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Menendez rushes to pay private-jet tab after FBI raid


“Wonderful things, subpoenas,” Wilford Brimley said in Absence of Malice, after the threat of one broke the silence of conspirators in the film’s climax. We can add FBI raids to that list of wonderful catalysts. After discovering that the FBI had raided the offices of his frequent travel companion and campaign donor Salomon Melgen, Senator Bob Menendez suddenly remembered that he owed nearly $60,000 to Melgen for private-jet flights to the Dominican Republic:

Embattled Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez said through a spokesman Wednesday that trips he took on the private jet of a major political donor “have been paid for and reported appropriately.” But that may not have been accurate until shortly before the statement went out to media: WNBC-TV4 in New York City reported Wednesday that Menendez recently wrote a $58,500 check to the jet’s owner, Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen.

“Senator Menendez has traveled on Dr. Melgen’s plane on three occasions, all of which have been paid for and reported appropriately,” the statement said.

Menendez’s chief of staff, Dan O’Brien, told NBC that it took the senator three years to pay his private airfare because of an office mistake.

“This was sloppy,” O’Brien conceded about two 2010 flights. “I’m chalking it up to an oversight.”
“Sloppy”? That’s hardly credible. Senators have staff members that watch for those kinds of expenditures. Three private jet flights to the Dominican Republic completely escaped their notice until the FBI raided Melgen’s offices? Riiiiiiiiiight.

NBC’s New York affiliate reports that the Ethics Committee is also looking into Menendez’ travel:

Asked whether the senator has been contacted by the Senate Ethics Committee about the matter, O’Brien said, “We can assume the Senate Ethics Committee is looking at the allegation.”

News of the senator paying for two private plane trips to the Dominican Republic comes after the FBI agents and investigators from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General searched the doctor’s Florida offices. Officials would not comment on the investigation, although several sources pointed out that HHS-OIG agents often investigate allegations of Medicare fraud.

View more videos at: http://nbcnewyork.com.

Wonderful things, FBI raids. This comes at a particularly sensitive time, as Menendez is slated to take over for John Kerry as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Until last night, Menendez had insisted he did nothing wrong, but the sudden payment of $58,500 for private jet flights that took place almost three years ago makes it look as if there is more to the investigation than Menendez has admitted. If the Ethics Committee has begun to probe Menendez’ travel, perhaps Harry Reid should start considering a Plan B.



http://hotair.com/archives/2013/01/31/menendez-rushes-to-pay-private-jet-tab-after-fbi-raid/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter



Poor pervert will prolly just face "censure".

Birds of a "feather" flock together!


Sen. Menendez's backer target of FBI raid



FBI agents late Tuesday night raided the West Palm Beach business of an eye doctor suspected of providing free trips and even underage Dominican Republic prostitutes to U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J. -- who has denied what he calls the "fallacious allegations."

Agents gathered at the medical-office complex of Dr. Salomon Melgen, a contributor to Menendez and other prominent politicians, to start hauling away potential evidence in several vans.

The investigation is believed to be focusing on Melgen's finances and the allegations about Menendez's trips and contact with prostitutes. A spokesman for Menendez could not be reached for comment, nor could Melgen.

Melgen has an outstanding IRS lien of $11.1 million for taxes owed from 2006 to 2009, according to records filed with the Palm Beach County recorder's office. A previous IRS lien for $6.2 million was released in 2011.

Despite those financial problems, Melgen and his family have contributed at least $357,000 to candidates and committees since 1998, according to Florida and federal campaign records. Of that, the Melgens have contributed about 9 percent to Menendez's federal campaigns.

Melgen also owns a private CL-600 Challenger plane through one of his West Palm Beach-based companies, and frequently flies between South Florida and Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic, where he is from.

Menendez has flown on the plane at least once, his office has said, when he was chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 2009 to 2011, when the Melgens contributed about $60,400 to the group. A spokeswoman had previously said that Menendez and Melgen are longtime friends and said the senator did nothing improper.

Melgen was first linked to Menendez just before the November elections, when the conservative Daily Caller website interviewed two alleged prostitutes who said they had relations with the New Jersey Democrat at Melgen's Dominican Republic mansion in Casa de Campo.

After the election, the news died down.

But then, days before Menendez was about to start leading the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as chairman, reporters started receiving a 58-page dossier of e-mails between a Miami FBI agent and a tipster who claimed that some of the prostitutes had been underage.

"I'm not going to respond to the fallacious allegations of your story," Menendez told the Daily Caller on Monday when a reporter caught up with him on a train in Washington.

At the time, Menendez had just stepped into the national spotlight along with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and six other senators who are hammering out a highly watched immigration plan that is the talk of Washington.

Rubio is one of the few big-name Florida politicians who has not received campaign money from the Melgens, who have contributed to Sen. Bill Nelson and Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Joe Garcia, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart, among others.

The FBI would not comment on the e-mails, and the agent, Regino Chavez, did not return calls or emails. But sources told The Miami Herald that the e-mails are real.

The e-mails from agent Chavez show that he tried to find out what happened. But the tipster, who went by the name "Peter Williams," refused to talk to him by telephone or meet him face to face.

Chavez contacted the tipster Aug.1, 2012, after the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington referred the case to the FBI. The tipster would not meet or speak by phone to CREW or to an investigative reporter, either.

"As far as the information you have provided, we have been unable to confirm most of it," Chavez wrote on Sept. 12. "We know that you are providing accurate information."

But it is not clear what that specific information is because Chavez was unable to interview the alleged prostitutes. Over the months, Chavez tried to meet or speak with the tipster, but had no luck.

Then, on Nov. 1, the agent wrote the tipster again and drew attention to the Daily Caller interview with the alleged prostitutes.

"I think we are at the point where you and I need to communicate over the phone so that we can move faster," he wrote.

No luck.

Amid the suspicious circumstances of the complaints, Democrats have tried to characterize the reports about Menendez and Melgen as a right-wing smear job.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid refused to comment on the possibility of an FBI investigation when he was asked Tuesday about the case.

Said Reid: "Always consider the source. All anyone here has to look at is the source where this comes from."

Tuesday night's raid, however, shows that there is at least an investigation tied to Menendez's longtime friend and ally.

http://www.arcamax.com/currentnews/newsheadlines/s-1271337


Whoo-Hoo0...ObamaCare here we c u m!

I'm thinking he needs to share a jail cell with this upstanding citizen:


http://theadvocate.com/home/5036904-125/guilty-plea-in-child-sex

Officials: Agents Raided Office of Menendez Friend After Document Shredding Truck Spotted



FBI agents and other law enforcement officials investigate the medical-office complex of Dr. Salomon Melgen who has possible ties to U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) on January 30, 2013 in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Federal agents raided the West Palm Beach eye clinic of a longtime friend and political supporter of Sen. Robert Menendez earlier this week after a document shredding truck was observed at the building, following attempts by FBI agents to question Dr. Salomon Melgen about his relationship with the New Jersey Democrat, according to federal officials familiar with the investigation.

The execution of the search warrant was carried out by a federal health care task force, with agents from both the FBI and the federal Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General's office, which had been investigating suspected Medicare fraud by Melgen's clinics for more than a year, the sources told ABC News. The raid appeared unrelated to recent allegations regarding Menendez's trips to Melgen's home in the Dominican Republic.

An attorney for Dr. Melgen's office told ABC News that "the government has not informed Dr. Melgen what concerns it may have. We are confident that Dr. Melgen has acted appropriately at all times. "

A spokesperson for Sen. Menendez told ABC News Thursday that the Senator's office was unaware of any FBI investigation or inquiries involving the Senator. The spokesperson confirmed the Senator was a longtime friend of Dr. Melgen and had recently reimbursed Melgen $58,000 for three trips on the doctor's private jet to the Dominican Republic, following a complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee by a Samuel Thompson, a New Jersey state senator and chair of the Middlesex County Republican Organization, in November 2012, just days prior to Menendez's reelection.


The spokesperson said the Senator was advised by Democratic campaign finance attorneys that under the "friendship" exclusion he likely didn't need to reimburse the cost of the trips, but to avoid any questions of impropriety decided to repay the full cost.

The spokesperson for Menendez also strongly denied allegations by The Daily Caller website that Menendez was involved with underage prostitutes during those trips.

"All of these allegations from a right-wing blog of engaging in prostitution are absolutely false," said the spokesperson. "The Senator has known Dr. Melgen for years and his travel on Melgen's plane on three occasions has been reported and reimbursed as required by the rules."

A spokesperson for the FBI would not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation. The HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.


Melgen, an eye doctor, is a major political donor, with most of his money going to Democrats. Over the past two decades, he and his family have contributed more than $400,000, and nearly $50,000 has gone to Menendez and Menendez PACs. They also contributed $60,400 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2009 – Menendez chaired the DSCC from 2009 to 2011 – and $50,000 to the New Jersey Democratic State Committee.

Questions about Menendez and his relationship with Melgen were raised by a pseudonymous tipster who contacted the Washington, D.C. good government group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) in 2012.

The tipster, using the name Peter Williams, told CREW via email that Menendez had traveled to the Dominican Republic in Melgen's plane and had had sex with prostitutes, at least one of them underage.


"There's reason to be quite skeptical of these allegations," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW. "Mr. Williams claims to have known about the Senator's conduct since as early as 2008 yet didn't come forward for four years until right before Menendez's reelection."

"In addition, despite efforts by Crew, news organizations and the FBI to speak with Mr. Williams either by phone or in person, he's refused to do that for over eight months," said Sloan. She said CREW was unable to determine if the underage woman referenced by Menendez was "a prostitute, underage, or even real."

"The timing, combined with his insistence on remaining on communication only through email, seriously undermines the credibility of the allegations," said Sloan.

Earlier this week, dozens of emails between "Peter Williams" and CREW, ABC News and the FBI were published on a website.

Despite extensive efforts by ABC News to meet with Williams, speak with him on the phone, or verify his identity, Williams refused to come forward.


http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/officials-sen-menendez-friend-raided-medicare-fraud-investigation/story?id=18364791


The best politicians money can buy!

Democrat Culture of Corruption rears its head again now that the culture wars are over.

The girls from "Jersey Shore" aren't even from the Jersey shore area, bro. Especially Snookie, who I'll agree is a skank, who is from Chile. Of the rest of the girls, only one, and I might add the prettiest one IMHO, Sammi Giancolo, is from New Jersey. So you see, they really don't represent the typical Jersey shore girl, TYVM.

Grew up in the same city as Menendez. Although I am several years older then him, I followed his career since he was a teenager & held his first political position. Nothing surprises me when I see anything (good and bad) about anyone from that area.

If you switch over to Fox, you can prolly still catch the 'war on X-mas' reruns.

Bob Menendez Spent Up to 87 Percent of Wealth Paying Back Donor

When Robert Menendez arrived in the U.S. Senate in 2006, he was a relative pauper in a chamber often called a millionaires’ club. The New Jersey Democrat ranked 97th out of 100 senators in terms of his personal wealth, according to financial records filed that year and compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

So Menendez’s decision last month to use his personal funds to reimburse a prominent political contributor $58,500 for two flights to the Dominican Republic came at a major cost. The repayment amounts to between 32 percent and 87 percent of the assets Menendez reported holding in bank accounts and stock, according to his latest financial-disclosure form, which was filed last year.

Menendez repaid Florida eye doctor and political donor Salomon Melgen only after his free flights aboard Melgen’s plane became public and the subject of a Senate ethics complaint. A local New Jersey Republican group filed a complaint last November, alleging the senator had broken Senate rules by “repeatedly flying on a private jet to the Dominican Republic, and other locations.” Menendez reimbursed Melgen the $58,500 two months later, on Jan. 4, according to his office.

In telling his own story, Menendez likes to talk about his scrappy roots. The first paragraph of the biography on his official Senate website notes that he is the son of immigrants who grew up in a tenement in Union City, N.J. Menendez, 59, rose from the local school board to mayor to state legislator to House member to U.S. senator. He recently became the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

As Menendez has accumulated political power, however, he has not accumulated great wealth. His 2011 financial disclosure, filed last May, lists checking and savings accounts that held somewhere between $66,003 and $165,000. (Congressional disclosure forms list assets in ranges.) He also owned stock in a single company, Metropolitan Life Insurance, worth between $1,001 and $15,000. A rental property he owned in Union City generated between $15,001 and $50,000 in income in 2011. (The property itself was valued at between a quarter-million and a half-million dollars, with Menendez still owing somewhere between $50,001 and $100,000 on the mortgage, the disclosure report shows.)

It would appear to be a comfortable enough living, especially with a senator’s annual $174,000 salary. But not so comfortable that cutting a $58,500 check couldn’t have a profound impact.

Menendez’s office declined to comment on the senator’s personal finances or the details of how he managed to pay back the $58,500 for the two flights.

On Monday, Menendez told CNN that paying for the flights simply “fell through the cracks.”
“When it came to my attention that payment had not taken place, I personally paid for them in order to meet my obligation,” he said.

Government watchdogs are dubious. They say Menendez’s financial situation adds fuel to questions about his motives and whether the free flights he accepted were a simple oversight.

“For a senator that’s not a Rockefeller, that’s real money,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. “It kind of makes you wonder.… If he knew in advance that the trips were going to cost him $60,000, would he have done it?”

In the years after the Jack Abramoff scandal, which involved trips abroad for politicians, McGehee said it “stretches credibility” that Menendez was unaware he was receiving a gift while boarding a private flight to a Caribbean island. “You’re about to walk on a private plane, and you’re a public official—and that doesn’t occur to you?” she said.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, another watchdog group, was even less charitable.

“He waited until he was caught to pay them back,” she said. “If you rob a bank—and you’re caught—you don’t say, ‘Take the money back and forget about it.’ ”

In a statement, Menendez’s office defended the senator and said all flights had now been paid for. “Dr. Melgen has been a friend and political supporter of Senator Menendez for many years,” the statement said. “Senator Menendez has traveled on Dr. Melgen’s plane on three occasions, all of which have been paid for and reported appropriately.” (The third trip was previously paid for and reported by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which Menendez chaired in 2009 and 2010, as the senator was traveling to raise funds.)

The tale of Menendez and Melgen has taken dramatic twists and turns in recent weeks. A conservative website, The Daily Caller, first alleged last fall that Menendez had visited prostitutes during the Dominican trips with Melgen. The accusations didn’t draw wide media attention until the FBI raided Melgen’s Florida offices last week, though it is not clear the raid had any connection to Menendez. Menendez told CNN: “The bottom line is, all those smears are absolutely false.” The FBI would not comment.

Melgen and his wife have been longtime political contributors to Menendez, dating back to the 1990s, giving tens of thousands of dollars. When Menendez chaired the DSCC in 2009, the Melgens gave the committee a combined $60,400. And in 2012, Melgen’s company gave $700,000 to a super PAC dedicated to electing Senate Democrats. That group, Majority PAC, spent $582,500 on Menendez’s behalf en route to his reelection last fall.

In addition to the political giving, the Melgens supported a legal defense fund that Menendez created in 2011 to fend off a tea-party-backed recall effort. The state high court dismissed the recall effort, and Menendez used his legal fund, called the Fund to Uphold the Constitution, to pay his lawyers.

“During the proceedings, the senator appreciated those who helped defray the costs of defending our democratic system from this frivolous, right-wing attack,” Menendez spokesman Paul Brubaker said.

Salomon and Flor Melgen gave a combined $40,000 in 2011 and 2012 to the legal fund, making them its largest donors.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily/senator-bob-menendez-spent-up-to-87-of-his-savings-to-repay-donor-for-dominican-republic-flights-20130205


Yet yesterday he had a presser where he kept calling his behavior a "smear"!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rcRkTTGmcs


Oooopps...looks like he forgot to report it all too!

If I remember correctly, Larry Craig got his arse busted for much less...and with less "evidence."