For most of his 18 years in the Senate, the Democratic congressman has been watched for flirting with the boundaries that mix the duties of his office with personal interests…
Haroldo Miguel Luis Castro Exclusive 02/10/2023
The well-known Democratic Senator from the state of New Jersey, Robert Menendezis already the first active legislator in United States (US) history to be charged with two unrelated crimes.
After leaving with as little damage as possible after the presidential victory of Donald J Trump of charges of bribery, fraud, sexual abuse and false statements brought by the Justice Department during the administration of Barack Obamais now assuming a new legal conflict for very similar complaints.
The 69-year-old politician with Cuban parents is being sued for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from his position as Senate president in exchange for his cooperation in increasing U.S. aid to Egypt and for trying to slow the criminal investigation involved to New Jersey business people. A huge sum of cash, gold bars worth $100,000 and a poorly owned Mercedes-Benz car were found in Menéndez’s suburban home.
Bob has once again resorted to the ploy of accusing the administration of distorting the facts to criminalize the legitimate activities of Congress. But to date, no one has agreed to publicly defend him against the behavior described by prosecutors, not even a former ally recommended by Menendez’s own office.
We are talking about one of the darkest figures in the world of politics and bureaucracy of the North American nation in recent decades. His rise to the elite was even marked by his rebellion against the then Mayor of Union City, William V. Muslo, who was considered his mentor.
For most of his 18 years in the Senate, Menéndez has been watched for flirting with boundaries that mix the duties of his office with personal interests. And although many of the suspicions never turned into accusations, he is known to have accepted trips on private planes, luxury vacations and other perks from wealthy people while using his influence to pursue non-governmental goals. Let us recall that for this reason he received a warning from the Senate Ethics Committee in 2018.
Nevertheless, information leaked to the press from political power circles refers to his use of authority to get his daughter Alicia Menéndez her own weekend show on MSNB, or his son Robert Menéndez Jr. will win his old seat in the House of Representatives in 2022.
With a pronounced right-wing extremist tendency, he criticized the government of Joseph R. Biden for the Withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, fought against Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and was one of the main opponents of normalizing relations with Cuba. In fact, Menéndez is known for positioning himself as one of the main defenders of the economic war and the blockade.
He is credited with writing it Chapter II of the Helms-Burton Act, a rule that codified the system of coercive measures imposed by Washington. In addition, he is associated with the protagonists of terrorist actions such as the assassination of the former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier in 1976 and the Cuban diplomat Felix García in 1980, both in the United States. Likewise his connection to the financiers Attacks in Havana in 1997.
There was no anti-Cuban initiative in Congress that missed Menéndez’s contributions and support. The theft of trademarks and patents and attacks on international medical cooperation programs are just two of the many examples that can be examined.
Even if his eventual departure from Congress will in no way change the US position towards the Greater Antilles, it at least shows the corruption of the US political system and ultimately allows us to glimpse the ethical caliber of those who join the Cuban one Resist the emancipation project.