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Hey, you're listening to the On The Media Midweek Podcast. I'm Michael Loewinger. This week, we're sharing the third and final episode of Dead End, the rise and fall of Gold Bar Bob Menendez, a brand new series about the disgraced former senator. For WNYC, reporter and host Nancy Solomon asks, why would a man at the top of the political world risk everything? Here, Nancy reconstructs what went wrong.
Bob Menendez is a creature of habit. When he's in his hometown, he likes to get breakfast at the IHOP. His adult children, the MSNBC host Alicia Menendez and the congressman Rob Menendez, joked about his habits in a campaign video a few years ago. Have you ever been to a restaurant with him that he's been to more than three times where he's ordered something different? Never. And during the 31 years he worked in Congress, Menendez was a regular at Morton's Steakhouse in downtown Washington.
And now, one dinner at Morton's in May 2019 is at the center of his downfall. Let me set the scene. Two FBI agents were there, posing as a couple on a date. They scored a table not far from where Menendez and his future wife, Nadine, were dining with Will Hanna, the halal meat guy we met last episode. And next to Hanna was a member of Egyptian intelligence.
One of the FBI agents later testified that she heard Nadine speak only once. "'What else can the love of my life do for you?' she asked the Egyptian men." This is the final installment of Dead End, the rise and fall of Goldbar Bob Menendez.
We've been looking at the whirlwind romance of Bob and Nadine Menendez and their love child, a bribery scheme involving a halal meat business, an Egyptian weapons deal, and more than half a million dollars in cash and gold bars. In this episode, we're going to find out how they got caught and try to answer the question many of those close to Bob Menendez are still asking.
Why would he jeopardize one of the most powerful jobs in the country and risk a long prison sentence for half a million dollars? The Morton Steakhouse dinner was just one of several between Menendez, Wilhana, and Egyptian intelligence officials. The FBI agent who testified, she said when they watched the dinner, they were not there to surveil Menendez. She never said exactly why they were even there.
So I asked Tracy Tully, the New York Times reporter, if she understood it. Did you ever figure out which one of those characters they were interested in? It would make sense to me that it was Hana and that they had been tipped off by the USDA that something hinky was going on with the halal meat certification contract. Hana had had his office and apartment searched at some point and they took
virtually everything and all his computers and his jewelry and his phones. And they'd been pouring through all that for some time. And that was right around the time of the halal meat genesis thing. Eventually, the FBI would show up at the split-level ranch house that Nadine and Bob Menendez shared in Inglewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
The plan was for agents to search the house without attracting any attention. They used unmarked vehicles, covered their FBI-branded clothing, and tried not to make a mess. After all, it was the home of a U.S. senator. But they found cash and gold bars tucked into every nook and cranny of the house. So much, in fact, that they had to call in for reinforcements and two cash-counting machines.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams included in the indictment a photo of the senator's bomber jacket with Robert Menendez and a Senate seal embroidered on the front. Some of the cash was stuffed in the senator's jacket pockets. That's it all. Agents also discovered a lot of gold. Senator Menendez had hit the jackpot. It turns out Wilhana Halalghai had a business partner.
a wealthy real estate developer in New Jersey. His name is Fred Davies, and he collects gold bars, some of which made their way into the Menendez home. When he announced the indictment, the U.S. attorney laid out the scheme. First, the indictment alleges that Senator Menendez used his power and influence, including his leadership role on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to benefit the government of Egypt in various ways.
Menendez helped Egyptian officials write a letter to his colleagues on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He basically ghost wrote it. The letter was asking for the release of $300 million worth of military aid. Menendez sent the letter to Nadine, who forwarded it to Wilhana, who passed it on to Egyptian officials. Essentially, all they had to do was add their letterhead and signature and send it on to Menendez's colleagues in the Senate.
We also allege that Senator Menendez improperly pressured a senior official at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to protect a lucrative monopoly that the government of Egypt had awarded to Hana, a lucrative monopoly that Hana then used to fund certain bride payments. It's a three-way trade. Menendez gives Egypt what they want. That's the helping a foreign government charge. Egypt gives Hana the monopoly, which makes him instantly rich.
And Hannah pays Bob and Nadine Menendez in cash and gold. That's the bribery charge. Menendez was also charged with obstruction of justice for his attempts to help two New Jersey businessmen who were facing criminal charges. Fred Davies, the guy who collects gold bars, and Jose Uribe, the one who meets with Menendez on the back patio in New Jersey when the senator rings a little bell to summon Nadine to the table.
Uribe gave them a Mercedes convertible to replace the car Nadine totaled when she killed the pedestrian. Remember, she wasn't found to be at fault, but she also wasn't drug or alcohol tested, and her phone wasn't inspected to see if she was driving distracted. But the part of this story that has fascinated me the most has been about how it all began, and whether Nadine actually chose to date Menendez for ulterior motives.
I brought this up with Times reporter Tracy Tully. When I started to learn about the case before the trial and then listening to some of the testimony at the trial, you know, I would wonder, was Nadine Menendez an Egyptian spy? How do you see her role in this? I guess I walked away thinking, no, she was not an Egyptian spy, but she was...
and is, it seems, certainly based on the text message, an opportunist. And she saw, as she wrote to one of her children, I believe, you know, every time I'm in the middle, I'm going to get money. Eventually, I came to the same conclusion. For one thing, the text that Nadine sent right after her first date with Menendez showed that she didn't know anything about the senator's powerful position on the Foreign Relations Committee.
When Nadine meets up with Will Hanna, she asked Menendez what international position he had. And Hanna didn't even know the senator's name, the texts show. Also, there's the timeline. It only took 25 days from their first date for Menendez to agree to an off-the-books meeting with an Egyptian general. So, suffice to say, he was a pretty willing partner in crime. And then, if Nadine was a spy...
She was a really bad one. I mean, don't they learn in Spying 101 to never put anything in a text? And she seemed to think that if she deleted texts from her phone, they would not be discovered. At one point, she asks Menendez if she should text one of their co-conspirators, and he quickly shoots back, "In a text, mind you." "No, you should not text or email."
Senator Menendez participated in many text exchanges that he certainly must now regret. In many of them, Nadine is in the middle of communications between the senator and Egypt's intelligence officers. He texts her, tell Will I'm going to sign off this sale to Egypt today. And then he lists the exact types of ammunition Egypt will get. Nadine screenshots the text and sends the message to Will Hanna.
which Hanna then sends to the Egyptian general in charge of obtaining U.S. weapons on WhatsApp. The general replies with three thumbs-up emojis. Bob and Nadine Menendez were convicted on all charges. Menendez resigned from the Senate in August of 2024. Nadine won't be sentenced until September. I was at the courthouse for the sentencing of Bob, and it was pretty surprising. He's been robbed by Democrats!
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One of the best parts for me about hosting Reveal, you know, your favorite weekly investigative podcast, is the interviews. I love to sit down with people and try to gain a perspective that gives me and our listeners a new way of seeing the world, which is why we're launching More to the Story with me, Al Ledson. It's a place where I can talk to some of the most intriguing people to bring some context to our changing world.
Follow the Reveal podcast feed and look for more to the story every Wednesday. I've arrived at the federal courthouse in Manhattan. It's about 830 in the morning and this is sentencing day. Strangely, the last senator to go to prison was also from New Jersey. And that had to do with the Abscam case 44 years ago.
There's no recording in the courthouse, so I have to check all my stuff and won't be able to do a blow-by-blow. Prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Menendez to 15 years. His defense team initially asked for a sentence range of no jail time to two years.
But after the judge sentenced Will Hanna and Fred Davies to eight and seven years respectively, the Menendez team spent the lunch break rewriting their statements to the judge. They asked for eight years, and Menendez made a personal plea that was meant to show his remorse. "'Your Honor,' he said, "'you have before you a chastened man.'" And then he broke down and cried. The courtroom was silent as he took a few moments to compose himself.
His adult children were sitting behind him in the front row. They didn't move a muscle, and Nadine wasn't there. He asked the judge to take into account all he had done in his career, and for that, the judge did knock off a few years. But he sentenced him to 11 years. Any sentence longer than 10 meant Menendez could not be assigned to a minimum security camp.
Afterwards, that chastened man stepped in front of a bank of microphones outside the courthouse and struck a very different tone. He turned his attention to the one man who could save him. 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? 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. 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-Belosy, 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 left, right and center.
Lawyers for Menendez aren't counting on a pardon and are working on an appeal. And the U.S. Supreme Court? It might help him. The Roberts Supreme Court has been steadily deregulating corruption. They've done this both in white-collar crime cases and in campaign finance cases. Whether or not Bob Menendez 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 elected mayor, state senator, and New Jersey member of Congress. And there's another thing. In all the cartoonish details of this story, the gold bars and the stacks of cash squirreled away in his home, there was never any discussion of the unique position Menendez occupied in the Senate.
I spoke about this with Brad Lawrence, the campaign consultant who worked for Menendez for more than 40 years. He's the one who invited him to his wedding back in the 1980s. I think Bob was, you know, sort of an anachronism in the sense of a guy that really had no money, came from no money, literally no money, did live in a tiny little apartment. You know, his mother was a seamstress. His father eventually committed suicide. I mean, he grew up a very difficult life.
And then all of a sudden he's in this most exclusive club in the world with all the fucking cliches about what the United States Senate is. And I think there's something corrosive about that. The majority of U.S. senators are wealthy.
And then there are the lobbyists, some of them who had worked for Menendez as kids right out of college and then went on to make big salaries on K Street in Washington. I think the fundraising aspect of it, which is not only you in that bubble in the Senate, but then you're in this bubble with all these wealthy donors that are, you know, they're flying around in private jets. They're doing this, they're doing that.
And you're this guy that grew up, you know, in this one-room apartment in Union City. And you're going, on the one hand, I'm as good as they are, if not better. I would imagine that that wealth around you does begin to gnaw at you. Nicholas Charvalati also worked for Menendez. Like his former boss, he's from a working-class immigrant family. He says working in Washington, with all the wealth in the Senate, lobbyists and donors...
was not easy for Menendez. I mean, that would frustrate the hell out of me, so I would imagine it would frustrate the hell out of him. Charvalati doesn't think it's a coincidence that shortly after Menendez fell in love with Nadine, he wanted more 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.
The bribery scheme, the Egyptian weapons deal, the stacks of cash and gold bars, it's mystifying to Brad Lawrence. 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. 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. But
You know, it is to me an inexplicable and tragic way for him to go. Standing outside Schuylkill Prison in Pennsylvania, it's bleak. A bunch of low-slung concrete buildings right off the highway. It's a long way from the nation's capital, with its grand dome looking out over the reflecting pool. You think that was him? Was there anyone in the back seat?
Now Bob Menendez has reported to Schuylkill Prison to begin serving his 11-year sentence. When I think about him in prison, I remember the story he tells about getting bullied in school. This is the guy that grabbed a wood plank at a construction site, whacked the bully, and never had a problem with him again.
And I think about him standing outside the courtroom, looking out the window at the Manhattan skyline and singing. It's impossible to know whether he's the chastened man he described to the judge. But one thing is certain. His legacy and the first sentence of his obituary is now changed forever. ♪
I'm Nancy Solomon. I made this series with Emily Botin and Jared Paul, our sound designer and music composer. We had help from Alex Brady, Amber Bruce, Rex Stone, Katie Graham, David Krasnow, Mike Kutchman, Valentina Powers, and Jackson Vale. Thanks for listening. ♪
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