1 year ago
The New Jersey Attorney General’s office intends to launch an internal inquiry into the allegations that Sen. Bob Menendez intervened in a criminal prosecution on behalf of an associate in exchange for a luxury car, according to two agency officials familiar with the plans.
The alleged intervention happened around 2019 — before current Attorney General Matt Platkin took control of the department — according to the indictment unsealed by federal prosecutors on Friday. Gurbir Grewal, who is now a division director in the Securities and Exchange Commission, was attorney general at the time.
The indictment says Menendez reached out to an unnamed “senior state prosecutor in the Office of the New Jersey Attorney General” regarding the criminal prosecution into associates of Jose Uribe. Uribe allegedly promised a new Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible in exchange for the senator’s help. Menendez contacted the unnamed senior official in the Attorney General's office to request terms favorable to Uribe’s associate, according to the indictment.
The official, according to the indictment, considered Menendez’s actions “inappropriate and did not agree to intervene.” According to the indictment, the official at the Attorney General’s office did not share with prosecutors that Menendez contacted him to “avoid any potential inappropriate influence in the case.”
According to the indictment, in April 2019, the unnamed associate of Uribe resolved the prosecution with a plea agreement that recommended a non-incarceratory sentence. The plea was more favorable than what state prosecutors initially offered earlier in the case, according to the indictment.
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