New Jersey Senator Faces Second Federal Corruption Probe
People familiar with the new case say that it is broadly similar to an older corruption probe that ended in a mistrial.
The senior senator of New Jersey, Robert Menendez, is reportedly under investigation by federal authorities again, apparently over allegations of corruption similar to those he faced seven years ago.
Semafor reports that prosecutors from the federal court in Manhattan have contacted people near Mr. Menendez over the past few weeks and have issued at least one subpoena in the investigation.
The new probe comes a few years after the end of another that began in 2015, during which Mr. Menendez was alleged to have accepted flights, vacations, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in return for lobbying for his co-defendant, a wealthy eye doctor and long-time friend of the senator, Salomon Melgen.
The case ended in a mistrial in 2017, and in 2018 the Department of Justice announced that it would not retry the Democratic senator even though the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, recommended that the agency try again.
The judge who heard the case in the federal district of New Jersey, Judge William Wall, wrote that the governmentâs allegations were âempty of relevant evident factâ and refused to hear a retrial.
The earlier case reportedly began with an investigation by the justice department into unsubstantiated reports, passed on to news outlets by an anonymous source, that Mr. Menendez and his co-defendant had visited underage prostitutes in the Dominican Republic.
The attempts by federal prosecutors to retry the case against Mr. Menendez were derailed after several judges refused to hear it.
The case was a rare instance of federal prosecutors publicly failing to follow through with a conviction, which many have characterized as a humiliation for the Public Integrity Section of the justice department.
According to Semafor, those familiar with the new case say it is broadly similar to the old case, though it involves a new group of people. Other details on the new investigation are thin.
Neither the senatorâs office nor representatives for the Southern District of New York immediately responded to a request for comment.
