How Bob Menendez Came By His Gold Bars
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Listener supported. WNYC Studios. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. In the through-the-licking-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.

The situation with New York City Mayor Eric Adams is a case in point. The Justice Department suggested they would drop serious federal charges if Adams would just assist the feds on the immigration issue. The mayor's attorney insisted there was never any deal, but even so, a pack of federal prosecutors quit their jobs in disgust.

So this, too, is surprising, but maybe not too surprising. 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. Menendez walked out of the courtroom and directly made a plea to guess who. President Trump is right. This process is political.

and it's corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system. You're a Democrat, the keys were brought by Democrats. How is this a witch hunt? How did Bob Menendez, who voted to impeach Donald Trump, end up begging him for a get-out-of-jail card?

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. 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. 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. He was singing, and it was killing me that I couldn't record it. In that courthouse, you have no phones. Nobody has recording devices. So they developed this sort of cocoon-like space where the defendants, the reporters, the lawyers, we were all kind of existing together for nine weeks. This is Tracy Tully. She's a reporter for The New York Times, and she was in court almost every day. He would sing during...

breaks in court, sometimes in the courtroom, 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. 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.

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. 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. This is from a public TV interview in 2012. So I created such a ruckus that they gave me the books, told me to shut up and put me in the honors program.

But I didn't feel right about that because I had friends who had the ability and the grades and not the money. So I started a petition drive at 19 to change the school board, put a referendum on the ballot, pass a referendum at 19, and then ran at the age of 20 the first school board elections in my hometown.

It wasn't long before Menendez developed a brand. I grew up in a tough neighborhood. We had a bully in the neighborhood. The fighter you don't want to mess with. And this stuck with him, from the Union City School Board in 1974... I got a piece of wood and whacked the bully. ...to his time as top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, nearly 50 years later. I never got whacked again.

I didn't really get to know him until I went to work for the city of Bayonne. This is Nicholas Charavalati. Former state legislator. Been in and around Hudson County politics since I was about 14 years old. We had a meeting in City Hall. It was a long time ago. Charavalati 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. In truth, we told Nancy I was

way over my head. And Charvelati ended up in a meeting with Menendez, who was then the local congressman. 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 as clear as day, he got up, kicked his chair over, and basically told them, there's no freaking way you're getting this land. That was the moment that, you know, quite frankly, I was like,

That's the type of guy I want representing me. 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. Menendez even had to wear a bulletproof vest into the courthouse.

Chara Velotti was impressed with Menendez, and he ended up going to work for him. 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. And I delivered the message in my manner. And he actually said to me, uh,

I thought I was hiring a Rottweiler, not a poodle. A representative for Senator Menendez said that story is not true. And what would you say, like, some of the elements that make up his success? So I think intelligence was one. Two was work ethic. I mean, he just would work all the time, especially back then 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. 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. Being from Hudson County in New Jersey, it was...

If you remember, it was like, let's just do it. And it's like, look, politically, it's expeditious just to vote for it, right? I mean, people want revenge. 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, OK, but I looked at everything. It's not there. 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. Jay Booth used to be a political operative in Hudson County who opposed Menendez from the start. Booth says, look at the charges in the current case where Menendez tried to pressure state and federal prosecutors. He says that's part of a long pattern. Menendez, 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 trying to appoint people that are going to protect him and harm his enemies in the criminal justice system. 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. And there, at the stainless steel prep counter, was a meeting happening, presumably on the down low. I saw Menendez, who was then a congressman, sitting in a corner in the kitchen where no one could see him, having lunch with the then Hudson County prosecutor.

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

But either way, meals in a restaurant kitchen didn't seem to help Menendez the first time the feds came after him in 2015. Private jets, weekend getaways in the Dominican Republic, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in... 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.

Menendez allegedly reached out to help the doctor's Medicare problems go away. He insisted the charges were unfair. 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. Was it corruption or business as usual in Washington?

It depends who you ask. 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. This is Brad Lawrence. He creates messaging for political candidates. 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. That's like 18 inches of files. Well, and there's boxes. I mean, don't forget this goes on since 1982. And he was working for Menendez when the senator ran into trouble with the gifts from the eye doctor. 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. But it's an interesting idea that was that a breaking point where he felt like, OK, they're going to treat me like this, that I'm going to really get everything I'm due. I don't know if it was that literally transactional about it, but I have a feeling that it certainly made him feel like,

playing by the rules certainly didn't get him anything. And so you'd be angry. I mean, I think most people would be angry about being indicted and put through the ringer for something that they felt certainly didn't merit that. It's how you come out of that may be the more interesting question. The case ended in a hung jury, and Menendez walked out of the courthouse defiant, as if he'd been entirely exonerated. 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.

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

He had met Nadine Arslanian at his usual breakfast spot, the IHOP in Union City. Voicemails from Nadine were entered as evidence in the second trial. A message from Nadine Arslanian to then-Senator Bob Menendez, used by prosecutors as evidence. Our story continues in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

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At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But, but, we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex.

of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radiolab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcasts. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. We're hearing the story today of Robert Menendez.

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

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 was also being prosecuted in the case. Nadine Arslanian 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.

Nadine was a stay-at-home mom, raising her kids in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and she liked a certain lifestyle. 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. By the time she met Bob Menendez, she was long divorced, and by all accounts, it was a whirlwind romance. Never, never...

20 months after they began dating, Bob proposed to Nadine in front of the Taj Mahal. He's known for his crooning, and the YouTube video of this one has been viewed 86,000 times. Nicholas Charvalati, who recalled Menendez kicking his chair over in a meeting, understands what it might have felt like when Menendez began dating Nadine.

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. 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 that I think other people can do. Bob Menendez had a new girlfriend and Nadine needed money.

She had financial problems and would soon face foreclosure of her home. 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. Will Hanna is kind of a serial entrepreneur. He started a bunch of

and he lost his house in Bayonne. He's got no money. And he becomes friends with Nadine Arslanian, who becomes Nadine Menendez. 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. And somewhere along the way, somebody comes up with the idea to create this halal certification company. 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. The Egyptian government chooses the businesses that certify meat imports into their country. And Wilhana, Nadine's friend, was trying to work his connections in Egypt to get one of those contracts. 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. Hi, it's me calling my very handsome senator. And within weeks, Nadine asks Menendez for a favor, that he meet with a high-level Egyptian official. I 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 meeting you.

And many meetings did happen. There were meetings with the Egyptian general and with Egyptian intelligence officers. Many of them included Hanna, the halal meat guy. And, you know, trial testimony showed that then the company took off.

and ultimately won a monopoly. Hana's company was the gatekeeper to all of that product, so it made him a very wealthy man. But Larry Lussberg, Hana's defense attorney, says his client was able to get the Egyptian monopoly on the strength of Hana's own connections and business acumen. He's appealing the conviction. I will go to my grave believing that the government did not prove its case here.

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. 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. Two, he made calls to an official at the U.S. Department of Agriculture

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. And three, the 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. That's the acting as a foreign agent charge.

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. Or maybe not. President Trump is right. This process is political and it's corrupted to the core. When he emerged from the sentencing, Menendez made his direct pitch to Donald Trump that his prosecution is just as wrong as Trump's.

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.

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. As someone who's a constitutional law professor, this is really irksome. Chara Torres-Spellacy teaches at the Stetson University College of Law in Florida. She writes about political corruption. It looks like there was an offer of a quid pro quo proposal

from the Adams team to Trump's DOJ. What do you think about the possibility that Donald Trump may pardon Menendez? Well, it would fit a pattern of the Trump pardons, both in his first term and early in his second term. 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. Some have argued that Menendez, because he is out of office and voted to impeach Trump, is unlikely to get a pardon. But for Torres Bellacy, the president's history means all bets are off. It's hard to know who Trump will pardon next.

One of the more recent pardons was for the former governor of Illinois, Rod Bogliovich. He was a Democrat. So I'm not sure whether the Democratic label matters so much to Trump. He seems much more interested in undermining anti-corruption laws now.

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

So the outlook for Bob Menendez is not quite as bleak as it might seem, despite facing 11 years in prison. 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: first in his family to go to college, first Latino in New Jersey elected mayor, state legislator, and member of Congress.

That's 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. Like Brad Lawrence, his consultant who worked on nearly every one of his campaigns. 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, 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, you know, it is to me an inexplicable and tragic way for him to go. 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. There's more reporting on politics and crime from Nancy Solomon at deadendpodcast.org. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of TuneArts, with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Sommer, with guidance from Emily Botin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Guan, and Alejandra Decat.

Special thanks this week to The New Yorker's Alex Brady. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Tarina Endowment Fund.

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