In 2007, Sen. Bob Menendez allegedly showed his then-lover a safe stuffed with cash, according to a dossier.
The Department of Justice charged Menendez in September with conspiracy for acting as an agent of the Egyptian government while he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“Prosecutors said the senator and his wife, Nadine Menendez, accepted bribes of cash, gold bars and a luxury car over the past five years from three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for a variety of corrupt acts,” according to the Associated Press.
The FBI raided Menendez’s New Jersey home in June 2022.
“Agents seized 13 bars of gold bullion, a luxury Mercedes-Benz and more than $550,000 in cash — including tens of thousands of dollars stuffed in envelopes, one of which held the fingerprints of Mr. Menendez and a co-defendant accused of providing bribes, according to the indictment,” The New York Times reported.
Menendez has pleaded not guilty and refused to resign from the Senate.
At a news conference in September following the indictment, Menendez explained the cash, saying, “For 30 years, I have withdrawn thousands of dollars in cash from my personal savings account, which I have kept for emergencies and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba.”
The New York Post reported Tuesday that it has obtained a 13-page dossier claiming that Menendez’s former lover, Cecilia Reynolds, bragged to her friends that she had seen bundles of cash in his home in 2007.
“She knows a lot of intimate stuff about Menendez and even knows federal and state secrets and all about his kickback schemes etc.,” the document said.
Should Menendez resign?
“She boasted to her friends that he always had bundles of cash lying around in his safe and hidden places. She was told by him that he has kickbacks from contractors and influence seeking people,” it continued.
The Post noted that the dossier alleged that Reynolds had posed for a nude photo — included in the document — on a trip the two took together to Puerto Rico, where they stayed at the governor’s beach house.
Reynolds, who was married at the time of the 2007 trip, told the Post in 2013, “My husband and I were separated for a period of time in the past.”
“Any and all allegations being peddled by a former disgruntled business partner are false and malicious,” she added in an apparent reference to the dossier, which first surfaced in 2013.
The Post pointed out that Reynolds’ connection to Menendez is a matter of public record.
He first met her in 2005 when she was publisher of the Spanish-language newspaper Nosotros.
Menendez was a congressman at the time representing the district near where the paper’s office was located.
After their trip to Puerto Rico, Reynolds returned to her husband.
The Post said neither Menendez’s attorney Robert Luskin nor Reynolds returned a request for comment regarding the allegations contained in the dossier.
In 2015, Menendez was indicted on federal corruption charges regarding alleged bribes in the form of gifts he accepted from Florida ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen, such as flights on his private jet and a luxury hotel stay in Paris.
The jury was not able to reach a verdict when the case went to trial in 2017, and the DOJ dropped the charges the next year.
However, the Senate Ethics Committee “severely admonished” Menendez in 2018 for accepting gifts from Melgen.
