By David Cruz
Correspondent
When Sen. Bob Menendez was forced to meet the press on Friday evening, it was an indication of the kind of reverberations that were being caused by reports of pending criminal charges against the senior senator. In what has become the senator’s standard MO, Menendez was defiant.
“Let me be very clear, very clear,” he told a room full of reporters. “I have always conducted myself appropriately and with accordance of the law.”
Menendez has been under investigation for close to two years now. The charges, if they are to be filed, will concern Menendez’s alleged actions taken on behalf of Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen. In 2012, an anonymous tipster was pitching a story to media outlets that Menendez had flown — in Melgen’s private jet — to a Dominican Republican resort, where, the tipster alleged, the senator cavorted with underage prostitutes. That story was discredited, but early in 2013, the FBI raided Melgen’s office.
The feds are looking into whether Melgen overbilled Medicare and Medicaid. It’s a billing conflict that Menendez brought up with Obama administration officials. Menendez also advocated for a company Melgen partially owned, which was looking to get a lucrative port security contract with the Dominican Republic.
“Anyone who knows us knows that he and his family and me and my family have been real friends for more than two decades,” said Menendez of his relationship with Melgen. “We celebrated holidays together. We have been there for family weddings and sad times, like funerals and have given each other birthday, holiday and wedding presents just as friends do.”
If he’s unnerved by the prospect of criminal charges, Menendez isn’t showing it. For a guy who grew up in Union City, the senator’s default has always been to square his shoulders and put up his hands.
“He’s a tough guy,” said Hudson County Republican Chairman Jose Arango, who has known Menendez for 30 years. “He was the jovial guy from Union City and then he became the congressman; then he became the senator. When you’re in that position, sometimes you don’t have that much time to be joking around.”
Politifax Editor Nick Acocella says he’s surprised by the Menendez allegation. “I’ve been watching Bob Menendez’s career for 30 years,” he said. “The first thing that comes to mind is that he is notoriously unmotivated by greed or money, so this strikes me as very, very strange altogether. I don’t know what they’re getting at. I don’t know what the charges are going to be; we haven’t seen it yet. Maybe we’re making a whole lot of fuss about nothing.”
That, too, would not be a big surprise. Pundits have had Menendez under indictment since before then-U.S. attorney Chris Christie investigated a Menendez real estate deal back in 2008. There may be more here than there was in that case, for which Christie’s successor ultimately apologized, but it’s little wonder the senior senator from New Jersey is a lot more withholding with his smiles nowadays.