Influential Democratic Senator Robert Menendez is being investigated by federal justice in New York, five years after he narrowly escaped a corruption conviction, the American press reported Wednesday.
The widely reported investigative site Semafor points out that prosecutors at the New York State Attorney’s Office in Manhattan are investigating the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee without specifying the content.
“Senator Menendez knows the press is reporting on an investigation today, but he doesn’t know the scope,” his political adviser Michael Soliman said in a statement sent to local media.
Neither he nor his Senate spokesman responded to inquiries from AFP.
Mr. Menendez is available to potential investigators, his adviser assured.
Robert Menendez, 68, of Cuban origin, born in New York, is a veteran politician in Washington. He was elected to the House of Representatives and then to the Senate by the Democrats for New Jersey between 1993 and 2006, where he chairs the powerful Foreign Affairs Committee.
The elected official has already had trouble with the federal judiciary.
Very rare for a senator, he was indicted on corruption charges in 2015 but his almost-concluded trial was canceled in 2017 for lack of a unanimous jury verdict.
The following year, the Justice Department — under Republican President Donald Trump — asked a judge to drop all corruption charges against Robert Menendez.
He was accused of using his position to defend the interests of a wealthy Florida friend, eye doctor, businessman and donor, Salomon Melgen, in exchange for gifts and campaign funding.
The senator would have benefited from free flights on private jets, a villa in the Dominican Republic, three nights in a Paris palace, meals, rounds of golf… and more than $750,000 in campaign contributions.
In exchange, according to the judiciary at the time, Mr. Menendez would have helped Mr. Melgen obtain a contract with Dominican Republic customs, intervened to allow the doctor’s foreign girlfriends to obtain American visas, or to settle a dispute with the Department of Health.
The Washington Post recalled Wednesday that Mr. Melgen, who was sentenced to 17 years in prison for fraud in 2017, was pardoned and released on January 20, 2021, the last day of the Trump presidency.