Connect with us

News

Sen. Bob Menendez found guilty on all counts in bribery trial

Published

on

Sen. Bob Menendez found guilty on all counts in bribery trial

Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey was found guilty of bribery charges, including acting as an agent of the Egyptian government.

Frank Franklin II/AP/AP


hide caption

toggle caption

Advertisement

Frank Franklin II/AP/AP

A federal jury in Manhattan on Tuesday found Sen. Robert Menendez guilty of using his political influence as a powerful member of Congress to benefit New Jersey businessmen as well as the governments of Egypt and Qatar in return for hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, including gold bars.

Menendez, a powerful Democrat from New Jersey who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was convicted on all 16 counts, including bribery, obstruction of justice, acting as a foreign agent and honest services wire fraud.

“This case has always been about shocking levels of corruption—hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in the form of cash, gold bars, a Mercedes Benz. This wasn’t politics as usual. This was politics for profit,” U.S. Attorney Damien Williams said outside the courthouse. “Now that a jury has convicted Bob Menendez, his years of selling his office to the highest bidder have finally come to an end.”

Advertisement

Immediately after the verdict was announced, the top Democrat in Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, called on Menendez to step aside: “In light of this guilty verdict, Senator Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our country, and resign,” Schumer said in a statement.

Menendez stepped down as head of the foreign relations panel after his indictment, but stayed in the U.S. Senate and is still running for reelection in November — as an independent.

Menendez was tried alongside two businessmen accused of bribing him: Egyptian-American Wael Hana and real estate developer Fred Daibes. A third businessman, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty and testified against the trio.

Hana and Daibes were also found guilty on all the counts they were facing.

Menendez’s wife, Nadine, was also charged in the case. She had been scheduled to face trial separately this summer after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, but on Tuesday the judge delayed her trial indefinitely. No reason was given.

Advertisement

Prosecutors accuse her of acting as a go-between with the businessmen in order to shield her husband.

The two-month trial was marked by colorful testimony and exhibits. At one point, jurors were able to hold a gold bar that the government says was found in a search of Menendez’s house. Prosecutors argued Menendez put his greed above service to the country and his constituents, while the senator’s lawyers rejected the charges and said the government lacked evidence of direct bribery.

Menendez did not testify on his own behalf.

This is the second federal criminal trial for Menendez. He was indicted in 2015 on unrelated federal corruption and bribery charges. A jury in that case could not reach a unanimous verdict and the judge declared a mistrial.

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

News

Bank of America profits fall as it pushes up provision for bad loans

Published

on

Bank of America profits fall as it pushes up provision for bad loans

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Bank of America’s profits slipped in the second quarter as results from the second-largest lender in the US pointed to the growing strain of higher interest rates on banks and borrowers.

BofA’s profits fell 7 per cent to $6.9bn, a smaller drop than the 10 per cent analysts had projected.

But BofA said interest income fell for the third quarter in a row, even as lending rose as customers demanded higher rates for their deposits.

Advertisement

The bank’s provision for loan losses also rose by more than a third from a year ago to $1.5bn. However delinquent loans, which peaked last quarter, fell $400mn in the quarter to $5.4bn.

Like other large banks, BofA benefited from a rebound in deals and other Wall Street activity. Fees from investment banking rose 29 per cent in the quarter from a year ago.

Revenue from sales and trading was up 7 per cent from a year ago, its ninth consecutive quarterly increase, and it best second-quarter showing in a decade.

Revenue was up 1 per cent from a year ago to $25.4bn.

“Our team produced another strong quarter, serving a growing client base,” BofA’s chief executive Brian Moynihan said.

Advertisement

The bank’s shares were up 2 per cent in pre-market trading.

Continue Reading

News

The Florida judge who just gave Trump a pass in documents case will now be judged herself

Published

on

The Florida judge who just gave Trump a pass in documents case will now be judged herself


What if I told you Judge Aileen Cannon has been working for years to get this case thrown out?

play

It would be easy to get angry at this point about how law and order is alleged to apply to everyone in America, but former President Donald Trump keeps being issued get-out-of-jail-free cards by judges he appointed.

Advertisement

It happened again Monday when the judge overseeing Trump’s federal case for allegedly taking and concealing classified documents after leaving office decided to rule counter to decades of established law and precedence to just toss the case out of court.

That’s frustrating to fair-minded people, no matter what political party you belong to. We’re told as children that nobody is above the law in America and we hope as adults to see that hold true.

But this would be a good time to press pause on our frustration because U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, nominated in April 2020 by Trump for the Southern District of Florida, is likely to face some judgment about her judgment.

We’ve been here before. It didn’t go so well for Cannon.

Judge Aileen Cannon did her part in the Trump document case

Advertisement

Cannon’s ruling has nothing to do with the merits of the case. Instead, she grabbed hold of a fringe legal argument that Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed in November 2022 by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee the investigation, was improperly selected.

Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury and charged last summer. His entire legal strategy since then has been to delay delay delay while painting the prosecution as a political vendetta as he seeks another term as president.

In this, Cannon has always seemed more like an eager collaborator than an impartial judge, dragging out the process and leaving legal motions in limbo while sparring with prosecutors. All the while, the clock is ticking down to the Nov. 5 general election. A Trump victory would make the case simply vanish.

Decision to throw out document case started years ago

Advertisement

One of Trump’s opening gambits in the case in 2022, months before charges were filed, was to ask Cannon to prevent prosecutors from examining the thousands of documents it found – some marked confidential or top secret – in boxes strewn across the ex-president’s private club in Florida while executing a search warrant.

Cannon played along, shutting down the prosecutors and appointing a “special master” to sift through the documents.

Smith appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, known for a certain right-leaning tilt on the political scale, where the case was heard by three judges, including two appointed by Trump.

More GOP decisiveness: Republican reaction to Trump shooting only sows more division. Our leaders must stop it.

Those judges, in December 2022, reversed Cannon in a 21-page ruling that ended with what amounted to a scolding for her for what amounted to an attempt at a “radical reordering” to limit how federal judges act in criminal investigations.

Advertisement

“The law is clear,” they wrote. “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.”

Let’s not forget the Supreme Court’s role in all this

That’s the way the law is supposed to work. Everyone is equal. Unless, of course, the U.S. Supreme Court decides otherwise.

The other recent development that has law-and-order fans freaking out was the Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling that Trump has immunity for any “official acts” he took as president while attempting to overturn the 2020 election but can still be tried in a separate case in federal court in Washington, D.C., for any “unofficial acts” he took in that attempt.

Justice Clarence Thomas joined the court’s other six conservatives, three appointed by Trump, in that 6-3 ruling but couldn’t resist helping Trump on a legal point that was not part of the case – writing a concurring opinion that questioned whether Smith’s appointment as special counsel was legal.

Advertisement

Thomas opened the door for Cannon to toss the documents charges against Trump. And that’s just what she did.

Trump legal cases still out there to be dismissed

Cannon tucked her ruling Monday into a news cycle already ramped up to full bore, between the attempted assassination of Trump in Pennsylvania on Saturday and his selection of a vice presidential running mate at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday evening.

Trump, who briefly called for unity after surviving Saturday, was right back at his usual rhetoric Monday, casting his legal troubles as “Political Attacks” while celebrating Cannon’s ruling on his social media site, calling for dismissal “of ALL the Witch Hunts.”

Trump’s abortion lies: I asked Trump’s campaign to prove that Democrats support infanticide. They couldn’t.

That included the case pending in Washington, a pending criminal case in Georgia on attempts to overturn the 2020 election there, the civil case where he was found liable for sexual assault, the criminal case in New York where he was convicted on 34 felony counts, and a civil case where he was fined $454 million for running a real estate business rife with fraud.

Advertisement

So many cases. And only one Judge Cannon.

Possible new member of SCOTUS?

Trump sees all politics as transactional – if he does something for you, he will expect something from you. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican and avid social media troll, said the quiet part out loud Monday in a post on the site previously known as Twitter with Cannon’s official portrait, calling her “Future Supreme Court Justice Cannon.”

Speaking of the Supreme Court, the justices took a pass in October 2022 when Trump asked them to overturn the 11th Circuit, which had just overturned Cannon.

If the special counsel successfully appeals the new Cannon ruling and revives the documents case, Trump will certainly try his luck again with our highest court.

Advertisement

Then we’ll find out just how many get-out-of-jail-free cards the conservative justices are willing to deal him.

Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan

Continue Reading

News

Milwaukee Is a Beach Town? See How Well You Know the Republicans' Host City.

Published

on

Milwaukee Is a Beach Town? See How Well You Know the Republicans' Host City.

The Republican National Convention is underway in Milwaukee, the largest city in the key swing state of Wisconsin. The four-day affair has put the city in an international spotlight just four years after Covid-19 spoiled the Democrats’ plans to hold their own convention in Milwaukee. But how much do you know about the host city? Take our quiz to find out.

Continue Reading

Trending