And this is a U.S.
attorney
for the Southern District of New York
Good morning, everyone.
Thank you for coming.
My name is Damien Williams and I'm
the United States attorney
here in the Southern District
of New York.
Today, I'm
announcing that my office has obtained
a three count
indictment charging
Senator Robert Menendez,
his wife, Nadine Menendez,
and three New Jersey businessmen,
while Hannah
Jose Uribe
and Fred Davis for bribery offenses.
The investigation that led to
these charges
has been run
out of the Southern District of New York
The indictment alleges that between 2018
and 2022,
Senator Menendez, the senior U.S.
senator from New Jersey
and the chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee,
and his wife, Nadine Menendez, engaged
in a corrupt relationship
with Hanna Uribe and Debbie's
The indictment alleges that
through that relationship,
the senator
and his wife
accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars
in bribes
in exchange for Senator Menendez
using his power and influence
to protect
and to enrich those businessmen
and to benefit the government of Egypt.
The indictment alleges that Hannah Uribe
and Davies provided bribes
in the form of cash,
gold, home mortgage payments,
a low show
or no show, a job for Nadine Menendez,
a Mercedes Benz and other things of value
to the senator and his wife.
Now, constituent
service is part of any legislators job.
Senator Menendez is no different.
And as we explained in the indictment,
there are things that Senator Menendez
says he can do for his constituents
and things
that he says he cannot do
for his constituents.
He put it all on his Senate website.
So, for instance,
it says he
cannot compel an agency
to act in someone's favor.
It says he cannot influence matters
involving a private business.
It says he cannot get involved
in criminal matters or cases, period.
But we allege that behind the scenes,
Senator Menendez was doing those things
for certain people,
the people who were bribing
him and his wife.
And let me say a little bit more
about the conduct
that's alleged in the indictment.
The indictment alleges
that Senator Menendez
took several actions
as part of this corrupt relationship.
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.
Among other actions, Senator Menendez
allegedly provided sensitive,
nonpublic U.S.
government information
to Egyptian officials
and otherwise took steps to secretly
aid the government of Egypt.
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 bribe payments
Second, the indictment
alleges that Senator Menendez
used his power and influence
to try to disrupt
a criminal investigation and prosecution
undertaken by the New Jersey
Attorney General's office
related to an associate
and a relative of Uribe.
Third, the indictment alleges
that Senator Menendez used his power
and influence
to try to disrupt
a federal prosecution of abuse
in the district of New Jersey in two ways
First,
by seeking to install
a United States attorney who he thought
could be influence
with respect to Davies.
And second,
by trying to influence that office
to act favorably in Debbie's case.
And as we allege in the indictment,
the senator agreed to do these things
and use his power in this way
because Hanna was paying bribes,
because Uribe was paying bribes
and because Davies was paying bribes.
Fortunately, the public officials
the senator
sought to influence
did not bend to the pressure.
That's a good thing.
That was part of this investigation.
Special agents
with the FBI executed search warrants
on the residence
and safe deposit box of Senator Menendez
and named Menendez in New Jersey.
When they got there,
they discovered
approximately $500,000 of cash
stuffed into envelopes and closets.
Some of the cash was stuffed
in the senator's jacket pockets.
Some of the cash,
some of the envelopes of cash
contain David's fingerprints,
Darby's DNA.
That's not all.
Agents also discovered
a lot of gold, gold that was provided
by Davies and Hanna.
And the FBI, of course,
found the Mercedes Benz that Uribe
had provided them
of.
The items that
that being covered
are discussed in the indictment,
which I encourage all of you
to read carefully.
Let's take a look at
just some of the items
so as you can see here,
this is the Mercedes Benz that we allege
that Uribe provided
as part of the scheme.
What you see here are three kilograms
of gold.
These three kilograms together are worth
approximately $150,000.
And of course, here you can see
just a fraction of the cash
that was uncovered as part of the scheme.
Now, I want to make a couple of things
very clear.
First, my office remains
firmly committed to rooting out
public corruption
without fear or favor
and without any regard
to partizan politics. That's in our DNA.
Always has been, always will be.
And second,
this investigation is very much ongoing.
We are not done.
And I want to encourage anyone
with information to come forward
and to come forward quickly.
And they can do that
by reaching out to the FBI.
Tip line one 800 call FBI
Now, a case of this magnitude requires
tremendous partnership.
And I want to thank our partners
at the FBI
who have been with us since day one
and have been absolutely incredible
every step along the way.
I also want to thank our partners
at the IRS
for their assistance
in this investigation.
I want to thank our colleagues
from around the Department of Justice,
who are far too many to name here
and to think specifically.
But they have also been invaluable.
And, of course, I want to
thank the career
prosecutors from my office
who are handling this investigation.
They have done tremendous work
Eli, Marc, Laura Pomerantz,
Dan Rich, Anthony, Paul Monteleone
and their supervisors,
Rebecca, Donna Luskin, Maureen Comey,
the chief
of our office's public corruption unit.
I now want to invite up to the podium
FBI assistant director in charge,
James Smith.
Jim,
good morning.
So I'm not going to go any further
into the case, as U.S.
Attorney Damien Williams explained.
But what I want to talk about more
or less is, hey,
the FBI's public corruption
excuse me,
the FBI investigating
public corruption
is one of our top priorities,
and we will continue
to investigate public corruption cases.
I want to thank the agents,
the team over here from the FBI, the IRS
for their hard work
into this investigation.
They've spent many hours
and days
and weeks and months
working this investigation.
I would also like to thank
all the prosecutors
from the Southern District of New York,
like to thank Damien
Williams for his support
in this particular case.
I would like to thank the IRS
for all their investigators
who worked tirelessly
along with the team here
to investigate this case.
And I would also finally like
to thank
the DOJ's Public Integrity section.
So thank you very much
for all your support in this
All right.
Thank you, everyone.
Let's talk more about this,
Elliot Williams.
Talk to me
about your reaction to this specifically.
I'm really interested
in we're talking about a sitting U.S.
senator
who is the chair of the Senate Foreign
Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
And you're talking about
you just heard a U.S.
attorney say that he was working
to benefit the government of Egypt
All right.
Not good.
And moreover, what's interesting
is the manner
in which the exchange of favors,
if you want to call them that plays out
is often through his wife.
The way the indictment is structured.
There are a number of statements
and communications made
between Senator Menendez and his wife
and alleged allegedly
between him and his wife
and some of the other people
who are charged that that lead
to these actions
that the
that the prosecutors are saying
that Senator Menendez engaged in.
But it's incredibly serious
when you are speaking
of nonpublic information being provided
to foreign actors.
A point
I noted in our earlier
segment was the fact
that at least
one of these conversations
that they recount is a phone call
that happens to two officials,
I believe might have even been Egyptian
officials directly
outside of the presence
of Senator Menendez and staff.
Now, look, as a former Senate staffer,
I can tell you,
you can't always control
what the boss is doing.
Sometimes you'll pick up the phone and
place phone calls and so on.
This goes beyond that
when you're talking about,
number one, the seriousness of it.
And number two,
the allegation that
he was being directed to do so
or at least being compensated
or reimbursed for his doing so.
That that that really jumped out to me
and is itself
something that prosecutors, I'm
certain, would hammer
in front of the jury
as very suspicious conduct from someone.
As you said,
Kate has an official position
and has people around him
that ought to be or,
you know,
probably were attempting
to protect him from engaging in conduct
like this.