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New Jersey businessman who pleaded guilty to trying to bribe Sen. Bob Menendez with Mercedes to testify in corruption trial
Washington — A key witness in the corruption trial of Sen. Bob Menendez is expected to testify Friday about what he says was an attempt to bribe the New Jersey Democrat by buying his wife, Nadine Menendez, a new Mercedes-Benz convertible.
Jose Uribe, a New Jersey insurance broker who was indicted with Menendez, pleaded guilty in March and confessed to buying a $60,000 luxury car to influence the senator. He is cooperating with prosecutors.
During the March hearing, Uribe said he conspired with the senator’s wife and others to buy her the car in exchange for her husband “using his power and influence as a United States senator to get a favorable outcome and to stop all investigations related to one of my associates,” according to the Associated Press.
He also told the judge he wanted to stop a “possible investigation into another person who I considered to be a member of my family,” adding that he concealed his involvement in the car payments “because I knew it was wrong.”
Throughout the senator’s corruption trial, which is in its fourth week, prosecutors have used text messages, emails, voice mails and financial records to portray the senator and his wife as collaborators in a complex bribery scheme that involved a halal meat monopoly, the Egyptian and Qatari governments and trying to influence several criminal investigations.
The senator is being tried alongside two New Jersey businessmen — Wael Hana, the owner of a halal certification startup, and Fred Daibes, a real estate developer. All three have pleaded not guilty. Nadine Menendez’s trial was delayed until later this summer as she undergoes treatment for breast cancer. She has pleaded not guilty.
Alex Kent/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Hana connected Uribe to the couple after Nadine Menendez was involved in a car crash that killed a pedestrian in December 2018. Nadine Menendez, who was not charged in the death, had been complaining to Hana about her lack of a car after the crash, according to text messages presented by prosecutors as evidence.
Meanwhile, Uribe was desperate to help a business associate who was charged with insurance fraud and an employee who was under investigation, according to prosecutors.
In January 2019, prosecutors say, the senator called New Jersey’s attorney general to try to disrupt the insurance fraud case. The alleged interference didn’t work, however, and Uribe’s business associate eventually pleaded guilty. But the investigation into Uribe’s employee, who he said he considered to be a family member, continued.
Uribe and Nadine Menendez came to an agreement that he would buy her the car she needed and the senator, whom she would marry the next year, would try to make the investigation go away, prosecutors say.
Nadine Menendez had her new car by early April 2019, after meeting Uribe in a restaurant parking lot where he gave her $15,000 in cash for a down payment, according to the indictments.
“Congratulations mon amour de la vie we are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes,” she allegedly texted the senator.
Uribe later arranged car payments, texting an associate, “I don’t want to use anything with my name on it,” according to messages prosecutors showed jurors.
After the FBI searched their home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, in June 2022, where agents discovered stacks of cash, gold bars and the Mercedes, Nadine Menendez and Uribe met to discuss what he would say if asked about the car payments, according to what he told the court when he pleaded guilty.
“I told her that I would say a good friend of mine was in a financial situation and I was helping that friend to make the payments on the car, and when she was financially stable, she will pay me back. Nadine says something like, ‘That sounds good,'” Uribe told the judge in March, according to the AP.
Prosecutors say the senator then wrote a check to his wife, who then wrote one to Uribe, characterizing it as a loan. That characterization was a lie, an attempt to hide the earlier bribe, prosecutors said.
Menendez’s attorneys have tried to shift any blame to his wife, arguing they lived separate lives and he was largely in the dark about her dealings with the three businessmen accused of bribing them.
“She kept Bob sidelined from those conversations,” his attorney Avi Weitzman said.
Nathalie Nieves contributed reporting.
Attention American Airlines passengers! If you’re one of those overeager travelers who jumps the queue by boarding before your assigned group, the carrier is coming for you.
American Airlines told CBS MoneyWatch that it’s piloting technology that alerts gate agents when customers try to board planes prematurely, meaning before their assigned boarding group has been instructed to line up at the gate. Such passengers’ boarding passes will trigger an audible sound and display a message to gate agents. They will not be permitted to board and will instead be instructed to wait their turns.
“We are in the early phase of testing new technology used during the boarding process,” the airline said in a statement. “The new technology is designed to ensure customers receive the benefits of priority boarding with ease and helps improve the boarding experience by providing greater visibility into boarding progress for our team.”
“Some people are taking advantage”
The trial has been underway for several weeks at Albuquerque International Sunport in New Mexico, Tucson International Airport in Arizona and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Virginia. So far, the results have been positive, an airline spokesperson told CBS MoneyWatch.
Customers pay for early-boarding privileges, or earn them by obtaining elite status with a particular airline. So passengers who haven’t paid for the perks and cut the line can anger others, adding to the frustrations of flying.
“Some people are taking advantage of the situation because there is no automated process, and you can in theory board with any group,” said Scott Keyes, founder of flight deals site Going.com.
Still, Keyes understands why passengers might want to skip lines to board early.
“The most important perk you get with early boarding is access to overhead bin space,” Keyes said, noting that passengers that board later often have no choice but to gate check their bags, which can be inconvenient. They don’t have access to their belongings in-flight and wait for their luggage to be returned to them at their destinations.
American Airlines did note that with the new system, gate agents still retain some discretion over the boarding process. For example, if members of a family or a group that is traveling together are in different boarding groups, a gate agent can allow the customer in a later group to board with their companions.
CBS News
Giuliani must turn over Manhattan apartment, other valuables to election workers he defamed, judge says
Ten months after a jury awarded two Georgia election workers nearly $150 million in a defamation lawsuit brought against Rudy Giuliani, a federal judge ruled Tuesday that the former attorney to Donald Trump must fork over his luxurious New York apartment and other valuables.
Giuliani, who rose to fame in the 1980s and 1990s as a federal prosecutor and mayor of New York City, has seven days to turn over his possessions to a receivership controlled by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. Giuliani spread conspiracy theories targeting the ballot counters after Trump lost the 2020 election.
Giuliani has previously tried to sell the apartment for about $6 million.
In his 24-page order, Judge Lewis Liman also ruled that Freeman and Moss should be the beneficiaries of some $2 million that Giuliani has said Trump’s 2020 campaign owes him. Other valuables he must turn over include more than two dozen high-end watches, a jersey signed by New York Yankees Hall of Famer Joe Dimaggio, furniture and other sports memorabilia.
Liman deferred judgment on whether Freeman and Moss are owed a trio of World Series rings that Giuliani’s son, Andrew, has said belong to him. Liman also declined to rule on whether Giuliani must turn over a condo in Palm Beach, Florida.
Giuliani has been disbarred in New York and Washington, D.C., and the fallout from his 2020 post-election actions has continued even as Trump is just two weeks away from an election that could see him retake the White House.
Giuliani no longer works for Trump directly, but in September 2023, the former president hosted a fundraiser at his New Jersey golf club to aid Giuliani’s legal bills.
A spokesperson for Giuliani did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
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