopoly.
That's the quid pro quo, what he did for the bribes.

Speaker 2 Two, he also contacted state and federal prosecutors and complained about criminal investigations against two of the men paying him off. That's obstruction of justice.

Speaker 2 And three, the Egyptian Egyptian government gave Hanna the monopoly. And Menendez, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, released a hold on military aid to Egypt.

Speaker 2 That's the acting as a foreign agent charge.

Speaker 2 Menendez was convicted on all counts and resigned from the Senate. He's now on the verge of becoming the first senator to go to prison in more than 40 years.

Speaker 2 Or maybe not.

Speaker 4 President Trump is right. This process is political and it's corrupted to the core.

Speaker 2 When he emerged from the sentencing, Menendez made his direct pitch to Donald Trump that his prosecution is just as wrong as Trump's.

Speaker 2 That was January 29th of this year, and it seemed far-fetched that Bob Menendez, a progressive who voted to impeach the president, would get a pardon from him.

Speaker 2 But two weeks later, Trump's Department of Justice ordered federal prosecutors in New York to drop their case against the Democratic mayor, Eric Adams.

Speaker 17 As someone who's a constitutional law professor, this is really irksome.

Speaker 2 Chara Torres-Spellasi teaches at the Stetson University College of Law in Florida. She writes about political corruption.

Speaker 17 It looks like there was a offer of a quid pro quo from the Adams team to Trump's DOJ.

Speaker 2 What do you think about the possibility that Donald Trump may pardon Menendez?

Speaker 17 Well, it would fit a pattern of the Trump pardons both in his first term and early in his second term.

Speaker 17 He has had a habit of pardoning people who have violated anti-corruption laws, whether they're white-collar crime anti-corruption laws or campaign finance laws.

Speaker 2 Some have argued that Menendez, because he is out of office and voted to impeach Trump, is is unlikely to get a pardon. But for Torres Belici, the president's history means all bets are off.

Speaker 17 It's hard to know who

Speaker 17 Trump will pardon next.

Speaker 17 One of the more recent pardons was for

Speaker 17 the former governor of Illinois, Rod Boglojevich. He was a Democrat, so I'm not sure whether the Democratic label matters so much to Trump.
He seems much more

Speaker 17 interested in undermining anti-corruption laws

Speaker 17 left, right, and center.

Speaker 2 Menendez has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. His lawyers aren't counting on a pardon and have said they'll appeal the conviction.
And the current U.S. Supreme Court, it might actually help.

Speaker 17 The Roberts Supreme Court has been steadily deregulating corruption. They've done this both in white-collar crime cases and in campaign finance cases.

Speaker 2 So the outlook for Bob Menendez is not quite as bleak as it might seem, despite facing 11 years in prison.

Speaker 2 But whether or not he receives a pardon or wins his appeal, it remains an epic collapse of what was a historic political career. He was the first in everything he did.

Speaker 2 First in his family to go to college. First Latino in New Jersey elected mayor, state legislator, and member of Congress.

Speaker 2 That's what what makes this case and the cartoonish details of gold bars and stacks of cash squirreled away in his home so mystifying to those who knew and respected him.

Speaker 2 Like Brad Lawrence, his consultant who worked on nearly every one of his campaigns.

Speaker 14 I don't want to be a Bob Menendez apologist, particularly in light of how it ended, but I also have, you know, a long history and a respect and affection for at least the first three-quarters of his life,

Speaker 14 political life. I don't have the answer to it.
I wish I did, and I feel like I'm an idiot that I don't have the answer for it. But,

Speaker 14 you know, it is to me an inexplicable and tragic way for him to go.

Speaker 3 Robert Menendez was sentenced to 11 years in prison. He remains free so he can attend Nadine Menendez's trial.
She also pleaded not guilty.

Speaker 3 There's more reporting on politics and crime from Nancy Solomon at dead endpodcast.org.

Speaker 3 That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks for listening.
See you next time.

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