Sen. Bob Menendez’s Egypt trip planning got ‘weird,’ Senate staffer recalls at bribery trial

NEW YORK (AP) — A Senate staffer testified at a bribery trial that planning for Sen. Bob Menendez’s 2021 trip to Egypt and Qatar got “weird” after the Democrat directed that Egypt be included in the process, a Senate staffer testified Monday.

Sarah Arkin, a senior staffer with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, testified as a government witness at a trial over bribes of hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold and cash allegedly paid to the senator in return for benefits he supposedly delivered to three New Jersey businessmen from 2018 to 2022.

Among favors he allegedly carried out, one included helping Egyptian officials in exchange for one businessman gaining a monopoly on the certification that meat sent to Egypt met Islamic dietary requirements.

Then, prosecutors say, he aided a prominent New Jersey real estate developer by acting favorably to Qatar’s government so the businessman could score a lucrative deal with a Qatari investment fund.

Besides charges of bribery, fraud, extortion and obstruction of justice, Menendez is also charged with acting as a foreign agent of Egypt.

Menendez, 70, and two businessmen who allegedly paid him bribes have pleaded not guilty to charges. A third testified earlier at the trial which entered its seventh week. When Menendez was charged last fall, he held the powerful post of chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a position he relinquished soon afterward.

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