Democrat Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) has bragged he still attends intelligence briefings and retains access to classified information, despite facing felony charges for conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud, and conspiracy to commit extortion under color of official right while acting as an unregistered foreign agent for the Egyptian government.
“I still have all my intelligence credentials,” he boasted in a PBS appearance, adding he was a “not barred from going into… intelligence briefing[s]” after he was charged and continues to attend the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“Bottom line is, I’m a United States senator, I have my security credentials, and an accusation is just that. It’s not proof of anything,” he reiterated on CNN.
Investigators found gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollars in hard cash at Menendez’s home. He is also accused of accepting a luxury car for his wife – who wrote off her previous vehicle during a crash in which she killed a pedestrian – in exchange for interfering in an insurance fraud investigation.
While Senate Democrat rules forced Menendez had to step down as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after he was charged, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has declined to remove him from the committee altogether.
It has fallen to the Democrats’ brain-damaged junior senator for Pennsylvania, John Fetterman, to introduce a resolution to try to take away Menendez’s committee assignments and prevent him from accessing classified briefings and information.