Investigation of Senator Menendez calls for subpoena over stalled NJ Bill

Federal investigators leading an investigation into New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, the powerful Democratic chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, this week subpoenaed documents from at least one longtime New Jersey mayor and senator, Nicholas Sacco, several officials said.

The subpoena was delivered at about 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, the day after a momentous election in Hudson County, a famously sharp-elbow political testing ground in northern New Jersey where Mr. Menendez cut his teeth as a lawmaker.

The request for the documents made it clear that Mr. Sacco, a Democrat who served in the Senate for 30 years and was reelected Tuesday to his ninth term as mayor of North Bergen, NJ, was not a target of the investigation. said its spokesman, Phil Swibinski.

Mr Sacco will “fully cooperate and provide any information requested, as he would in any law enforcement investigation,” Mr Swibinski said in an email.

“Mayor Sacco has been assured that he is not a target of the investigation and has been approached only as a potential witness,” added Mr. Swibinski, whose public relations firm also works for the state’s Democratic Party.

There have been few outward signs of movement in the federal investigation into Mr. Menendez since an initial round of subpoenas went public in October. And Mr. Menendez, 69, has continued to raise funds for his anticipated run next year for a fourth term in the United States Senate.

But even while amassing more than $1 million in donations in the first quarter of the year, Mr Menendez also said he paid large bills related to the investigation Data from the Federal Election Commission submitted last month.

Michael Soliman, a spokesman and close political adviser to Mr. Menendez, said the senator planned to set up a legal defense fund to pay costs related to the investigation, which is being run by US prosecutors. law firm for the Southern District of New York.

“Senator Menendez is confident that this official investigation will be successfully concluded,” Mr. Soliman said last month. “But since it is still unresolved, he will open a separate legal defense fund so as not to eat up further campaign funds.”

The nature and scope of the investigation into Mr. Menendez is unclear, but it is at least partly related to a New Jersey start-up company, IS EG Halal, which over the course of a year became the only entity authorized to to explain that halal meat imported to Egypt from all over the world, was prepared according to Islamic law.

Wednesday’s subpoena seeks documents related to the halal business and information about a bill Mr Sacco twice sponsored in Trenton with Senator Brian Stack, according to a person familiar with the details of the subpoena who has requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the document publicly.

The subpoena specifically requested correspondence regarding Mr. Menendez’s account; his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez; or Fred Daibes, one of the region’s most prominent developers, who pleaded guilty to a federal banking crimesaid the person.

Mr. Soliman declined to comment on the subpoena. Mr. Stack, who is also mayor of Union City, NJ, a job Mr. Menendez held in the 1980s and early 1990s, did not return the call.

The account, the Palisades Cliffs Protection and Planning Act, has not progressed in the legislature, but would limit the height of development projects near the Palisades, along the Hudson River. The legislation was opposed by construction unions and some property developers.

Mr Daibes’ negotiated plea deal did not require jail time. And this month Mr. Daibes, an Edgewater, NJ contractor whose projects transformed the Hudson River waterfront, was the subject of a damning 83-page report from the New Jersey’s Commission of Inquiry.

The committee found that Mr. Daibes provided direct and indirect financial benefits to elected leaders in Edgewater, and that he had significant influence over policy decisions in the community. Neither he nor his lawyer was immediately available for comment.

Mr. Menendez has insisted from the outset that he would cooperate fully with any investigation. And FEC reports indicate that his lawyers did.

Since January, his campaign committee has paid $127,000 to Winston & Strawn, a law firm headed by Abbe Lowell, who represented Mr Menendez during a two-month bribery trial in 2017, the records show. The case ended in a mistrial after the jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict, and prosecutors declined to try Mr. Menendez again after a judge dismissed many of the charges.

Mr. Menendez’s campaign committee also paid $48,000 to Schertler Onorato Mead & Sears, a Washington law firm, and $55,000 to Haystack ID, a firm hired by the Trump Organization last year to respond to subpoenas from the Attorney General of New York after former President Donald J. Trump was convicted of contempt of court for failing to do so.

Representatives from Haystack and the two law firms did not respond to calls or emails.