‘Gold Bar' Bob Menendez' most brazen abuse of power — helping Egypt cover up the murder of Jamal Khashoggi
This was an egregious human rights abuse and the biggest betrayal to the values he was elected to uphold as a US senator.
The disgraced former New Jersey Democrat — now serving an 11-year sentence for corruption and conspiracy to act as a foreign agent for Egypt and Qatar — had coached his high-level Egyptian contacts how to respond to a grilling about Khashoggi's assassination in a Saudi embassy before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in June 2021, court records show.
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As if that wasn't bad enough, Menendez was the powerful chairman of the committee at the time.
7 Disgraced US Senator Bob Menendez helped Egyptian intelligence officials cover up their role in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
AP
7 Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident journalist who had long criticized the government of Mohamed bin Salam, was drugged and dismembered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
AP
As revealed in my upcoming book, 'Gold Bar Bob: The Downfall of the Most Corrupt US Senator' (co-authored with Thomas Jason Anderson), Menendez met with Abbas Kamel, then director of the General Intelligence Directorate of Egypt.
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He was visiting the US in an effort to persuade the Biden administration to release more than $300 million in weapons sales held up because of concerns over the Middle Eastern country's shoddy record on human rights.
The Saudis convicted of killing Khashoggi had obtained the drugs used in his murder from Egyptian intelligence operatives, according to reports and court filings.
Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post, was killed and dismembered when he attended an appointment at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018.
7 Bob Menendez's role in the cover-up of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi is told in the upcoming 'Gold Bar Bob,' which will be published in October.
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7 Jamal Khashoggi married Hanan Elatr in June, 2018. Months later, he was dead.
Courtesy of Hanan Khashoggi
Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman took responsibility for the murder 'because it happened on my watch' but denied ordering the hit.
'What Menendez did was sinful,' said Hanan Elatr Khashoggi, the slain journalist's wife. 'It's sinful when I hear that a US senator accepted a bribe from a dictator to cover up a murder.'
Menendez's role was mentioned briefly in court papers when he was indicted on criminal charges in 2023.
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'He also briefed the head of Egyptian intelligence on questions other US senators were preparing to ask regarding reports that Egypt had aided in a notorious human rights abuse, the murder and dismemberment of a US lawful permanent resident journalist,' court papers say.
'He did so in the explicit words of his co-defendant wife, so that the head of Egyptian intelligence could prepare his 'rebuttals' and 'answers' to Menendez's fellow US senators' questions.'
Menendez' wife, Nadine, who was also convicted on bribery and corruption charges, had pressed her husband to help the Egyptians in exchange for bribes, including gold bars and a Mercedes convertible. She is scheduled to be sentenced next month.
7 Bob Menendez accepted gold bars for helping Egyptian officials and an Egyptian businessman in New Jersey.
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7 Jamal Khashoggi and his wife, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi, who he married shortly before his murder.
Courtesy of Hanan Khashoggi
7 The final photograph of Jamal Khashoggi as he walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018.
AP
Elatr Khashoggi, who was born in Egypt and grew up in Dubai, now lives in Virginia, where she obtained political asylum in 2023 after she was harassed and tortured by Emirati intelligence operatives following her husband's death, she said.
She told The Post she met her husband at a journalism conference in 2009, and married him five months before his murder. She last saw him in September 2018, before he went on his trip to Europe and Turkey, where he wanted to buy an apartment.
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'This is an open wound and a tragedy,' said Rahmy, who launched an unsuccessful lawsuit against an Israeli spyware company that allowed intelligence operatives to track the Khashoggis — information that ultimately led to his murder, she said.
'Everyone and their mother is trying to bury this story,' Rahmy continued, adding that Elatr Khashoggi is mulling a lawsuit against the 18 Saudis who were tried for the murder in Saudi Arabia.
'We're not giving up until we achieve justice.'
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Perhaps a very small measure of that justice has already been achieved now Menendez is languishing in federal prison.
Menendez has appealed to both ex-President Joe Biden and current President Donald Trump for pardons.
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