Bob Menendez pleads not guilty to charge of acting as ‘foreign agent’

The US Senator Bob Menendez pleaded not guilty today in a Manhattan court to charges that he acted as “unregistered foreign agent» on behalf of the Egyptian government.

Federal prosecutors on Oct. 12 accused the New Jersey Democratic senator, who until recently headed the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, of acting on behalf of Egyptian military and intelligence officials between 2018 and 2022.

Senator Menendez pleaded not guilty today before Judge Sidney Stein. In a statement on October 12, Bob Menendez emphasized that the accumulation of new charges does not automatically mean that they are true. Senator and his wife Nadine Menendez have been accused of receiving gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for exerting influence in favor of the Egyptian government and interfering with authorities’ investigations against the businessmen.
On September 27, all the accused pleaded not guilty.

Nadine Menendez and one of the businessmen, Wael Hanna, pleaded not guilty to the “foreign agent” charge on October 18. According to the indictment, Hanna arranged meetings between Senator Bob Menendez and Egyptian officials, who pressured him to sign a military aid agreement. In return, the businessman allegedly put Nadine Menendez on his company’s payroll. The businessman and Nadine Menendez also allegedly passed on recommendations and requests from Egyptian officials to the senator.

She is the third time Bob Menendez is the target of a federal investigation, but he was never convicted. As required by Democratic Party rules, he resigned as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but insists he is innocent and refuses to resign as a senator.