NANCY SOLOMON: Bob Menendez is a creature of habit. When he's in his hometown, he likes to get breakfast at the IHOP. His adult children, the MSNBC host Alicia Menendez and the congressman Rob Menendez, joked about his habits in a campaign video a few years ago.

CAMPAIGN VIDEO: Have you ever been to a restaurant with him that you've been to more than three times where he's ordered something different? Never. Never. 

NANCY SOLOMON: And during the thirty one years he worked in Congress, Menendez was a regular at Morton's Steakhouse in downtown Washington. And now one dinner at Morton's in May 2019 is at the center of his downfall. 

Let me set the scene: two FBI agents were there, posing as a couple on a date. They scored a table not far from where Menendez and his future wife, Nadine, were dining with Will Hana, the halal meat guy we met last episode. 

And next to Hana was a member of Egyptian intelligence. One of the FBI agents later testified that she heard Nadine speak only once. "What else can the love of my life do for you?" she asked the Egyptian men.

This is the final installment of Dead End: The Rise and Fall of Gold Bar Bob Menendez. We've been looking at the whirlwind romance of Bob and Nadine Menendez and their love child: a bribery scheme involving a halal meat business, an Egyptian weapons deal and more than half a million dollars in cash and gold bars. 

In this episode, we're going to find out how they got caught and try to answer the question many of those close to Bob Menendez are still asking: why would he jeopardize one of the most powerful jobs in the country, and risk a long prison sentence for half a million dollars? 

The Morton's Steakhouse dinner was just one of several between Menendez, Will Hana, and Egyptian intelligence officials. The FBI agent who testified, she said when they watched the dinner, they were not there to surveil Menendez. She never said exactly why they were even there. 

So I asked Tracey Tully, the New York Times reporter, if she understood it.

Nancy Solomon on tape: Did you ever figure out which one of those characters they were interested in? It would make sense to me that it was Hana and that they had been tipped off by the USDA that something hinky was going on with the halal meat certification contract.

Tracey Tully: Hanna had had his office and apartment searched at some point, and they took Virtually everything, and all his computers, and his jewelry, and his phones. And they'd been pouring through all that for some time. And that was right around the time of the halal meat genesis thing.

NANCY SOLOMON: Eventually, the FBI would show up at the split level ranch house that Nadine and Bob Menendez shared in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. The plan was for agents to search the house without attracting any attention. They used unmarked vehicles, covered their FBI-branded clothing and tried not to make a mess. After all, it was the home of a U.S. Senator.

But they found cash and gold bars tucked into every nook and cranny of the house. So much, in fact, that they had to call in for reinforcements and two cash-counting machines. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams included in the indictment a photo of the senator's bomber jacket, with “Robert Menendez,” and a senate seal, embroidered on the front.

Damian Williams: Some of the cash was stuffed in the Senator's jacket pockets. That's not all. Agents also discovered a lot of gold 

NANCY SOLOMON: Senator Menendez had hit the jackpot. It turns out, Will Hana (halal guy) had a business partner: a wealthy real estate developer in New Jersey. His name is Fred Daibes, and he collects gold bars, some of which made their way into the Menendez home. When he announced the indictment, the US attorney laid out the scheme. 

Damian Williams: First, the indictment alleges that Senator Menendez used his power and influence, including his leadership role on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to benefit the government of Egypt in various ways.

NANCY SOLOMON: Menendez helped Egyptian officials write a letter to his colleagues on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – he basically ghost wrote it. The letter was asking for the release of three hundred million-dollars worth of military aid. Menendez sent the letter to Nadine, who forwarded it to Will Hana, who passed it on to Egyptian officials. Essentially all they had to do was add their letterhead and signature, and send it on to Menendez’s colleagues in the Senate.

Damian Williams: We also allege that Senator Menendez improperly pressured a senior official at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to protect a lucrative monopoly that the government of Egypt had awarded to Hana, a lucrative monopoly that Hana then used to fund certain bribe payments.

NANCY SOLOMON: It's a three-way trade. Menendez gives Egypt what they want: that's the helping a foreign government charge. Egypt gives Hana the monopoly, which makes him instantly rich. And Hana pays Bob and Nadine Menendez in cash and gold: that's the bribery charge.

Menendez was also charged with obstruction of justice – for his attempts to help two New Jersey businessmen who were facing criminal charges: Fred Daibes, the guy who collects gold bars – and Jose Uribe, he’s the one who meets with Menendez on the back patio in New Jersey, when the senator rings a little bell to summon Nadine to the table. Uribe gave them a Mercedes convertible, to replace the car Nadine totaled when she killed the pedestrian. Remember, she wasn’t found to be at fault.  But she also wasn’t drug or alcohol tested … and her phone wasn’t inspected to see if she was driving distracted.   

But the part of this story that has fascinated me the most has been how it all began, and whether Nadine actually chose to date Menendez for ulterior motives. I brought it up with the Times reporter, Tracey Tully. 

Nancy Solomon on tape: When I started to learn about the case before the trial and then listening to some of the testimony at the trial, you know, I would wonder: was Nadine Menendez an Egyptian spy? How do you see her role in this? 

Tracey Tully: I, I guess I walked away thinking, no, she was not an Egyptian spy. But, she was, and is, it seems, certainly based on the text message, an opportunist. And she saw, as she wrote to one of her children, I believe, “you know, every time I'm in the middle, I'm gonna get money.”

NANCY SOLOMON: Eventually, I came to the same conclusion. For one thing, the texts that Nadine sent right after her first date with Menendez show that she didn’t know anything about the senator’s powerful position on the Foreign Relations Committee. When Nadine meets up with Will Hana, she asked Menendez what "international position" he had. And Hana didn’t even know the senator’s name, the texts show. Also, there's the timeline. It only took twenty five days from their first date for Menendez to agree to an off-the-books meeting with an Egyptian general. So, suffice to say, he was a pretty willing partner in crime. 

And then, if Nadine was a spy, she was a really bad one. I mean, don't they learn in Spying 101 to never put anything in a text? And she seemed to think that if she deleted texts from her phone, they would not be discovered. At one point, she asks Menendez if she should text one of their co-conspirators, and he quickly shoots back -- in a text, mind you -- “No, you should not text or email.” 

Senator Menendez participated in many text exchanges that he certainly must now regret. In many of them, Nadine is in the middle of communications between the senator and Egypt's intelligence officers.  He texts her "Tell Will I am going to sign off this sale to Egypt today.” And then he lists the exact types of ammunition Egypt will get. Nadine screenshots the text and sends the message to Will Hana, which Hana then sends to the Egyptian general in charge of obtaining U.S. weapons – on whatsapp. The general replies with three thumbs up emojis. 

Bob and Nadine Menendez were convicted on all charges.  Menendez resigned from the senate in August of 2024. Nadine won’t be sentenced until September. I was at the courthouse for the sentencing of Bob, and it was pretty surprising.

Crowd voices: How is this a witch hunt?

NANCY SOLOMON: That’s coming up next.

Nancy Solomon on tape: I've arrived at the Federal Courthouse in Manhattan. It's, uh, about eight 30 in the morning. and uh, this is sentencing day. Strangely, the last senator to go to prison was also from New Jersey. Uh, and that had to do with the Abscam case. 44 years ago. There's no recording in the courthouse, so I have to check all my stuff and, uh, won't be able to do a blow by blow.

NANCY SOLOMON: Prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Menendez to fifteen years. His defense team initially asked for a sentence range of no jail time to two years. But after the judge sentenced Will Hana and Fred Daibes to eight and seven years respectively, the Menendez team spent the lunch break rewriting their statements to the judge.They asked for eight years and Menendez made a personal plea that was meant to show his remorse.

 “Your honor,” he said, “you have before you a chastened man.” 

And then he broke down and cried.  The courtroom was silent as he took a few moments to compose himself. His adult children were sitting behind him, in the front row. They didn’t move a muscle and Nadine wasn’t there. 

He asked the judge to take into account all he had done in his career. And for that, the judge did knock a few years off. But he sentenced him to eleven years.  Any sentence longer than ten meant Menendez could not be assigned to a minimum security camp.  

Afterwards, that chastened man stepped in front of bank of microphones outside the courthouse, and struck a very different tone. He turned his attention to the one man who could save him.

Senator Menendez: President Trump is right. This process is political, and it's corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system. 

Crowd voices: You're a Democrat, the piece was brought by Democrats. How is this a witch hunt? How is…

NANCY SOLOMON: That was January 29th of this year, and it seemed far-fetched that Bob Menendez, a progressive who voted to impeach the president, would get a pardon from him. But two weeks later, Trump's Department of Justice ordered federal prosecutors in New York to drop their case against the Democratic Mayor, Eric Adams. 

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: As someone who's a constitutional law professor, this is really irksome.

NANCY SOLOMON: Ciara Torres-Spelliscy teaches at the Stetson University College School of Law in Florida. She writes about political corruption.

Nancy Solomon on tape: What do you think about the possibility that Donald Trump may pardon Menendez? 

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Well, it would fit a pattern of the Trump pardons both in his first term and early in his second term. He has had a habit of pardoning people who have violated anti-corruption laws, whether they're white collar crime, anti corruption laws, or campaign finance laws. 

NANCY SOLOMON: Some have argued that Menendez, out of office and voted to impeach Trump, is unlikely to get a pardon. But Torres-Spelliscy says the president's history suggests all bets are off. 

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: It's hard to know who Trump will pardon next. Uh, one of the more recent pardons was for the former governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich. He was a Democrat, so I'm not sure whether the Democratic label matters so much to Trump. He seems much more interested in undermining anti-corruption laws, left, right, and center. 

NANCY SOLOMON: Lawyers for Menendez aren’t counting on a pardon and are working on an appeal. And the U.S. Supreme Court? It might help him. 

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: The Roberts Supreme Court has been steadily deregulating corruption. They've done this both in white collar crime cases and in campaign finance cases.

NANCY SOLOMON: Whether or not Bob Menendez receives a pardon or wins his appeal, it remains an epic collapse of what was a historic political career. He was the first in everything he did – first in his family to go to college. First Latino elected  mayor, state senator and New Jersey member of congress.

And there's another thing. In all the cartoonish details of this story -- the gold bars and the stacks of cash squirreled away in his home -- there was never any discussion of the unique position Menendez occupied in the senate. I spoke about this with Brad Lawrence, the campaign consultant who worked for Menendez for more than forty years. He’s the one who  invited him to his wedding back in the 1980s.

Brad Lawrence: I think Bob was you know, sort of an anachronism in the sense of a guy that really had no money, came from no money, literally, literally no money, they lived in a tiny little apartment, you know, his mother was a seamstress, his father eventually committed suicide, I mean, he grew up a very difficult life.

And then all of a sudden he's in this most exclusive club in the world, all the fucking cliches about what the United States Senate is. And I think there's something corrosive about that,

NANCY SOLOMON: The majority of U.S. Senators are wealthy. And then there are the lobbyists, some of them who had worked for Menendez as kids right out of college and then went on to make big salaries on K Street in Washington.

Brad Lawrence: I think the fundraising aspect of it, which is not only you in that bubble in the Senate, but then you're in this bubble with all these wealthy donors that are, you know, they're flying around in private jets, they're doing this, they're doing that, and you're this guy that grew up, you know, in this one room apartment in Union City, and you're going, on the one hand, I'm as good as they are, if not better.

Nicholas Chairavalloti: I would imagine that that wealth around you does begin to gnaw at you. 

NANCY SOLOMON: Nicholas Chiaravelotti also worked for Menendez. Like his former boss, he’s from a working class immigrant family. He says working in Washington, with all the wealth in the senate, lobbyists and donors, was not easy for Menenedez. 

Nicholas Chairavalloti: I mean that would frustrate the hell out of me, so I would imagine it would frustrate the hell out of him.

NANCY SOLOMON: Chiaravelloti doesn't think it's a coincidence that shortly after Menendez fell in love with Nadine, he wanted more money. 

Nicholas Chairavalloti: I think that puts some pressure on you and causes you some, some doubts about, what you should be earning. I think that does have an impact because you can't really do the things, um, that I think other people can do. 

NANCY SOLOMON: The bribery scheme, the Egyptian weapons deal, the stacks of cash and gold bars – it’s mystifying to Brad Lawrence.  

Brad Lawrence: I don't have the answer to it. I wish I did, and I feel like I'm an idiot that I don't have the answer for it. I don't want to be a Bob Menendez apologist, particularly in light of how it ended, but I also have, you know, a long history and respect and affection for at least the first three quarters of his life, political life. But, you know, it is, to me, an inexplicable and tragic way for him to go. 

NANCY SOLOMON: Standing outside Schuylkill prison in Pennsylvania, it’s bleak. A bunch of low slung concrete buildings right off the highway.  It’s a long way from the nation’s capital, with its grand dome looking out over the reflecting pool.   

Car drives by

Voices at the scene: You think that was him?  Was there anyone in the back seat?

NANCY SOLOMON: Now Bob Menendez has reported to Schuylkill prison in Pennsylvania to begin serving his eleven year sentence. 

Voices at the scene: Jersey plates, it was a red car. The speeding with the Jersey plates, seems really suspicious.  

NANCY SOLOMON: When I think about him in prison, I remember the story he tells about getting bullied in school. This is the guy that grabbed a wood plank at a construction site, whacked the bully and never had a problem with him again. And I think about him standing outside the courtroom, looking out the window at the Manhattan skyline, and singing. It’s impossible to know whether he’s the chastened man he described to the judge. But one thing is certain: his legacy – and the first sentence of his obituary  – is now forever changed. 

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