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A former lawyer who was accused of trying to bribe the Medford police chief to get city approval for a pot shop has been sentenced to prison.
Somerville man Sean O’Donovan, 56, was sentenced on Wednesday to two years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.
O’Donovan was also ordered to pay a $150,000 fine.
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The owner of a suburban Chicago construction company last week pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe an employee of the Cook County Assessor’s Office in return for favorable property assessments.
Alex Nitchoff, 56, of Lemont, Illinois, pleaded guilty one count of conspiring to corruptly give something of value to influence and reward a public official, and one count of using an interstate facility to facilitate bribery, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Each count is punishable by up to five years in federal prison.
Nitchoff admitted to participating in a conspiracy to bribe an employee of the Cook County Assessor’s Office in exchange for favorable property assessments. Nitchoff’s sentencing for May 8.
According to court documents, Nitchoff confessed to collaborating with others between 2016 and 2019 to provide complimentary home improvement services and materials to Lavdim Memisovski, an employee of the Cook County Assessor’s Office.
The services, which included various enhancements to Memisovski’s personal residence such as concrete work, decking materials, fencing, and more, were offered with the intention of influencing Memisovski’s professional actions regarding property tax assessments. In exchange for these favors, Memisovski reportedly undertook official actions that reduced property taxes for Nitchoff’s properties by an estimated $550,000.
Nitchoff’s employee, John Bodendorfer, also faced charges related to the bribery scheme but pleaded not guilty and awaits trial. Similarly, Memisovski, who previously admitted to his involvement in the conspiracy, is awaiting sentencing.
This case is part of a broader investigation that has ensnared multiple individuals associated with the Cook County Assessor’s Office. Among them are two other employees, Basilio Clausen and Lumni Likovski, who have pleaded not guilty to bribery charges and are awaiting trial for allegedly accepting bribes in exchange for reducing property assessments.
Additionally, Robert Mitziga, the owner of a fence installation company, faces similar bribery charges and has pleaded not guilty. The seventh defendant, former City of Chicago building inspector Joseph E. Garcia, has already been sentenced to probation for falsely claiming to have inspected home repair projects.
Assistance in this investigation was provided by the IRS Criminal Investigation Division and the City of Chicago Inspector General’s Office, highlighting the collaborative efforts of various law enforcement agencies to uncover and address corruption within the real estate assessment system.
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A disgraced former Russian mayor convicted over bribery had his prison sentence cut short after signing a contract to fight with Russia’s military in Ukraine, local media reported Sunday.
Oleg Gumenyuk, who served as mayor of the far eastern city and cultural hub of Vladivostok between 2018 and 2021, was convicted last year of accepting bribes worth 38 million roubles (about $432,000) and sentenced to 12 years imprisonment.
However, he was released after agreeing to bear arms and fight as part of his country’s military operation in Ukraine that started nearly two years ago, his lawyer Andrei Kitaev told Russian news outlet Kommersant.
He said that the politician’s whereabouts were unknown, but that Gumenyuk was instructed to report to his military unit on Dec. 22.
Local officials for the Federal Penitentiary Service in the Primorsky region where the former mayor was held did not confirm the reports.
Photos circulating on social media show a man resembling Gumenyuk carrying a gun while being surrounded by other servicemen.
Russia has gone to extraordinary lengths to replenish its troops in Ukraine, including deploying thousands of prisoners directly from the country’s jails. Inmates who sign up for six months on the frontline are pardoned upon their return.
It’s not the first time that authorities have used such a tactic, with the Soviet Union employing “prisoner battalions” during World War II.
Also on Sunday, shelling continued with a Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Kherson, injuring six people, the region’s military administration Sunday.
Four firefighters were also hurt after a drone hit a fire station in the wider Kherson region.
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian drone strike injured one at the Russian border village of Tetkino, Kursk region governor Roman Starovoyt said on social media.
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TOKYO — The bid-rigging trial around the Tokyo Olympics played out Tuesday in a Japanese courtroom — more than two years after the Games closed — with advertising giant Dentsu and five other companies facing criminal charges.
Seven individuals are also facing charges from Tokyo district prosecutors in the cases, including Koji Henmi, who oversaw the sports division at Dentsu at the time.
Executives or management-level officials at each of the accused companies, and Tokyo Olympic organizing committee official Yasuo Mori, have been charged with violating anti-monopoly laws.
Among the companies facing charges are Dentsu Group, Hakuhodo, Tokyu Agency and event organizer Cerespo. All deal with event organizing, sports promotion or marketing.
Dentsu has a long history of lining up sponsorships and advertising with bodies like World Athletics, headed by Sebastian Coe, and the Switzerland-based International Olympic Committee, led by Thomas Bach.
Genta Yoshino, the lawyer for Henmi, did not deny the bid-rigging took place. Speaking in Tokyo district court, he said no bid process was ever decided upon or set up by the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee.
“Even if what happened gets categorized as bid-rigging, all my client did was abide by the organizing committee’s intentions, following their instructions,” Yoshino told the court, presided over by a panel of three judges.
Yoshino said his client merely did his best to make the Olympics a success. Henmi was under pressure from the IOC, which repeatedly expressed doubts about the ability of the Tokyo organizers, Yoshino added.
The organizing committee was headed at the time by Yoshiro Mori, a former Japanese prime minister who was eventually forced to resign as the head of Tokyo 2020. The CEO was Toshiro Muto, a former deputy director of the Bank of Japan.
The maximum penalty for a company convicted of bid-rigging is a fine of up to 500 million yen ($3.3 million). An individual, if found guilty, faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to 5 million yen ($33,000).
Trials take months in Japan, sometimes years. The next session in the trial was scheduled for Jan. 15, 2024. It’s unclear when a verdict may come.
Dentsu was a key force in landing the Olympics for Tokyo in 2013. French prosecutors have looked into allegations that IOC members may have been bribed to vote for Tokyo.
Once the Olympics landed in Tokyo, Dentsu became the chief marketing arm of the Games and raised a record $3.3 billion in local sponsorship. Dentsu received a commission on the sales — sales that were at least twice as large as any previous Olympics.
The reports of corruption surrounding Dentsu also forced the resignation in 2019 of Tsunekazu Takeda, the head of the Japanese Olympic Committee and an IOC member who headed Olympic marketing.
Tokyo organizers say they spent $13 billion to organize the 2020 Olympics, which were delayed a year by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a government audit suggests the expenditure might have been twice that. At least 60% was public money.
The Tokyo scandal ruined the chances of the northern city of Sapporo of landing the 2030 Winter Olympics. It had been a strong favorite but was forced to withdraw. The IOC last week said it favored a French Alps bid for the 2030 Games with Salt Lake City the preferred choice for 2034.
Earlier this year French police searched the headquarters of the 2024 Paris Olympics in an investigation over contracts linked to the Games.
In the wake of the scandal, Dentsu has been restricted from bidding on contracts for the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and by the city of Osaka and the local prefecture, which is hosting the 2025 World Exposition.
Tokyo prosecutors have also been investigating a separate bribery scandal centered around Haruyuki Takahashi, a former Dentsu executive. Takahashi was a member of the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee and wielded powerful influence over the Olympic business.
Takahashi’s trial opens Dec. 14. He has not publicly acknowledged guilt, or made any statement, and speculation is rife he will fight the charges.
The scandal involving Takahashi involves bribery allegations over Olympic sponsorships that were won by companies such as Aoki Holdings, a clothing company that dressed Japan’s Olympic team, and Sun Arrow, which produced the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic mascots.
Some company officials have already been convicted, but did not receive jail time. Almost all criminal trials in Japan result in guilty verdicts. The defense, including Henmi’s, is trying to salvage the client’s reputation and minimize any fines.
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AP coverage of the Paris Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
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OMAHA, Neb. — Warren Buffett’s company decided not to move forward with an expedited trial on its bribery allegations against the billionaire Haslam family in January under the strict conditions a judge set, but it will still be able to raise those concerns then as a judge considers the Haslams’ rival claim that Berkshire Hathaway tried to depress the Pilot truck stop chain’s earnings.
Both the Haslams and Berkshire have accused each other of trying to manipulate the profits at the nation’s largest truck stop chain because those numbers will determine how much Berkshire has to pay if the family decides to sell its remaining 20% stake in the business next year as expected. The two sides agreed on a formula in 2017 when the family decided to sell the first chunk of the business that sets the price based on the earnings.
The Haslams argue that Berkshire is trying to keep earnings down with an accounting change at Pilot while Berkshire says that Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam tried to bribe executives at the truck stop chain his family used to run to inflate earnings at the company. The Haslam family includes Jimmy Haslam and former Tennessee governor Bill Haslam and their father who founded the company.
A Delaware judge already scheduled a two-day January trial on the allegations the Haslams made about the accounting change in its initial lawsuit in October. But the judge said that if Berkshire wanted to get a decision on its bribery allegations at the same time it would have to forego requesting any additional evidence beforehand and limit the number of witnesses it would call.
It won’t be clear until after that January trial when Berkshire’s bribery allegations will be tried.
The Haslams received $2.758 billion in 2017 when Berkshire bought its initial 38.6% stake in Pilot and another $8.2 billion this year when it took control of 80% and became the majority owner. Buffett told Berkshire shareholders this spring that he would have preferred to buy the whole company at once because the price was better in 2017, but the Haslams wouldn’t sell it all then.
It’s not clear exactly how much the remaining stake is worth. The Haslam family estimates that the stake was worth $3.2 billion before the accounting change. Berkshire disputes that figure.
The Haslams’ attorney called that accusation a “wild invention” but Berkshire said it believes Jimmy Haslam offered millions to at least 28 executives to make short-term moves that would boost profits.
Berkshire said it learned about the bribery scheme just a few weeks ago after an executive who had been offered one of the bonuses came forward to the new CEO Berkshire appointed after it became the majority owner.
Even though the bribery allegations won’t be decided in January, Berkshire still plans to make them part of its defense against the Haslams’ lawsuit.
Berkshire wanted the court to prevent the Haslams from exercising their option to sell the rest of the company to Berkshire next year because it says there are so many doubts about the accuracy of Pilot’s 2023 earnings. The Haslams have the option to decide to sell at the start of every year under the agreement they signed back in 2017.
The Knoxville, Tennessee-based Pilot has more than 850 locations and roughly 30,000 employees in the United States and Canada has already provided a significant boost to Berkshire’s revenue and profits this year.
In addition to the truck stops, Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire owns an eclectic assortment of other businesses including Geico insurance, BNSF railroad and several major utilities along with a number of smaller manufacturing and retail businesses. It also holds a sizeable stock portfolio with big stakes in Apple, Coca-Cola, American Express and Bank of America among other holdings.
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TRENTON, N.J. — New Jersey first lady Tammy Murphy on Wednesday launched a bid for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in next year’s contest.
Her candidacy, announced Wednesday, puts her in the running to become the first woman elected to the Senate from New Jersey. The Democratic primary already features U.S. Rep. Andy Kim and could include Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who has lost significant party support amid federal bribery charges but has not ruled out a run in 2024.
“We need a senator who will work every single day to lower the cost of living, protect abortion rights, end the gun violence epidemic, and defend our democracy,” Murphy said in a roughly four-minute-long video posted online.
The first lady, 58, is a constant at events alongside her husband, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, and has taken on maternal and infant health and the environment as her top priorities — issues she highlighted in her announcement.
A Virginia native and University of Virginia graduate, Tammy Murphy worked in finance at Goldman Sachs alongside Phil Murphy before the couple settled in New Jersey. They have four children.
Democrats picked up at least five seats in the Assembly in this year’s midterm legislative elections, a boon for the governor, who is in the final two years of his second term.
Those successes could translate into critical county support for the first lady, who campaigned alongside the governor to increase their party’s legislative majorities. A number of key county party chairmen set candidate ballot positions, and support from the county party frequently leads to electoral success.
Debbie Walsh, the director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University said the system, which can often surprise political newcomers, could work to elect a woman to the Senate in this case.
“This is one individual woman who has the advantage here of being able to use the system that has been the challenge or the barrier to women’s participation. In some ways maybe that’s the way we get the first woman in the Senate, maybe that’s the breakthrough,” Walsh said.
Patricia Campos-Medina, a political activist and labor leader, said she is also considering a run on the Democratic side and that she’s heard from people that they’re concerned about the possibility of losing a Latino voice in the U. S. Senate if Menendez doesn’t return. She also said she thinks this is a prime moment to fight for workers and, like Tammy Murphy, to stand up for women’s reproductive rights.
On the GOP side, Mendham Mayor Christine Serrano Glassner is seeking the Senate seat next year. Serrano Glassner said in a written statement that Tammy Murphy’s candidacy reflects “cronyism” in Democratic politics.
New Jersey’s primary is June 4.
Tammy Murphy is well known in New Jersey’s political circles. Before the governor’s first run for office in 2017, she worked to set up a think tank he used to showcase policy ideas. She is the honorary chair of the New Jersey Council on the Green Economy and launched Nurture NJ, an initiative aimed at boosting infant and maternal health and lowering maternal mortality, with a goal of cutting maternal mortality by 50% by 2026.
A former Republican, Tammy Murphy has spoken about growing up in a GOP-leaning area of Virginia and has previously donated to the Republican party. She became a Democrat before her husband’s run for office.
The first lady was named in a gender discrimination lawsuit this year brought by state troopers who worked on the detail responsible for providing security for the governor. The suit alleges that Tammy Murphy denied a trooper the use of a carriage house on Murphy’s property to pump breast milk.
In a statement this week, she denied the allegations as “outrageous and categorically false.”
Menendez has pleaded not guilty to federal charges. Prosecutors have said the senator and his wife, Nadine Menendez, accepted bribes of cash, gold bars and a luxury car over the past five years from three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for a variety of corrupt acts. He’s also accused of being an unregistered agent on behalf of Egypt.
He hasn’t said whether he’ll seek reelection in 2024 but remarked after being indicted that he’s “not going anywhere.”
Menendez criticized Tammy Murphy in a statement Wednesday for being a “card-carrying Republican for years” and said she’d have to answer for the policies of her husband’s administration, echoing similar attacks the GOP tried against the governor in his 2021 reelection bid.
“I’ll gladly put my record of success on behalf of the people of New Jersey against anyone,” Menendez said.
He was first appointed to the Senate seat in 2006 after the vacancy caused by Jon Corzine’s election as governor of New Jersey. Menendez has since won three elections to the Senate.
Menendez’s indictment led to a collapse of Democratic support in the state for him.
Kim, a three-term representative from the state’s 3rd District, announced his candidacy just a day after the corruption charges against Menendez, saying he believed New Jersey deserved better. He was the first Asian American elected from New Jersey, according to the U.S. House historian’s database.
He said in a statement Wednesday that voters want someone “battle tested and proven so we don’t let Washington Republicans take back the Senate.”
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A diver who spotted something metallic not far from Sardinia’s coast has led to the discovery of tens of thousands of ancient bronze coins
ByThe Associated Press
November 4, 2023, 1:00 PM
A picture made available by the Italian Culture Minister showing some of the discovered ancient bronze coins. A diver’s spotting something metallic not far from the Sardinian coast has led to the discovery of tens of thousands of ancient bronze coins. Italy’s culture ministry said on Saturday, Nov. 4, 2023, that the diver alerted authorities, who sent divers assigned to an art protection squad along with others from the ministry’s undersea archaeology department. Found in sea grass, not far from the northeast shore of the Mediterranean island were the coins dating from the first half of the 4th century. (Italian Culture Ministry Via AP)
The Associated Press
ROME — A diver who spotted something metallic not far from Sardinia’s coast has led to the discovery of tens of thousands of ancient bronze coins.
Italy’s culture ministry said Saturday that the diver alerted authorities, who sent divers assigned to an art protection squad along with others from the ministry’s undersea archaeology department.
The coins dating from the first half of the fourth century were found in sea grass, not far from the northeast shore of the Mediterranean island. The ministry didn’t say exactly when the first diver caught a glimpse of something metallic just off shore Sardinia, not far from the town of Arzachena.
Exactly how many coins have been retrieved hasn’t been determined yet, as they are being sorted. A ministry statement estimated that there are at least about 30,000 and possibly as many as 50,000, given their collective weight.
“All the coins were in an excellent and rare state of preservation,” the ministry said. The few coins that were damaged still had legible inscriptions, it said.
“The treasure found in the waters off Arzachena represent one of the most important coin discoveries,” in recent years, said Luigi La Rocca, a Sardinian archaeology department official.
La Rocca added in a statement that the find is “further evidence of the richness and importance of the archaeological heritage that the seabed of our seas, crossed by men and goods from the most ancient of epochs, still keep and preserve.”
Firefighter divers and border police divers were also involved in locating and retrieving the coins.
The coins were mainly found in a wide area of sand between the underwater seagrass and the beach, the ministry said. Given the location and shape of the seabed, there could be remains of ship wreckage nearby, the ministry said.
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U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez is returning to Manhattan federal court to enter a not guilty plea to a conspiracy charge alleging that he acted as an agent of the Egyptian government even as he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
ByLARRY NEUMEISTER Associated Press
October 23, 2023, 12:10 AM
FILE – Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., listens during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023, at the Capitol in Washington. Menendez returns to Manhattan federal court on Monday, Oct. 23, to enter a not guilty plea to a conspiracy charge alleging that he acted as an agent of the Egyptian government even as he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough, File)
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez returns to court Monday to enter an expected not guilty plea to a conspiracy charge alleging that he acted as an agent of the Egyptian government even as he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Menendez, 69, was scheduled to appear in the afternoon before Judge Sidney H. Stein at federal court in Manhattan.
The Democrat stepped down from his powerful post leading the Senate committee after he was charged last month. Prosecutors said the senator and his wife, Nadine Menendez, accepted bribes of cash, gold bars and a luxury car over the past five years from three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for a variety of corrupt acts.
The other defendants entered not guilty charges to a superseding indictment last week. The senator was permitted to delay his arraignment so he could tend to Senate duties. He has said that throughout his whole life he has been loyal to the United States and that he will show his innocence.
Menendez has resisted calls from more than 30 Democrats that he resign.
The rewritten indictment added a charge alleging that the senator, his wife and one of the businessmen conspired to have Menendez act as an agent of the government of Egypt and Egyptian officials.
As a member of Congress, Menendez is prohibited from acting as an agent for a foreign government.
Menendez is accused of passing information to the Egyptians about the staff at the U.S. embassy in Cairo, ghostwriting a letter on Egypt’s behalf intended to influence fellow senators and urging the U.S. State Department to get more involved in international negotiations to block a dam project Egypt opposed, among other things.
Last week, Nadine Menendez and a businessman, Wael Hana, pleaded not guilty to the superseding indictment.
Both of them were charged with conspiring with the senator to use him as an agent of the government of Egypt and its officials. The charge carries a potential penalty of up to five years in prison.
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U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez is returning to Manhattan federal court to enter a not guilty plea to a conspiracy charge alleging that he acted as an agent of the Egyptian government even as he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
ByLARRY NEUMEISTER Associated Press
October 23, 2023, 12:10 AM
FILE – Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., listens during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023, at the Capitol in Washington. Menendez returns to Manhattan federal court on Monday, Oct. 23, to enter a not guilty plea to a conspiracy charge alleging that he acted as an agent of the Egyptian government even as he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough, File)
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez returns to court Monday to enter an expected not guilty plea to a conspiracy charge alleging that he acted as an agent of the Egyptian government even as he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Menendez, 69, was scheduled to appear in the afternoon before Judge Sidney H. Stein at federal court in Manhattan.
The Democrat stepped down from his powerful post leading the Senate committee after he was charged last month. Prosecutors said the senator and his wife, Nadine Menendez, accepted bribes of cash, gold bars and a luxury car over the past five years from three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for a variety of corrupt acts.
The other defendants entered not guilty charges to a superseding indictment last week. The senator was permitted to delay his arraignment so he could tend to Senate duties. He has said that throughout his whole life he has been loyal to the United States and that he will show his innocence.
Menendez has resisted calls from more than 30 Democrats that he resign.
The rewritten indictment added a charge alleging that the senator, his wife and one of the businessmen conspired to have Menendez act as an agent of the government of Egypt and Egyptian officials.
As a member of Congress, Menendez is prohibited from acting as an agent for a foreign government.
Menendez is accused of passing information to the Egyptians about the staff at the U.S. embassy in Cairo, ghostwriting a letter on Egypt’s behalf intended to influence fellow senators and urging the U.S. State Department to get more involved in international negotiations to block a dam project Egypt opposed, among other things.
Last week, Nadine Menendez and a businessman, Wael Hana, pleaded not guilty to the superseding indictment.
Both of them were charged with conspiring with the senator to use him as an agent of the government of Egypt and its officials. The charge carries a potential penalty of up to five years in prison.
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A Silicon Valley executive who lied to investors about inventing technology that tested for allergies and COVID-19 using only a few drops of blood has sentenced to eight years in prison and ordered to pay $24 million in restitution
ByThe Associated Press
October 18, 2023, 7:51 PM
SAN JOSE, Calif. — A Silicon Valley executive who lied to investors about inventing technology that tested for allergies and COVID-19 using only a few drops of blood was sentenced Wednesday to eight years in prison and ordered to pay $24 million in restitution, federal prosecutors said.
Mark Schena, 60, was convicted last year of paying bribes to doctors and defrauding the government after his company billed Medicare $77 million for fraudulent COVID-19 and allergy tests, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.
Schena claimed his Sunnyvale, California-based company, Arrayit Corporation, had the only laboratory in the world that offered “revolutionary microarray technology” that allowed it to test for allergies and COVID-19 with the same finger-stick test kit, prosecutors said.
In meetings with investors, Schena claimed he was on the shortlist for the Nobel Prize and falsely represented that Arrayit could be valued at $4.5 billion, prosecutors said.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, from 2018 through February 2020, Schena and other employees paid bribes to recruiters and doctors to run an allergy screening test for 120 allergens ranging from stinging insects to food allergens on every patient whether they were needed or not, authorities said.
The case against Schena shared similarities with a more prominent legal saga surrounding former Silicon Valley star Elizabeth Holmes, who dropped out of Stanford University in 2003 to found a company called Theranos that she pledged would revolutionize health care with a technology that could scan for hundreds of diseases and other issues with just a few drops of blood, too.
Holmes was convicted on four felony counts of investor fraud following a nearly four-month trial in the same San Jose, California, courtroom where Schena’s trial was held. In May, Holmes entered a Texas prison where she could spend the next 11 years.
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Two lobbyists have been sentenced to prison for bribing the head of a Michigan marijuana licensing board
ByThe Associated Press
October 18, 2023, 1:07 PM
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Two lobbyists were sentenced to federal prison Wednesday for conspiring to provide $42,000 in bribes to the head of a Michigan marijuana licensing board.
Brian Pierce and Vincent Brown were partners and consultants for the state’s fledgling marijuana industry when Rick Johnson, formerly known as a powerful Republican lawmaker, led the board in 2017-19.
Pierce was sentenced to two years in prison while Brown received a 20-month term from U.S. District Judge Jane Beckering.
“Choices were made, and each time they were the wrong ones,” Pierce told the judge.
The board reviewed and approved applications to grow and sell marijuana for medical purposes. Johnson was recently sentenced to more than four years in prison for accepting $110,000 when he was in charge.
Pierce was greedy and in a “dark place” when he conspired to bribe Johnson, defense attorney Ben Gonek said in a court filing.
Prosecutors said the corruption included paying a Detroit stripper $2,000 to have sex with Johnson.
“They owned Rick Johnson. … They cheated, and they put at a disadvantage those people who followed the rules,” U.S. Attorney Mark Totten told reporters outside court.
In a letter to the judge, Brown said he followed Pierce’s “lead in virtually every facet” of being a lobbyist.
“I was too foolish and blinded by the dollars to refuse to participate in the bribery scheme,” Brown said.
Four people pleaded guilty. A Detroit-area businessman who paid bribes, John Dalaly, was recently sentenced to more than two years in prison.
Michigan voters legalized marijuana for medical purposes in 2008. A decade later, voters approved the recreational use of marijuana.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer abolished the medical marijuana board a few months after taking office in 2019 and put oversight of the industry inside a state agency.
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MIAMI — A suspended Miami city commissioner who is accused of accepting $245,000 in exchange for voting to approve construction of a sports facility has pleaded not guilty to multiple felony charges, including bribery and money laundering.
Alex Diaz de la Portilla did not appear in court Friday, but his attorney, Ben Kuehne, entered the plea for him.
Diaz de la Portilla and a co-defendant, Miami attorney William Riley Jr., were arrested Sept. 14.
Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended Diaz de la Portilla, who is a fellow Republican, after the commissioner’s arrest. Kuehne said Friday that his client was campaigning for the Nov. 7 election to keep his seat on the commission.
“We look forward to a vindication of these charges because Alex is not guilty,” Kuehne said at the Miami-Dade criminal courthouse, according to the Miami Herald.
Kuehne requested that Diaz de la Portilla be tried separately from Riley, WPLG-TV reported.
On Friday, Riley’s attorney also entered a not guilty plea for his client, who did not appear in court. Riley is accused of being the front for the business that allegedly gave money to the Diaz de la Portilla campaign in exchange for the right to build a sports facility on land that is now a downtown city park.
Both men bonded out of jail soon after being arrested, and their next status hearing is Nov. 14. A trial date has not been set.
Diaz de la Portilla is a former state legislator and was elected to the city commission in 2019.
Investigators said Diaz de la Portilla and Riley accepted more than $15,000 for the Miami-Dade County Court judicial campaign of Diaz de la Portilla’s brother but did not report the money, as required by state law. Riley also controlled a bank account in the name of a Delaware-based corporation to launder about $245,000 in concealed political contributions made by a management services company in exchange for permission to build a sports complex, officials said.
Investigators also said Diaz de la Portilla operated and controlled two political committees used both for his brother’s campaign and for personal spending. Records showed one of the committees reported donations of about $2.3 million and the other reported more than $800,000.
Diaz de La Portilla and Riley are each charged with one count of money laundering, three counts of unlawful compensation or reward for official behavior, one count of bribery and one count of criminal conspiracy.
Diaz de la Portilla is also charged with four counts of official misconduct, one count of campaign contribution in excess of legal limits and two counts of failure to report a gift. Riley is also charged with failure to disclose lobbyist expenses.
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NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Sam Bankman-Fried’s former top executive, testifying in Manhattan federal court Wednesday, blamed the FTX founder for corrupting her values so she could lie and steal and got emotional when describing the cryptocurrency empire’s final days, saying the collapse of his businesses resulted in a “relief that I didn’t have to lie anymore.”
Caroline Ellison, who eventually was made chief executive of Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency hedge fund, Alameda Research, blamed the man she was entwined with romantically for several years since 2018 for creating justifications so that she could do things that she now admits were wrong and illegal.
Testifying for a second day, she recalled that Bankman-Fried said he wanted to do the greatest good for the most people and that rules like “don’t lie” or “don’t steal” must sometimes be set aside, effectively that the ends justified the means.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon asked Ellison how she was affected by Bankman-Fried’s philosophy.
“I think it made me more willing to do things like lie and steal over time,” she said.
Ellison spent much of the last two days walking the jury through how she, at Bankman-Fried’s direction, repeatedly had to tap into the customer deposits at FTX to solve problems at the hedge fund or at the exchange. FTX deposits would be withdrawn to pay for new investments or political donations, or to hide steep losses on Alameda’s balance sheet, she testified. All of this was done at the direction of Bankman-Fried.
All the while, Bankman-Fried put on a public veneer of being a good steward of cryptocurrency markets, cultivating relationships with politicians and the public. Ellison testified that Bankman-Fried once described his then-unkept hair as “valuable” to his image, and deliberately drove a Toyota Corolla to appear modest.
After several hours on the witness stand, Ellison got choked up as she described the final days of FTX and Alameda, saying that the early November period before the businesses filed for bankruptcy “was overall the worst week of my life.”
Still, she said she felt bad for “all the people harmed” when there wasn’t enough money left for all of FTX’s customers and Alameda’s lenders.
When the end arrived, Ellison said it left her with a “sense of relief that I didn’t have to lie anymore.”
Alameda was seen as a dumping ground for the problems of FTX and Bankman-Fried, and its fuel was FTX customer money. When FTX lost hundreds of millions of dollars on a cryptocurrency known as Mobilecoin due to failures of FTX’s systems, the losses were moved onto Alameda’s balance sheet.
Some of the more surprising testimony from Ellison came as she described what she said was a large bribe of over $100 million that was paid to Chinese officials to get them to free up $1 billion that was frozen in 2021 in cryptocurrency exchanges in China because of a money laundering investigation of someone who had once been an Alameda customer.
She said FTX and Alameda executives tried hiring a lawyer in China to negotiate the release of the funds and tried to siphon away the $1 billion through accounts set up in the names of “Thai prostitutes” before finally settling on the bribery scheme.
“Sam initially said no, but eventually changed his mind,” Ellison said. The funds were eventually released. While the payments came out of Alameda’s accounts, the funds ultimately came from FTX customer deposits.
Bankman-Fried was charged earlier this year with conspiracy to violate the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in connection with what prosecutors said was a $40 million bribe, but the charge was withdrawn because Bahamian authorities had not approved it as part of Bankman-Fried’s extradition.
Ellison revealed that she had to doctor balance sheets to try to hide that Alameda was borrowing about $10 billion from FTX customers in June 2022, when the cryptocurrency market was falling dramatically and some lenders were demanding that Alameda return their investments in full. She said she once created seven different balance sheets after Bankman-Fried directed her to find ways to conceal things that might look bad to Alameda’s lenders.
“I didn’t really want to be dishonest, but I also didn’t want them to know the truth,” Ellison said.
She said a few years earlier, she would never have believed that she would one day be sending false balance sheets to lenders or misallocating customer money, “but I think it became something I became more comfortable with as I was working there.”
Ellison said she was in a “constant state of dread” at that point, fearful that a rush of customer withdrawals from FTX couldn’t be met or that what they had done would become public.
“In June 2022, we were in the bad situation and I was concerned that if anybody found out, it would all come crashing down,” she said.
The crash came last November, when FTX couldn’t fulfill a rush of customer withdrawals, forcing it into bankruptcy and prompting investigations by prosecutors and regulators.
“I was terrified,” she said. “This was what I had been worried about the past several months and it was finally happening.”
Ellison, 28, pleaded guilty to fraud charges in December, when Bankman-Fried was extradited to the United States from the Bahamas.
She is expected to be cross-examined on Thursday.
Bankman-Fried, 31, has pleaded not guilty to fraud charges. His lawyers say he was not criminally to blame for what happened to his businesses.
Initially confined to his parents’ Palo Alto, California, home under terms of a $250 million bond, Bankman-Fried has been jailed since August after Judge Lewis A. Kaplan concluded that he had tried to improperly influence potential witnesses, including Ellison.
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For more AP coverage of Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX: https://apnews.com/hub/sam-bankman-fried
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NEW YORK — In his two decades as a professional drug snitch, Jorge Hernández was a master of the double cross.
He lied to his handlers, threatened to unmask fellow informants and even admitted killing three people during his days as a cocaine runner. But time and again, he leveraged his extensive contacts in the narcotrafficking underworld to stay alive, avoid the inside of a jail cell and keep making money.
Now Hernández has turned the tables again, this time on the same U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration that launched his lucrative career as the go-to fixer for traffickers, prosecutors and defense attorneys alike. And he’s delivered his most explosive trophy yet: two veteran DEA agents charged in a $73,000 bribery conspiracy involving leaked information about ongoing drug investigations.
Hernández, a beefy, bald-headed figure known by the Spanish nickname Boliche – bowling ball – made secret recordings for the FBI and is expected to play a key role this month in the Manhattan federal court trial of former DEA supervisors Manny Recio and John Costanzo Jr. It’s a case that threatens to expose the seamy underbelly of the nation’s premier narcotics law enforcement agency, which has seen at least 18 agents charged or convicted of crimes since 2015, many for being too cozy with informants.
Not on trial but in the middle of it all is a fiercely competitive circle of high-priced Miami defense attorneys flippantly referred to as the “white powder bar.” Their stock in trade is not so much the finer points of law but in scrambling to sign up kingpin clients before the ink is dry on their indictments, negotiating surrender deals and converting them into government cooperators.
In such a world, informants like Hernández thrive by trading in the currency of information — who will be charged and when, said Steven Dudley, co-founder of Insight Crime, a research center focused on Latin America.
“He’s a linchpin in a corrupt system that is about making cases and making money,” Dudley said.
“When cases are made everyone wins,” he added. “The narcos get lower sentences and get to keep some proceeds, the prosecutors and agents get promotions, and the lawyers rake in the money. The only loser is Lady Justice.”
The case is just the latest embarrassment for the DEA, following the arrest of a standout agent in Colombia who laundered money for the cartels and spent lavishly on Tiffany jewels and VIP travel, and another accused of accepting $250,000 in bribes to protect the Mafia in Buffalo, New York.
Hernández’s central role in the latest case emerged from an Associated Press review of hundreds of court records, some of which have never been revealed publicly, and interviews with 12 current and former law enforcement officials familiar with his career as a confidential informant, including several who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the matter.
Lawyers for Recio and Costanzo have raised concerns in court papers about Hernández’s criminal history, particularly the three people he admitted to killing prior to becoming an informant. But prosecutors insist he is reliable, pointing to bank records and wiretapped calls they say corroborate his testimony.
“Just because someone has committed crimes doesn’t mean that we immediately discount everything they say,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheb Swett told a judge earlier this year.
Neither the DEA nor the Justice Department responded to requests for comment. Hernández hung up when contacted by the AP.
“Call the Justice Department’s customer service line,” he later texted. “They have all the information you desire.”
Court records show the 56-year old Hernández began his criminal climb in the 1990s dispatching boatloads of cocaine for the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia, a right-wing group that later morphed into one of the world’s largest drug-trafficking organizations.
In 2000, after a warlord placed a hit on him, he fled to neighboring Venezuela, where he was arrested. After paying bribes to secure his release, he approached the DEA about becoming an informant.
By all accounts, Hernández proved an adept casemaker, developing a reputation for delivering results but also aggressive behavior toward friends and foes alike.
Agents grew so reliant on Hernández’s network of more than 100 informants across Latin America and the Caribbean that they set him up with a phone and desk at the Tampa headquarters of Operation Panama Express, a federal anti-narcotics task force combining resources from the FBI, DEA, U.S. Coast Guard and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
However, people familiar with Hernández’s past say his luck ran out in 2008 when he was recorded threatening to expose federal informants as snitches unless they paid him to keep quiet. Court records show the DEA abruptly terminated his cooperation agreement and he returned to Venezuela.
But when one door closed, another opened. Despite being blackballed as an informant, Hernández continued to keep in close contact with the DEA and in 2016 met Costanzo, who was supervising agents in Miami investigating Colombian businessman Alex Saab, a suspected bag man for Venezuela’s socialist leader, Nicolas Maduro. At some point, Hernández was also receiving money transfers on Saab’s behalf from offshore accounts and banished from the case, people close to the probe said.
Shortly after, Hernández started cooperating with the FBI in New York, which had its own investigation into Saab. This time his payout wasn’t in cash — it was in seeking to avoid his own criminal exposure.
In 2017, Hernández connected Saab with Bruce Bagley, a University of Miami expert on narcotics trafficking. At Hernández’s urging, Bagley received $3 million from accounts controlled by Saab in the United Arab Emirates and Switzerland. He then transferred the money to Hernández, prosecutors have said, believing it would be forwarded to Saab’s U.S. attorneys, who were secretly negotiating a deal for Saab to turn on Maduro.
But the professor admitted keeping a 10% commission and in 2021 was sentenced to six months in prison for money laundering.
People familiar with the case told the AP that Hernández was also charged under seal in the same money laundering scheme, and that may have pushed him to keep cooperating.
Court papers show that in early 2019, at the FBI’s direction, Hernández recorded conversations with Recio as well as Miami attorney Luis Guerra in which they discussed recruiting targets of DEA investigations as clients using confidential information allegedly furnished by Costanzo. Recio had recently retired from DEA and was working as a private investigator with Guerra and another attorney, David Macey.
Recio is accused in the indictment of speaking hundreds of times on a burner phone he purchased for Costanzo to allegedly coordinate unlawful searches of criminal databases. In exchange, Recio allegedly directed purchases to Costanzo totaling $73,000, including plane tickets and a down payment on a condo. Prosecutors did not allege in the indictment that the lawyers were aware of those gifts.
Also under scrutiny were conversations between Recio and Costanzo discussing confidential DEA plans in 2019 to arrest another potential client. César Peralta was a high-level trafficker in the Dominican Republic who was able to elude capture for more than four months despite a massive search involving 700 law enforcement officials, according to court documents and people familiar with the case.
The task of reaching out to drug suspects to steer them to the attorneys of choice was assigned to Hernández, who was allegedly promised a generous cut of any legal fees.
“Don’t tell anybody where that information comes from,” Guerra tells Hernández in one recorded conversation, according to court documents and the people familiar with the case. “Do it the way you always do it, brother. Using your magic.”
Prosecutors declined to say whether any attorneys have been or will be charged. Attorneys for Recio and Costanzo did not respond to requests for comment, nor did Macey and Guerra.
Costanzo, who was suspended by the DEA after being indicted, denied in a 2019 FBI interview that he ever took anything of value. But he acknowledged that he and other agents sometimes tipped off defense attorneys as part of their mission to encourage suspects to turn themselves in and cooperate.
“We’ve been doing this for years,” he said.
As for Hernández, he’s still involved in Miami’s legal community, running Hernández de Luque Brothers, billed on its website as a “new kind of consulting firm for a changing world.”
“An integral part of our services is to work closely with our clients so that they can make the right decisions in selecting the right attorney.”
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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org.
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LOS ANGELES — A U.S. Navy sailor charged with providing sensitive military information to China pleaded guilty in Los Angeles on Tuesday to conspiring with a foreign intelligence officer and receiving a bribe, federal prosecutors said.
Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao, 26, originally pleaded not guilty when he was charged Aug. 4. The Justice Department alleges that Zhao, based at Naval Base Ventura County, north of Los Angeles, conspired to collect nearly $15,000 in bribes from a Chinese intelligence officer in exchange for information, photos and videos of involving Navy exercises, operations and facilities.
The information included plans for a large-scale U.S. military exercise in the Indo-Pacific region, which detailed the location and timing of naval force movements, prosecutors said. The Chinese officer told Zhao the information was needed for maritime economic research to inform investment decisions, according to the indictment.
Zhao, who also went by the name Thomas Zhao and held a U.S. security clearance, “admitted he engaged in a corrupt scheme to collect and transmit sensitive U.S. military information to the intelligence officer in violation of his official duties,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release Tuesday.
Zhao, of Monterey Park, California, faces a statutory maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison. He has been in custody since his arrest on Aug. 3.
Zhao was charged on the same day as another California-based Navy sailor who is accused of similar crimes. But they are separate cases, and federal officials haven’t said if the two were courted or paid by the same Chinese intelligence officer as part of a larger scheme.
Jinchao Wei, a 22-year-old assigned to the San Diego-based USS Essex, is charged with providing detailed information on the weapons systems and aircraft aboard the Essex and other amphibious assault ships that act as small aircraft carriers. He pleaded not guilty in federal court in San Diego.
Last week, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer was charged in Seattle with attempting to provide classified defense information to the Chinese security services during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sgt. Joseph Daniel Schmidt, 29, was arrested Oct. 6 at San Francisco International Airport as he arrived from Hong Kong, where he had been living since March 2020, the Justice Department said.
A federal grand jury returned an indictment charging him with retention and attempted delivery of national defense information. U.S. District Court records in Seattle did not yet list an attorney representing Schmidt on the charges, and neither the U.S. attorney’s office nor the federal public defender’s office had information about whether he had a lawyer.
An FBI declaration filed in the case quoted Schmidt as telling his sister in an email that he left the U.S. because he disagreed with unspecified aspects of American policy.
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TOKYO — An executive at Japanese publishing house Kadokawa was found guilty Tuesday of bribing a former Tokyo Olympics organizing committee member.
Toshiyuki Yoshihara, charged with paying 69 million yen ($463,000) to Haruyuki Takahashi, was given a two-year prison sentence, suspended for four years. That means he avoids prison, as long as he doesn’t break the law in the next four years.
Tokyo District Court Presiding Judge Yoshihisa Nakao said Yoshihara wanted Kadokawa to have an edge in becoming a sponsor, which he believed would enhance its brand power.
“The belief in the fairness of the Games has been damaged,” Nakao said, stressing Yoshihara knew the payments were illegal and sought to disguise them as consulting fees.
The punishment was suspended because Yoshihara had expressed remorse, and his wife had promised to watch over him, Nakao said.
Yoshihara said, “Yes,” once, in accepting the verdict, but otherwise said nothing, and bowed repeatedly as he left the courtroom.
The verdict for Yoshihara, arrested last year, was the latest in a series of bribery trials over sponsorships and licensing for products for the Tokyo Games.
Kadokawa Group was chosen as a sponsor and published the Games program and guidebooks.
The ballooning scandal has marred the Olympic image in Japan, denting Sapporo’s bid for the 2030 Winter Games.
An official announcement on the bid is expected Wednesday, after the mayor meets with Japanese Olympic Committee President Yasuhiro Yamashita, a judo gold medalist and IOC member, a Sapporo city official said.
At the center of the scandal is Takahashi, a former executive at advertising company Dentsu, who joined the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee in 2014, and had great influence in arranging sponsorships for the Games. Takahashi says he is innocent. His trial is yet to begin.
Fifteen people at five companies face trial in the bribery scandal. The other companies are Aoki Holdings, a clothing company that outfitted Japan’s Olympic team, Daiko Advertising Inc., Sun Arrow, which made the mascots, and ADK, an advertising company.
An official at a consultant company called Amuse was given a suspended sentence in July after being convicted of helping Takahashi receive bribes in return for a part of the money.
Given the various allegations, the money that went to Takahashi totaled some 200 million yen ($1.3 million).
In Tuesday’s trial, Yoshihara was accused of working with Tsuguhiko Kadokawa, a top official at Kadokawa, the son of the founder and a major figure in Japan’s movie and entertainment industry, as well as with Kyoji Maniwa, another senior official at Kadokawa.
Maniwa, accused of depositing the money to Takahashi’s account, was given a suspended sentence in June. Tsuguhiko Kadokawa also faces trial.
In April, Aoki’s founder Hironori Aoki and two other company officials were convicted of handing 28 million yen ($188,000) in bribes to Takahashi and received suspended sentences.
In July, the former head of ADK, Shinichi Ueno, was given a suspended sentence after a conviction of paying 14 million yen ($94,000) to Takahashi.
The organizing committee members, as quasi-public officials, are forbidden from accepting money or goods from those seeking favors. Those receiving bribes are generally given harsher verdicts in Japan than those paying them.
The Tokyo Games were postponed until 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
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Yuri Kageyama is on X, formerly Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama
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AP coverage of the Paris Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
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A suburban Detroit mayor has been indicted on a federal bribery charge for allegedly demanding $50,000 in bribes to facilitate the sale of a city property to an outside party
DETROIT — A suburban Detroit mayor was indicted Tuesday on a federal bribery charge for allegedly demanding $50,000 in bribes to facilitate the sale of a city property to an outside party.
Inkster Mayor Patrick Wimberly allegedly accepted the bribes from September 2022 through this past April, the indictment said. The bribes began at $5,000 monthly until Wimberly demanded more and they rose to $10,000 monthly, prosecutors said in a news release.
Wimberly, 49, could face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 if convicted.
“Elected public officials owe a duty to their community to act in the citizens’ best interest,” U.S. Attorney Dawn Ison said in a news release. “Our office is committed to prosecuting those public officials who betray the public trust by accepting bribes.”
A telephone message seeking comment was left Tuesday at Wimberly’s office. Online court records did not list an attorney who might comment on his behalf.
Wimberly, a former city council member and marijuana entrepreneur, was elected in 2019. He is running for reelection in the Nov. 8 general election.
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WASHINGTON — Sen. Bob Menendez came under heavy pressure to resign Tuesday as a surging number of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate, including fellow New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker, urged him to step aside over the federal bribery allegations against him.
Around half of Senate Democrats have now said that Menendez should resign, including several running for reelection next year. Calls for his resignation, including from the head of the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, Michigan Sen. Gary Peters. came in quick succession after Booker called on his colleague to step aside. Menendez has refused to leave office but has not yet said whether he will run for reelection next year.
Menendez, the longtime chairman and top Democrat on the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and his wife, Nadine, are accused in an indictment released Friday of using his position to aid the authoritarian government of Egypt and to pressure federal prosecutors to drop a case against a friend, among other allegations of corruption. The three-count indictment says they were paid bribes — gold bars, a luxury car and cash — by three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for the corrupt acts.
In a statement, Booker said that while Menendez deserves the presumption of innocence, senators should adhere to a higher standard, and the details of the allegations against Menendez have “shaken to the core” the faith and trust of his constituents. He said the indictment of Menendez includes “shocking allegations of corruption and specific, disturbing details of wrongdoing.”
“As senators, we operate in the public trust,” Booker said. “That trust is essential to our ability to do our work and perform our duties for our constituents.”
Menendez has denied any wrongdoing, saying he merely performed as any senator would and that the nearly half million dollars in cash found in his home — including some stuffed in pockets of clothing — was from personal savings and kept at hand for emergencies. Authorities recovered about 10 cash-filled envelopes that had the fingerprints of one of the other defendants in the case on them, according to the indictment.
Menendez, along with his wife and two of the businessmen co-defendants, are to be arraigned Wednesday.
Another defendant, Wael Hana, was arrested at New York’s Kennedy Airport Tuesday after returning voluntarily from Egypt to face the charges. According to the indictment, Hana served as a conduit to Menendez for Egyptian military and intelligence officials, passing messages to and from the senator and arranging meetings.
Menendez’s defiance in recent days is similar to his insistence that he was innocent after he first faced federal bribery charges eight years ago — a case that ended with a deadlocked jury in 2017. As he did then, he is stepping down from his leadership position on the Foreign Relations panel, as per Senate Democratic caucus rules. But he has otherwise made clear that he’s not going anywhere.
“I recognize this will be the biggest fight yet, but as I have stated throughout this whole process, I firmly believe that when all the facts are presented, not only will I be exonerated, but I still will be New Jersey’s senior senator,” Menendez said Monday at Hudson County Community College’s campus in Union City, where he grew up.
In the Capitol on Tuesday evening, Menendez declined to answer reporters’ questions about Booker’s statement. “I would refer you to all the previous statements I’ve already made. I think that’s plenty,” he said.
The calls for his resignation are in sharp contrast to his first case. And Booker’s call is especially significant in the clubby Senate, where home state colleagues tend to stay away from public criticism of each other. Booker and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina testified as character witnesses in Menendez’s last trial.
The increasing Democratic calls for Menendez to resign also put increased pressure on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has so far stopped short of recommending that Menendez step down. Schumer has not commented on the indictment since saying in a statement Friday that Menendez would step down from the Foreign Relations panel.
On Tuesday evening, Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow became the highest-ranking Democrat in leadership to call for his resignation. “Bob is a longtime colleague, and it saddens me to come to this decision,” Stabenow, the No. 3 Democrat, said in a statement.
Other Democratic senators who have called for Menendez to step down included Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Peter Welch of Vermont, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Jon Tester of Montana, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Michael Bennet of Colorado, Mark Kelly of Arizona, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, John Fetterman and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey of Massachusetts.
Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who caucuses with Democrats, also called on Menendez to resign.
While the number of Democratic senators calling for Menendez was expected to grow, some said they would not. Sens. Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Joe Manchin of West Virginia all said they believe the decision is up to New Jersey voters.
The White House also declined to weigh in. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One that “the senator did the right thing by standing down from his chairmanship.” She did not say whether President Joe Biden believed he should resign from his seat, nor would she comment on how his presence would affect public faith in the Senate.
“That is for Senate leadership to speak to, that’s for Sen. Menendez to speak to,” she said.
If Menendez does run for reelection, he will face at least one challenger in a primary: Democratic Rep. Andy Kim announced over the weekend that he will run for the Senate because of the charges against the state’s senior senator.
And Menendez would likely be running without the support of his party. Peters, who urged his resignation Tuesday, is the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which provides campaign support to incumbent Democratic senators and challengers.
Peters said in a statement Tuesday evening that Menendez is not able to serve effectively. “As elected officials, the public entrusts us to serve in their best interests and in the best interests of our country,” Peters said.
In court earlier in the day, a judge ordered Hana freed pending trial on $300,000 cash bail and a $5 million bond.
Hana’s lawyer, Lawrence Lustberg, said after the hearing that his client is innocent and has a long friendship with Nadine Menendez that predated her marriage to the senator by years. “He has pleaded not guilty because he is not guilty,” Lustberg said.
Prosecutors say Hana gave the senator’s wife, Nadine Menendez, a “low-show or no-show job,” paid $23,000 toward her home mortgage, wrote $30,000 checks to her consulting company, promised her envelopes of cash, sent her exercise equipment and bought some of the gold bars that were found in the couple’s home.
Hana also sought the senator’s help in fending off criticism from U.S. agricultural officials after Egyptian officials gave his company a lucrative monopoly over certifying that imported meat met religious standards, the indictment said.
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Offenhartz reported from New York. Associated Press writers Stephen Groves from Washington and Seung Min Kim from aboard Air Force One contributed to this report.
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UNION CITY, N.J. — Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey defiantly pushed back against federal corruption charges on Monday, saying nearly half a million dollars in cash authorities found in his home was from his personal savings, not from bribes, and was on hand for emergencies.
Rejecting rising calls for him to resign, the influential chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said he believed he’d be cleared of charges that he took cash and gold in illegal exchange for helping Egypt and New Jersey business associates.
“I recognize this will be the biggest fight yet, but as I have stated throughout this whole process, I firmly believe that when all the facts are presented, not only will I be exonerated, but I still will be New Jersey’s senior senator,” Menendez said at Hudson County Community College’s campus in Union City, where he grew up.
He did not respond to questions and did not say whether he would seek reelection next year.
Addressing allegations in the indictment unsealed Friday that authorities found cash stuffed in envelopes and clothing at his home, Menendez said that stemmed from his parents’ fear of confiscation of funds from their time in Cuba.
“This may seem old fashioned, but these were monies drawn from my personal savings account based on the income that I have lawfully derived over those 30 years,” he said.
Authorities recovered about 10 envelopes with tens of thousands of dollars in cash that had the fingerprints of one of the other defendants in the case on them, according to the indictment.
Menendez also addressed his relationship with Egypt, which plays a central role in the indictment against him, suggesting he’s been tough on the country over its detention of Americans and other “human rights abuses.”
“If you look at my actions related to Egypt during the period described in this indictment and throughout my whole career, my record is clear and consistent in holding Egypt accountable,” he said.
Prosecutors say he met with Egyptian military and intelligence officials, passed along non-public information about employees at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and ghostwrote a letter on behalf of Egypt asking his Senate colleagues to release a hold on $300 million worth of aid. He did not directly address those allegations Monday.
The state’s Democratic leadership, including Gov. Phil Murphy, the state party chairmen and leaders of the Legislature, along with some of Menendez’s congressional colleagues, are calling on him to resign
In Washington, however, where his party holds a bare Senate majority, some of Menendez’s Democratic colleagues have stopped short of urging him to give up his seat, notably Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, and Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois.
Even though Schumer has not called for Menendez to step down, other members of his caucus have. Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and Vermont Sen. Peter Welch called for his resignation on Monday, following Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman on Saturday.
Menendez did, however, step down as required as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Schumer said on Friday, when the indictment was unsealed.
If he seeks reelection, Menendez will face at least one challenger in a primary next year after Democratic Rep. Andy Kim announced over the weekend that he will run for the Senate because of the charges against the state’s senior senator.
Menendez’s reelection campaign could face significant hurdles besides the criminal indictment, the second one he has faced in eight years, in light of opposition from state party leaders.
If the Democratic Party abandons Menendez, he could lose a potent benefit of party support: the so-called party line, or preferred ballot placement in the primary, widely regarded as a significant boost to incumbents and those with establishment backing.
Menendez has denied any wrongdoing in the federal case against him, his wife and three of their business associates. In an emailed statement last week, he accused prosecutors of misrepresenting “the normal work of a congressional office” and said he will not allow his work in the Senate to be distracted by “baseless allegations.” A lawyer for his wife said she “denies any criminal conduct and will vigorously contest these charges in court.”
He and Nadine Menendez are accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, gold and a luxury car from a trio of New Jersey businessmen for a variety of corrupt acts.
The indictment said Menendez used his clout to interfere in three criminal cases, pressured U.S. agriculture regulators to protect an associate’s business interests, and used his position as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee to influence U.S. policy on Egypt.
Federal agents who searched his home in 2022 found more than $480,000 in cash stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets and a safe, and gold bars worth more than $100,000, prosecutors said. Another $70,000 was discovered inside his wife’s safety deposit box, they said.
Some Menendez supporters attended the news conference .Among them was Manny Contreras, a resident of nearby Passaic County, who said he came to show his support for Menendez and had been voting for him for years.
“It’s a big problem for the Latino community, we don’t want to see him go, we have to give him the benefit of the doubt,” Contreras said.
He said if Menendez were found guilty, he would have to reconsider his support, but because of the good things in the Menendez’s long career, he was willing to let the process play out.
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Catalini reported from Trenton. Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.
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U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey and his wife were indicted Friday on bribery charges after an investigation that turned up $100,000 in gold bars and $480,000 in hidden cash at their home, prosecutors said.
Federal prosecutors announced the charges against the 69-year-old Democrat nearly six years after an earlier criminal case against him ended with a deadlocked jury. They said a search of Bob Menendez’s home turned up $100,000 in gold bars and $480,000 in hidden cash.
The latest indictment is unrelated to the earlier charges that alleged Menendez accepted lavish gifts to pressure government officials on behalf of a Florida doctor.
The Senate Historical Office says Menendez appears to be the first sitting senator in U.S. history to have been indicted on two unrelated criminal allegations.
A lawyer for Menendez’s wife hasn’t responded to a message seeking comment. Messages were left for Menendez’s Senate spokesperson and his political consultant.
The first time Menendez was indicted, he had been accused of using his political influence to help a Florida eye doctor who had lavished him with gifts and campaign contributions.
The new charges follow a years-long investigation that examined, among other things, the dealings of a New Jersey businessman — a friend of Menendez’s wife — who secured sole authorization from the Egyptian government to certify that meat imported into that country meets Islamic dietary requirements.
Investigators also asked questions about the Menendez family’s interactions with a New Jersey developer.
Menendez’s political career had looked as though it might be over in 2015, when a federal grand jury in New Jersey indicted him on multiple charges over favors he did for a friend, Dr. Salomon Melgen.
Menendez was accused of pressuring government officials to resolve a Medicare billing dispute in Melgen’s favor, securing visas for the doctor’s girlfriends and helping protect a contract the doctor had to provide port-screening equipment to the Dominican Republic.
Menendez has always maintained his innocence. His lawyers said campaign contributions and gifts from Melgen — which included trips on his private jet to a resort in the Dominican Republic and a vacation in Paris — were tokens of their longtime friendship, not bribes.
Prosecutors dropped the case after a jury deadlocked in November 2017 on charges including bribery, fraud and conspiracy, and a judge dismissed some counts.
The Senate Ethics Committee later rebuked Menendez, finding that he had improperly accepted gifts, failed to disclose them and then used his influence to advance Melgen’s personal interests.
But months later, New Jersey voters returned Menendez to the Senate. He defeated a well-financed challenger in a midterm election that broke a Republican lock on power in Washington.
Melgen was convicted of health care fraud in 2017 but former President Donald Trump commuted his prison sentence.
Menendez is widely expected to run for reelection next year.
The son of Cuban immigrants, Menendez has held public office continuously since 1986, when he was elected mayor of Union City, New Jersey. He was a state legislator and spent 14 years in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2006, Gov. Jon Corzine appointed Menendez to the Senate seat he vacated when he became governor.
At least two other senators — Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas; Richard Kenney, D-Delaware — were indicted on multiple occasions while still in office, but each senator’s indictments covered overlapping allegations, according to the Senate Historical Office.
Neither Kenney nor Hutchinson were ultimately convicted, and both went on to serve their full terms. In total, 13 senators have been indicted throughout history, of which six have been convicted, according to the Senate Historical Office. Two of those convictions were overturned.
Menendez first publicly disclosed that he was the subject of a new federal investigation last October.
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