(Graybar Bob) Menendez is in jail, but his foreign bribers are still cashing in. Why? | Opinion

nj ^ | 8/10/25 | Tom Malinowski

[Libloather]

In New Jersey, we think of the fall of former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez as a story of old fashioned corruption — a politician taking gifts for favors.

For that crime, Menendez is now serving an 11 year prison sentence. And state officials have continued to pile on consequences, with Attorney General Matt Platkin filing a lawsuit to have it judicially confirmed that Menendez is “forever disqualified” from holding public office, and Assemblywoman Aura Dunn promoting a bill that would take away state pensions from former officials convicted of misconduct in office.

But there is an equally disturbing side of the story that’s gotten less attention, involving the people on the other side of the transaction.

As evidence in Menendez’s trial showed, the government of a foreign dictatorship — Egypt — and its willing partners in the United States used the former senator to gather intelligence on our country, and to change our government’s foreign policy, by easing restrictions on arms sales that were put in place because of Egypt’s imprisonment and torture of dissidents.

The trial also made clear that a New Jersey company – IS EG Halal based in Edgewater – played a vital role in parts of the corrupt scheme.

The Egyptian government in 2019 gave this company a monopoly for certifying food exported to Egypt as halal, apparently to create a source and channel of funds for bribing Menendez. Several of the bribes to him and his wife in 2019 and 2021 were reportedly paid out of the company’s checkbook.

So what has happened to the authors of this scheme?

After the Menendez indictment, Democrats in the U.S. Senate temporarily held up some U.S. aid to Egypt, but the current Republican-led Congress is moving to lift all restrictions on that aid...

[Libloather]

...which would be even more than what the Egyptians hoped to get from bribing Menendez.

[packagingguy]

He must have done something to cross the Democrat Party. If he’d played ball nothing would have happened.

[Bonemaker]

“... but his foreign bribers are still cashing in. Why? “

They did us a favor..rid us of denmocrat filth.

[Sicon]

U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez as a story of old fashioned corruption — a politician taking gifts for favors. For that crime, Menendez is now serving an 11 year prison sentence.

That’s actually the only part of this story that surprises me.