Menendez: Talk of girlfriends tainted grand jury

NEWARK – Attorneys for U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez claim the criminal grand-jury proceeding against him and a longtime friend was inappropriately tainted with salacious material about sexual relationships and extramarital affairs.

But government attorneys insist the Democratic senator’s girlfriends, and those of his married friend, are at the center of the corruption case against the pair.

Attorneys for Menendez and Dr. Salomon Melgen are seeking to have the 68-page, 14-count criminal indictment against them dismissed. One of their arguments for dismissal, outlined in motions filed in July, is that the government “flooded the grand jury proceedings with inflammatory questions regarding sexual relationships, affairs and lavish gifts which are unrelated to the charges contemplated by the government.”

U.S. Department of Justice attorneys, in court papers filed last week, defended their questioning of the defendants’ girlfriends. It is the women with whom Menendez and Melgen associated who attest firsthand to the value of the favors and gifts that the pair exchanged, government attorneys said in their response to the defendants’ motions.

Menendez and Melgen, both 61, were charged in April in an indictment alleging Melgen, a wealthy Florida eye doctor and major campaign contributor to Menendez, showered about $1 million in gifts on him in exchange for the senator’s influence for his benefit.

Luxury villa, hotel

The alleged gifts to Menendez included campaign donations, flights aboard a private plane from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey for vacations at Melgen’s luxury villa in the Dominican Republic, and a stay at a suite in a Paris hotel.

The indictment alleges that Menendez reciprocated by using his official power to promote Melgen’s interests. It claims Menendez helped to secure visas for at least three of Melgen’s foreign girlfriends, blocked potential threats to Melgen’s contract for cargo-screening services with the Dominican Republic, and intervened on the doctor’s behalf in a Medicare billing dispute worth millions of dollars.

Menendez has insisted that his relationship with Melgen is nothing more than a 20-year friendship and that the charges against them are the fruits of a political smear campaign against him.

Defense attorneys, in their motions, complained that the government improperly elicited testimony in the grand jury proceedings about Melgen’s girlfriends receiving visas and Menendez’s girlfriends enjoying trips by private jet to Melgen’s Caribbean villa. They said the government called three of Melgen’s girlfriends and three of Menendez’s to testify before the grand jury even though they had nothing to do with the real issues in the case.

“The prosecution called every woman it could find who could provide irrelevant and prejudicial testimony concerning their alleged relationships with Dr. Melgen,’’ the defense attorneys said in their briefs.

Heart of allegations

But prosecutors said that the women who were called to testify do not represent all of the senator’s and doctor’s girlfriends, and they are at the heart of the allegations against the pair.

“The government did not interview or subpoena all of defendant Melgen’s or defendant Menendez’s girlfriends,” the government’s brief said. “Rather, the government only subpoenaed defendant Melgen’s girlfriends who were the beneficiaries of defendant Menendez’s official actions, and only defendant Menendez’s girlfriends who enjoyed with him the things of value provided by defendant Melgen.

“It cannot be ignored that part of the corrupt exchange involved defendant Menendez using the power of his Senate office to help defendant Melgen bring his foreign girlfriends into the United States, while defendant Melgen used his wealth to help defendant Menendez take his American girlfriends on exotic overseas vacations,” the government said. “The nature of these relationships is highly relevant to the defendants’ motives, and to the value of each gift and official act. This goes directly to the heart of ‘the real issues’ in this case.”

Defense attorneys argued that evidence of Melgen’s extramarital affairs is irrelevant, but the government asserts that otherwise relevant evidence does not become immaterial simply because it involves an extramarital affair.

The defense claimed the government’s case was tainted from the start because it was based on an investigation into false allegations of underage prostitution, likely initiated by political enemies.

Although they were never proved, the government had a responsibility to investigate the serious criminal allegations, which were “not so ‘easily disprovable’ as the defendants suggest,” prosecutors said in their response.

Prostitute party

Prosecutors, in their brief, said witnesses had described a party involving prostitutes that Melgen attended at his private villa. Melgen had flown numerous young women from the United States and other countries to the Dominican Republic on his private jet, they said. The young women included two whom he met while they were performing at a South Florida “gentleman’s club” and whom he flew to his villa a day after paying one of them $1,000 and the other $2,000, prosecutors said.

“Indeed, one of defendant Melgen’s pilots described ‘young girls’ who ‘looked like escorts’ traveling at various times on defendant Melgen’s private jet,” the brief said. “Some young women who received substantial sums of money from defendant Melgen were in the same place as defendant Menendez at the same time.”

Defense attorneys complained that prosecutors implied an illicit relationship between Menendez and a female staff member, but prosecutors say the staffer and Menendez twice stayed at Melgen’s Caribbean villa and traveled there together on Melgen’s private jet on flights that Menendez did not pay for or report, which they say is further evidence of the corrupt relationship.

Prosecutors dismissed defense allegations that they intimidated, coerced and abused witnesses, including Menendez’s ex-wife and his 70-year-old sister.

The defense attorneys said the indictment should be dismissed because FBI agents visited Menendez’s ex-wife, Jane Jacobsen, while she was still in her pajamas.

“Ms. Jacobsen was indeed still in her pajamas when FBI agents visited her home, but they visited her home at 9 a.m. on a weekday,” prosecutors responded.

The prosecutors explained that federal rules of criminal procedure define daytime as beginning at 6 a.m., authorizing agents to execute search warrants then, adding, “Here, the FBI waited until 9 a.m. on a Wednesday to knock on her door.”

The defendants also objected to what they said were similarly aggressive tactics employed on Caridad Gonzalez, the senator’s 70-year-old sister.

“The FBI visited defendant Menendez’s sister because she received from defendant Melgen an eight-night stay on Brickell Key, making her a fact witness in this investigation,” prosecutors said in their brief. “The ‘aggressive tactics’ the defendants describe, however, were merely serving Ms. Gonzalez with a grand jury subpoena after she participated in the interview.”

A hearing on the motions to dismiss the indictment against Menendez and Melgen is scheduled for Sept. 17 before U.S District Judge William H. Walls in federal court in Newark.

Kathleen Hopkins writes for the Asbury Park Press, a sister paper of the Home News Tribune: khopkins@app.com