Monday marked Day 3 in the trial of New Jersey Democratic Senator Menendez. Menendez was charged with corruption for allegedly using his office to dole out favors for wealthy Democratic donor, Dr. Salomon Melgen in exchange for campaign cash.
A former aid to Sen. Menendez testified Monday, alleging Sen. Menendez wrote a letter on behalf of a 22-year-old girlfriend of Dr. Melgen, her sister and two other girlfriends of Dr. Melgen’s in an effort to assist her with her visa application. The third girlfriend was not mentioned in Monday’s testimony.
Politico reports:
When one of Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen’s girlfriends handed her interviewer at the U.S. consulate in the Dominican Republic a letter from U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez in support of her 2008 visa application, the interviewer wasn’t impressed.
“He looked at it briefly and he said, ‘sorry but this does me no good … unfortunately, we are the ones who decide whether or not someone is qualified for a visa’” the then-22-year-old girlfriend, Rosiell Polanco, recounted to the 63-year-old Melgen in Spanish, according to translated emails read aloud in court on Monday. ‘And with that, he ended the interview.’”
Melgen soon informed Menendez the visa application for Polanco, as well as one for her sister, were denied. But Menendez didn’t give up. His senior adviser, Mark Lopes, told him he was working on a follow-up letter to the consul general.
Would the senator like to wait for that letter, Lopes asked, or call the embassy ASAP?
“Call ambassador ASAP,” Menendez wrote back, according to emails entered into evidence on Monday.
Within weeks, the sisters had another interview. Weeks after that, Lopez got word their visa applications had been approved.
“In my view, this was only due to the fact that (Robert Menendez) intervened,” Lopes wrote to Menendez’s then-chief of staff, Danny O’Brien, adding that he would tell Menendez.
Also revealed — Menendez owns one expensive grill. Prosecutors allege Menendez intended to pay Melgen back in American Express card points after Melgen used his Amex points to foot the bill for a $1,500 per night hotel in Paris. As evidence to the contrary, the defense showed a 2013 Amex statement showing Menendez cashed out his 135,000 points to buy a grill.
ABC News reports:
Earlier Monday, a vice president for American Express testified Melgen used about 650,000 AmEx points to pay for a Paris hotel room for Menendez in 2010. Menendez had about 58,000 points in his AmEx account at the time, and prosecutors want to show he tapped his wealthy friend in order to stay in a $1,500-per-night hotel as part of the bribery scheme.
Defense attorneys have said Menendez planned to give Melgen the points back, but prosecutors introduced Menendez’s AmEx bill to show that in 2013, he used nearly all of his 135,000 points to buy a barbecue grill.
Just how confident is the defense, you ask? The attorney for Dr. Melgen, Kirk Ogrosky, began by accusing prosecutors of attacking Hispanic-Americans. The judge then warned attorneys not to turn the trial into “tabloid trash”. Safe to say they know they’re screwed.
Last week, Menendez’s request for breaks in the trial so he would be able to scoot down to D.C. to cast votes was denied by a federal judge.
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Comments
Here’s a fun game.
Read a ‘mainstream’ story about Menendez. See how many paragraphs it takes for them to sneak in the fact he was a Democrat.
Bonus points if they never mention it at all.
I would play the game if I could find any MSM reports on the trial.
Senator Christie?
There’s a sitting senator on trial for bribery? I can’t find it in the MSM.
https://www.bing.com/search?q=Mendendez+trial&pc=MOZI&form=MOZCON
You need to get out (of your bubble) more often.
You gotta admit — this one will be a hoot to watch. The guy is so dirty and the actions are so tawdry that it’ll make the TV show Dallas look tame.
They’ve tried to play the senator card and they’ve tried to play the aggrieved Hispanic card, but that hasn’t worked. My guess is that they don’t have any useful cards left.
So we can watch this creep’s name get dragged through the mud or they’ll take a plea. Please, please let the trial play out.
The only difference between “Senator” Menendez and a lot of his colleagues on The Hill is that Menendez was stupid enough to get caught. And that’s being pretty stupid.
How is this different from the special services Hillary provided to those who “donated” millions of dollars to her slush fund and paid her millions for BJ’s speeches?
Serious answer…
nuance and threading legal needles.
I’ve always held here that the law is a clumsy hammer, not a scalpel.
Nothing Dollar Bill did WRT his speeches was even remotely illegal, though wrong as hell.
What Hellary did was dancing on the precipice. It COULD be held to be illegal, but nobody is pushing that…at the moment.
BJ should never have accepted money from those with issues before the State Dept. Those were bribes.
You and I could agree that is true rhetorically.
But it would not begin to make out a case for the crime of bribery.
There’s a quid pro quo, and he was not in office at the time. He was just giving speeches for a fee. Value for value is just a market transaction.
Did it reek of corruption? Oh, HELL, yeh…!!!
So, Mendendez is a crooked bastid. Given that he is a Commiecrat, this ALSO must be a week with a Thursday in it.