The Fighter

Nancy Solomon: A year ago, in June of 2024, during the trial of Bob Menendez, I was sitting in the hallway finishing a cup of coffee outside the courtroom. There was only one other person there, standing next to the bench, looking out at the spectacular Manhattan view from the 23rd floor. Bob Menendez. He was singing. And it was killing me that I couldn't record it.

Tracey Tully: In that courthouse, you have no phones, nobody has recording devices. So they've developed this sort of cocoon-like space where the defendants, the reporters, the lawyers, we were all kind of existing together for nine weeks.

Nancy Solomon: This is Tracey Tully. She’s a reporter for the New York Times. And she was in court almost every day.

Tracey Tully: He would sing during breaks in court, sometimes in the courtroom, often outside in that vestibule that you described and I remember riding down an elevator with the crowd of people at one point and one of the lawyers said, I think it's a form of prayer.

Nancy Solomon: This is Dead End: The Rise and Fall of Gold Bar Bob Menendez. Over the course of three episodes, we’re going to tell you about the epic collapse of New Jersey’s senior senator. He was convicted of a bribery scheme involving a monopoly on halal meat exports to Egypt and helping that country obtain U.S. military aid. We’ll dig into the details and try to solve a mystery: how could a successful politician at the peak of his power do something that ultimately ruined him?

Bob Menendez grew up in Union City. His parents had come from Cuba. His father was a carpenter and a gambler and his mother a factory seamstress. He’s often told the story about how he qualified for an honors program when he was a senior in high school, but he couldn't afford the books.

Bob Menendez: And I couldn't understand for the life of me in a public high school that I'd be barred from being in the honors program.

Nancy Solomon: This is from a public TV interview in 2012.

Bob Menendez: So I created such a ruckus that they gave me the books, told me to shut up and put me in the honors program. But I didn't feel right about that because I had friends who had the ability and the grades and not the money, so I started a petition drive at 19 to change the school board, put a referendum on the ballot pass a referendum at 19 and then ran at the age of 20 the first school board elections in my hometown.

Nancy Solomon: It wasn’t long before Menendez developed a brand

Bob Menendez: I grew up in a tough neighborhood. We had a bully in the neighborhood …

Nancy Solomon: The fighter you don’t want to mess with.

Bob Menendez: … told my mom and she said, avoid him …

Nancy Solomon: And this stuck with him, from the Union City School Board in 1974

Bob Menendez: I got a piece of wood and, uh, whacked the bully …

Nancy Solomon: To his time as top Democrat on the Senate Committee Foreign Relations, nearly 50 years later.

Bob Menendez: … I never got whacked again.

Nicholas Chiaravalloti: I didn't really get to know him until I went to work for the city of Bayonne.

Nancy Solomon: This is Nicholas Chiaravalloti.

Nicholas Chiaravalloti: Former state legislator, been in and around Hudson County politics since I was about 14 years old.

We had a meeting in City Hall

Nancy Solomon: It was a long time ago – Chiaravalloti was working for the city of Bayonne. The small working-class town was in a fight over a piece of land that had been an old army installation.

Nicholas Chiaravalloti: And truth be told, Nancy, I was way over my head.

Nancy Solomon: And Chiaravalloti ended up in a meeting with Menendez, who was then the local congressman.

Nicholas Chiaravalloti: Um, we had been making the case that the army and the port authority were not dealing with us truthfully. And the moment that the army reiterated the lie to him, I remember as clear as day, he got up, kicked his chair over, and basically told them, there's no freaking way you're getting this land. That was the moment that, you know, quite frankly, I was like, that's the type of guy I want representing me.

Nancy Solomon: I mean, when he was young, Menendez stood up to his political mentor – a popular mayor who ended up getting convicted for allowing town contracts to go to a business with connections to the mob. Menendez even had to wear a bulletproof vest into the courthouse. Chiaravalloti was impressed with Menendez. And he ended up going to work for him.

Nicholas Chiaravalloti: And, you know, he had a very different style than I did. We got into an argument once, he wanted me to deliver a message to an elected official, but he wanted me to deliver it in his manner, and I delivered the message in my manner and he actually said to me, uh, I thought I was hiring a Rottweiler, not a, not a poodle.

Nancy Solomon: A representative for Senator Menendez said that story is not true.

Nancy Solomon: And what would you say is the sort, like, some of the elements that make up his success?

Nicholas Chiaravalloti: So I think intelligence was one. Two was work ethic. I mean, he just would work all the time, especially back then, uh, he, he was a beast. Three was loyalty. Right? Because once he, he was your friend, he would stick with you, um, even if it was against his interest.

Nancy Solomon: Chiaravalloti was working for Menendez when he first got to the senate. Menendez faced a tough choice about whether to confirm Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court, especially because Alito was from New Jersey.

Bob Menendez: No matter one's political persuasion, we all take pride in the honor that has been bestowed on a fellow New Jerseyan.

Nancy Solomon: And Chiaravalloti reminded Menendez that – like Alito – many of his voters were Italian American.

Nicholas Chiaravalloti: I remember going and talking to him and saying, look, you know, Italian Americans, you know, they're pretty, you know, centrist folks, and like, this is one of their own, and, and he's like, he's like, I'm not gonna get there, it's not gonna happen. Like, guy, this guy's, shouldn't be on the court, like he doesn't, he's going to overturn some of the basic beliefs that we have,

Bob Menendez: This is my first vote in this body, and I had hoped to cast it in support of this nominee, but after reviewing his record and his testimony before my fellow senators, I cannot.

Nancy Solomon: And so the newly minted junior senator from New Jersey rose on the senate floor to make his first ever speech – about Alito.

Bob Menendez: It's not where you come from that matters, but where you will take the nation. Does a Supreme Court with Justice Alito. Take the nation forward or move the nation back? Will it be in America where a woman does not have access to the best medical care? Will it be in America where a woman does not control her own body?

Nancy Solomon: Chiaravalloti also worked with Menendez back when he had been in the House… when he had bucked local sentiment and voted against the Iraq war.

Nicholas Chiaravalloti: Being from Hudson County in New Jersey, where it was, if you remember, it was like, let's just do it. And it's like, look, politically, it's expeditious just to vote for it, right? I mean, people want revenge. And like, Bob Menendez, despite sort of the intensity of his personality in that moment, and this is like repeated throughout his career could sit back and say, Okay, but I looked at everything. It's not there.

Nancy Solomon: But there is a subset of people -- a large one -- who believe Menendez has been corrupt from the beginning. They don't buy the hero testifying against the machine narrative.

Unidentified speaker: the first priority seemed to always be judges and prosecutors, um, trying to appoint people that are going to protect him

Nancy Solomon: That’s coming up after the break.

[Sounds of Nancy meeting someone]

Nancy Solomon: Jay Booth used to be a political operative in Hudson County who opposed Menendez from the start. Booth says, look at the charges in the current case where Menendez tried to pressure state and federal prosecutors. He says - that’s part of a long pattern.

Jay Booth: Menendez, um, in his larger than life quest for political power, as I watched it, was always, the first priority seemed to always be judges and prosecutors, um, trying to appoint people that are going to protect him and harm his enemies in the criminal justice system.

Nancy Solomon: Booth says he witnessed Menendez in action many years ago. He happened to walk into the kitchen of Puccini's, a legendary restaurant on Jersey City’s west side that was a hangout for politicos. And there, at the stainless steel prep counter, was a meeting happening, presumably on the downlow.

Jay Booth: I saw Menendez, who was then a congressman, sitting in a corner in the kitchen where no one could see him, having lunch with the then Hudson County prosecutor, which of course was, would be perceived as unethical or more particularly, something they were eating in there so that no one could see them clearly.

Nancy Solomon: Elected officials are not supposed to hold back channel meetings with prosecutors. A representative for Menendez says – that one didn’t happen. But either way, meals in a restaurant kitchen didn’t seem to help Menendez the first time the Feds came after him in 2015.

News tape: Private jets, weekend getaways in the Dominican Republic and hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions.

Nancy Solomon: This case involved a wealthy Florida eye doctor who had been under investigation for medicare fraud. The doctor had given Menendez expensive gifts and trips to the Dominican Republic and Paris. Menendez allegedly reached out to help the doctor’s Medicare problems go away. He insisted the charges were unfair.

Bob Menendez: Prosecutors at the Justice Department don't know the difference between friendship and corruption and have chosen to twist my duties as a senator. and my friendship into something that is improper.

Nancy Solomon: Was it corruption, or business as usual in Washington? It depends who you ask.

Brad Lawrence: Maybe I drank the Kool Aid, but I really thought it was sort of unfair. They were criminalizing behavior that, maybe wasn't wonderful, but certainly didn't deserve a federal indictment.

Nancy Solomon: This is Brad Lawrence. He creates messaging for political candidates.

Brad Lawrence: These are all Menendez files.

Nancy Solomon: And Lawrence has worked for nearly every major Democratic candidate in New Jersey for the past forty-odd years. He worked for Menendez the longest.

Nancy Solomon: That’s like 18 inches of files.

Brad Lawrence: there's boxes. Don't forget this goes on for since 1982.

Nancy Solomon: And he was working for Menendez when the Senator ran into trouble with the gifts from the eye doctor.

Brad Lawrence: I believe he legitimately felt he had done nothing wrong, certainly nothing illegal. And I think he was very angry about that. I know he was very angry about that. And I don't know that he moved on.

Nancy Solomon: No, but it's an interesting idea that, that that, was that a, a breaking point where you felt like, okay, they're gonna treat me like this, that I'm gonna really get everything I'm due, you know?

Brad Lawrence: Well, I don't know it was that literally transactional about it, but I have a feeling that it certainly made him feel like playing by the rules certainly didn't get him anything. And so you'd be angry. I think most people would be angry about being indicted and put through the ringer for something that they felt certainly didn’t merit that. It’s how you come out of that may be the more interesting question.

Nancy Solomon: The case ended in a hung jury and Menendez walked out of the courthouse defiant, as if he had been entirely exonerated.

Bob Menendez: To those who were digging my political grave so that they could jump into my seat, I know who you are, and I won't forget you.

Nancy Solomon: The trial was also a pretty pivotal time in the senator's personal life. He and his fiance broke up right before the trial began. And soon after the hung jury, he fell for someone new.

Nadine Menendez: Hi mon amour d’la vie,

Nancy Solomon: He had met Nadine Arslanian at his usual breakfast spot, the IHOP in Union City.

Nadine Menendez: I just wanted to hear your voice,

Nancy Solomon: Voice mails from Nadine were entered as evidence in the second trial.

Nadine Menendez: I can't wait for you to hold my hand and go to sleep.

Nancy Solomon: By all accounts, it was a whirlwind romance.

Nadine Menendez: Hi, it's me, calling my very handsome senator.

Nancy Solomon: And only 24 days after their first date, Nadine arranged for the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to meet – off the books – with an Egyptian general.

Nadine Menendez: I just got off with the general. Since he has not met you before, he needs to have some kind of clearance from Egypt as to why he's meeting a U. S. senator out of his – the embassy.

Nancy Solomon: Why would the new girlfriend of Bob Menenedez be arranging a meeting with an Egyptian general? That’s coming up in Episode two of Dead End: The Rise and Fall of Gold Bar Bob Menendez.

I’m Nancy Solomon. I made this series with Emily Botein, and Jared Paul, our sound designer and music composer. We had help from Alex Brady, Amber Bruce, Rex Doane, Katie Graham, David Krasnow, Mike Kutchman, Valentina Powers, and Jackson Vail.

Thanks for listening.

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