The Menendez indictment: ‘Girlfriend 2,’ the doctor and the senator
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) leaves the podium after speaking to the media during a news conference in Newark, N.J., on April 1, 2015. (Photo: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)
New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez personally intervened to arrange U.S. visas for a Dominican model, a Brazilian student and a Ukrainian actress — girlfriends of a wealthy Florida doctor who plied the senator with nearly $1 million in gifts and campaign contributions, according to a Justice Department indictment released Wednesday.
Menendez’s efforts to facilitate the romantic life of his patron, Dr. Salomon Melgen, a Florida ophthalmologist and businessman, are among the most tantalizing details in a 68-page indictment that alleges a brazen cash-for-favors scheme that went on for years.
When one of Melgen’s girlfriends, the Dominican model, and her sister were both denied tourist visas by the U.S. embassy in that country — after a consular official noted, among other factors, their young age (18 and 22 years old) and lack of any visible means of support — Menendez didn’t take no for an answer.
“Call Ambassador asap,” he instructed a staffer who had been assigned to work the case. Melgen’s friend, described in the indictment as “Girlfriend 2,” and her sister then got their visas, prompting the staffer to email a colleague: “In my view, this is only due to the fact that RM [Robert Menendez] intervened. I’ve told RM.”
Dr. Salomon Melgen at his office in West Palm Beach, Fla., on July 20, 2009. (Photo: Hector Gabino, The Miami Herald/AP Photo)
The indictment details much else that Menendez allegedly did for Melgen, advocating for the doctor’s interests “all the way up to the highest levels of the U.S. government,” according to a Justice Department press release.
A Menendez adviser confirmed to Yahoo News that the senator will temporarily step down as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But, the adviser said, he has no plans to resign and intends to vigorously contest the indictment, arguing that Melgen was a friend and that none of his official actions on his behalf were in exchange for gratuities and gifts.
“For nearly three years, I’ve lived under a Justice Department cloud, and today, I’m outraged that this cloud has not been lifted,” Menendez said at a news conference in Newark, N.J., on Wednesday night. “I am confident at the end of the day I will be vindicated.”
“This is not how my career is going to end,” Menendez said. “I’m angry and ready to fight because today contradicts my public service career and my entire life.”
“Prosecutors don’t know the difference between friendship and corruption,” he added.
Among Menendez’s actions, according to the indictment: He repeatedly intervened with the State Department to get officials there to back a Melgen company bid for a multimillion-dollar port security contract in the Dominican Republic. Menendez allegedly met with the assistant secretary of state for counternarcotics on May 16, 2012, to discuss the issue, the same day that Melgen and his family gave $40,000 to a New Jersey Democratic “victory” committee backing Menendez’s re-election and another $20,000 to the senator’s legal defense fund.
And Menendez also repeatedly pressed Melgen’s interests in an $8.9 million billing dispute with Medicare, raising the issue with the U.S. government’s top official in charge of Medicare and then with Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.
The Sebelius meeting was arranged by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (referred to obliquely as “Senator 3” in the indictment) and was an opportunity to press Menendez’s argument that his friend was being treated “unfairly” by Medicare. The agency contended that he was double-billing the taxpayers for administering an eye drug known as Lucentis.
But the meeting did not go well for the senator: Sebelius bluntly informed Menendez that that CMS “was not going to pay for same vial of medicine twice.”
At the same time that Menendez was pressing Melgen’s interests, he was receiving multiple favors from the doctor, including free flights aboard the doctor’s plane for stays at a luxury villa the doctor owned at Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic.
“Located on one of the three golf courses, Melgen’s villa opens to a courtyard, has its own pool, and is serviced by Melgen’s private staff, which cooks, cleans, provides transportation and generally caters to the needs of Melgen and his guests,” the indictment reads.
Menendez used his Senate chief of staff “to help manage his dealings with Melgen,” according to the indictment. And when the then-unmarried Menandez wanted to take a girlfriend to Paris for three nights in April 2010, Melgen helped make it happen: He turned over 649,611 American Express rewards points to the senator, allowing him and the woman to stay for free at the five-star Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome hotel. The suite, which included a “limestone bath with soaking tub” was valued at $1,536 per night, according to the indictment, making the total value of the Menendez excursion (when fees and tax recovery charges were added) $4,934.10.
