New Jersey businessman Jose Uribe testified Monday that he asked Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) directly for his help in making an insurance fraud investigation of a friend go away.
Uribe, the prosecution’s star witness in Menendez’s federal bribery and corruption trial in Manhattan, told jurors he asked the Democratic senator to do “anything in his power” to stop the inquiry into a woman he considered to be like a daughter and that Menendez said he would “look into it.”
“I asked him to help me get peace for me and my family,” Uribe said, adding that it was the fifth time he had met the senator but the first time he had brought up asking him for help.
Uribe said he never discussed the thousands of dollars he made in car payments for a convertible for Menendez’s wife, Nadine.
“I never talked to Mr. Menendez about making payments for the car,” Uribe said.
He added that he assumed Menendez knew he was financially helping his wife because she had been trying to set up a meeting between them so Uribe could ask him to block the state investigation, the New York Times reported.
“The only reason why she’s trying is I’m complying with my part of the deal,” Uribe said.
He added that he told Nadine Menendez, “If your problem is a car, my problem is saving my family,” before giving her $15,000 in cash to make a down payment.
Uribe has pleaded guilty to multiple state and federal crimes linked to his businesses. He is scheduled to be sentenced Friday.
Prosecutors have spent the past four weeks trying to piece together what they claim is a sprawling, yearslong bribery scheme by the Menendezs.
Uribe testified Friday that his friend Wael Hana, a co-defendant in the trial, told him in early 2018 that there were multiple state criminal investigations swirling around the trucking company of a friend of his as well as his own insurance business. Hana allegedly said he could make those investigations disappear if Uribe was willing to spend $200,000 to $250,000. Uribe agreed. Hana told Uribe he would go to Nadine Menendez, who went by Nadine Arslanian at the time and had started dating the senator, to make the deal.
Uribe held a July 13, 2018, political fundraiser for Bob Menendez that raised $50,000. There was no mention of the backroom deal at the party or afterparty, both of which the senator attended.
Later that year, an investigator from the attorney general’s office asked to interview one of Uribe’s employees. Uribe testified he was “not happy” and texted Hana to get the senator to intervene in the investigations. Hana set up an October 2018 dinner meeting, but there was no mention of the deal.
“Nothing was discussed there of value, I will say,” Uribe testified. “It was a pointless, a pointless meeting.”
Uribe said he began communicating directly with Arslanian in March 2019 and promised that he would buy her a car if she delivered on the deal.
Bob Menendez has been charged with bribery, fraud, extortion, obstruction of justice, and acting as a foreign agent of Egypt. He has pleaded not guilty.
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Nadine Menendez has also been charged, but her trial has been delayed for health reasons.
New Jersey real estate developer Fred Daibes and Hana are on trial alongside Bob Menendez. They, too, have pleaded not guilty and claim the gifts they gave the senator were out of generosity and not part of a bribe.
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