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- This is One-On-One.

- I'm an equal American just like you are.

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(upbeat music) - Hi, everyone.

Steve Adubato.

You think you know the story behind Bob Menendez?

Well, there's a book that you need to read to find out more.

It's called "Gold Bar Bob: The Downfall of the Most Corrupt US Senator," written by Thomas Jason Anderson, who we have right now, and also co-written by Isabel Vincent.

Thomas, good to see you.

Thank you for joining us.

- Hey, thank you so much for having me on, Steve.

Really appreciate it.

- Well, as I said, read the book, learned from the book, enjoyed the book, disgusted by aspects of the book.

And even though I grew up in Essex County politics, we'll talk about Bob Menendez and Hudson County and Union City in a minute.

Why the book?

- Well, it was a long path and a long journey.

So I stumbled over Bob Menendez working for a think tank in Washington, D.C., as a research journalist helping "The New York Post" and "The New York Times" and "The Washington Post" on corruption stories.

And I was working on one such story in New York state where Bob held a field hearing in the Senate, which is very rare for a senator to have a hearing, an official Senate hearing, but like in a park in New Jersey.

And I found it so strange, and when I went digging down into it, I fell into the entire Union City corruption scene.

And it was like that one string, when I pulled on it, it turned into a 15-year journey where I was working with several newspapers all over the world for 15 years chronicling all types of different corruption stories circling around Bob Menendez and it finally culminated into his final, this second time that he got indicted.

And while that was happening, I was approached and I was asked by people in the media, "Hey, it might be a good idea to write a book.

You've been working on this for so long."

And so Isabel, my co-author Isabel, who I did a lot of work with over the years on Bob Menendez, she's an investigative reporter at "The New York Post," we sat down and we talked about it and really quickly, we got 10 chapters down and in, like, three days, we had like half the book done almost.

It was pretty crazy.

- Let ask you this... The chapters speak for themselves, the table of contents.

So many pieces of this got my attention.

Can we play word association?

- Sure.

- Okay.

Bob Menendez, Union City, go.

- One of the most corrupt places on earth (chuckles).

- Because?

- It's just a system that was put in place long before Bob and everyone there seems to be just built genetically to just fit right on in.

And it's really one of the most humming, best run corruption machines in history, I believe.

- So as we speak, Bob Menendez is serving, how long is his sentence?

- He got, uh, 11 years.

- So Bob Menendez is in jail.

Not sure if he'll ever get out.

We wish his family all the best.

Not the point of this conversation.

But one of the reasons I'm curious and I wanted to talk to Thomas about this is when I was a kid growing up, and when I ran for the state legislature at 25 and served two short years in the legislature, Bob Menendez was a giant.

Bob Menendez came out of Union City as a reformer.

He started out, if you will, under the leadership of Bill Musto.

Talk about a political boss, right?

Who was the mayor of Union City, the Democratic boss there, the senator there.

Bob Menendez was in his universe, but then decided that he would testify against Bill Musto when Bill Musto was indicted.

Wore a bulletproof vest in the courtroom because he was afraid for his life allegedly.

He was a reformer and that many of us looked up to.

What the heck happened?

- Well, he started off that way.

And when he was in high school, he was a model student.

He had it all basically, and he wasn't wealthy, okay?

He had it all, but he had it all through the Musto machine where they picked up early on Bob's talent and his abilities, okay?

And it's like I said before, Union City, even though Musto was a great man, he was a war hero, right, And he really... When it came to ethical standards, even though he ended up being convicted and had to go to jail for corruption and even though the whole machine is corrupt, ethically, Musto was one of the most ethical people you could ever meet, right?

But here was Bob Menendez and he's coming in with a slew of young Cubans in Union City.

- Why Cubans?

- Well, when Castro came into power, he chased out many, many people out of the island.

- So Castro takes over from Batista in Cuba.

- Yep.

- Castro is the reformer, communist reformer.

Many people leave Cuba to come to the United States.

Many of them went to Miami, but a large number went to Union City, if you will.

Where does Menendez's family fit into that?

- So a lot of families, a lot of Cuban families, they landed in New York City, but what happens is in New York City, it's rough, man.

It's expensive.

If you don't have family there, you could be in trouble.

And so Union City became the little enclave right outside of the heart of Manhattan that a lot of Cuban immigrants landed in.

It became their second home in the United States outside of Miami.

It's the second largest population of Cuban exiles outside of Miami.

But the problem was, was that these Cuban exiles, especially the ones in Union City, they had been, many of them, a part of the failed Bay of Pigs attack.

- 1962 Bay of Pigs.

- That's right.

- They tried to overthrow Castro, and there they are, and they're massacred, if you will, and the Bay of Pigs, John F. Kennedy, one of his greatest disasters.

Go ahead.

- That's right, and so that betrayal, so a lot of these men were thrown in prison.

Their best friends, family members, were killed right there on the beach, on the sand in Cuba.

And so when they were actually let loose, they were let loose, but now they had military training.

Now they had been tortured for years in prison by Castro.

And now they wanted revenge and they wanted their homes back.

And so when you plug that group of guys with young other immigrants and exiles from Cuba in Union City together and you get them involved in the Musto machine that was already there, it becomes a very volatile mix, okay?

- And where's Menendez in that?

- So Menendez sort of fit between both worlds, right?

So Menendez was, his second father was Musto, right?

Basically.

- Hold on.

Senator, Mayor Bill Musto was a second father, in quotes, to Bob Menendez?

- Absolutely, yes.

- Well, then how does Menendez turn on him and testify in the Musto trial against him with a bulletproof vest?

- See, that's where we say in the book we believe that's where he went wrong, is when he turned on the man that was feeding him every night dinner in his home, when Bob had holes in his shoes and he was stuffing paper in the holes in his shoes, that's how poor he was, and Musto took this poor kid who had nothing but talent, brought him under his wing, taught him everything, and Menendez turned around and stabbed him in the back.

Yes.

- So Menendez serves in the legislature.

He then gets elected to the House of Representatives, then he goes to the United States Senate.

I believe he was the first Cuban to serve in the United States Senate.

Serves as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

And now he's got real power.

By the way, before the trial in which Menendez and his wife are convicted, we'll talk about her in just a moment, there was a trial back in 2000, and help me on this, the Salomon Melgen trial was 2017.

- 2017.

That's right.

- That ended in a hung jury.

But Dr.

Salomon Melgen was convicted of overbilling Medicare bills, right?

- Yes.

- And so what the heck is that trial, how does Dr.

Melgen connect to Menendez?

And then how the heck's this next thing happened where the FBI's raiding his house a few years ago?

Go ahead.

- Exactly.

Exactly.

So all of that, there's a guy, there's a really good attorney, his name is Abbe Lowell.

And he was- - Yeah, one of the best.

- That's right.

And he was Menendez's attorney for that 2017 trial.

And one of the things that Abbe Lowell is really good at is winning the fight before the case even starts, right?

And one of the big battles he won was making it so that the case would be tried in New Jersey instead of Washington, D.C.

And that was the trick, because once he had the case in New Jersey, once Bob got the case to New Jersey, now he had home cooking, okay?

And with that home cooking, he could get a hung jury, right?

- But Melgen's serving 17 years now.

- Yes, but, see, that's the thing.

When you look at Dr.

Melgen, he was not a beloved politician.

In his case, when he got convicted, he got convicted on a separate trial, Medicare fraud, okay?

Where he- - Not in the trial with Menendez?

- Exactly, no, that was a hung jury.

- Well, what was their relationship?

I thought they were friends.

I heard Menendez say they were buddies.

- Yeah, they were best friends.

They were best friends for a long time.

- What did they allegedly do together and how did it relate to corruption charges against Menendez?

- Okay, so what they got involved in is something very typical that you see in Latin America outside the United States and it's a situation where politicians have all this power.

They have so much power, they can make individuals billionaires, right?

But in exchange, they can't be paid billions of dollars 'cause that would be bribery.

So what they get in exchange are free trips on private jets, free trips at the Four Seasons, girlfriends, parties, that type of stuff.

- This is what Melgen is doing allegedly for Menendez?

- Exactly.

So their friendship was based on, their friendship goes back to the '90s, okay?

But during that entire time, Dr.

Melgen was his number one political donor.

And on top of that, he was flying Bob Menendez all around the world for vacations on his private jet free of charge.

And in exchange, what Menendez was doing was putting pressure on HHS to force them- - The federal agency which regulated Medicare.

- Exactly.

To force them to allow Dr.

Melgen to commit Medicare fraud and not get in trouble.

- Oh, boy.

- That's what was going on there.

- Okay, so this is what I'm so confused by.

By the way, this is the book, "Gold Bar Bob."

The title of the book, the gold bars, you know the story, and we'll talk to Thomas about the gold bars and the 500k in cash in the shoes and pockets of, that's another story in just a moment.

"The Downfall of the Most Corrupt US Senator."

So here's what I'm curious about.

So Menendez has the hung jury, right?

'17.

His buddy Melgen, or Melgen, as you say, goes to jail.

Doesn't he learn, "Hey, I gotta do it the right way.

I've gotta be a boy scout or a girl scout and walk a straight line?"

What the heck happened?

- The opposite.

The opposite.

That's not- - Explain that.

- So what happens is in order to get to the heights that Menendez got to, you have to remember he's someone who started off with a father who had a gambling addiction.

He was an alcoholic.

He could barely- - Not Bob.

You mean his dad was an alcoholic.

- His father.

This is how I'm saying this is the way Bob came into the world.

He came into the world, he was the only American citizen in his family 'cause he was born on January 1st, 1954, in a New York City Hospital, right?

Everyone else was here illegally in his family.

And his father was an alcoholic, could barely keep a job.

His mother was a seamstress.

And when she wasn't a seamstress, she was doing janitorial work.

And so here he is, very, very poor man.

He's at the bottom, bottom rung of all of society in America, in Union City.

And he goes from that place all the way up to chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a position where that individual, without his signature, you can't get weapons from the United States.

So every single country in the world, every bullet they get, Bob had to sign off on.

And if he didn't approve of the bullets, they didn't get them.

That's how powerful this position is.

- Okay, by the way, I'm gonna correct myself, Salomon Melgen, his sentence was commuted by President Trump in 2021.

My bad.

Not serving the 17 years.

Thank you, team, for helping me correct myself.

Pick up your point, Thomas, please.

- Right, exactly.

So, yeah, he got that after getting some help from the Cuban community.

So I forgot where I was at, but- - No, you were talking about, okay, so now he's the head of the chair of the very powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

What does that have to do with Egypt, Qatar?

The FBI raids his house.

And what does it have to do with his wife?

- Well, first of all, in order to do what he did, you have to be kind of delusional, basically, because anyone can look at that if you're thinking with a clear head and say, "Well, a kid who is that poor in that family situation, the only legal person in his family, they're not going to become the chairman of the Senate Foreign, it's never going to happen, I'm sorry.

That's a pie in the sky.

It's not."

But Bob, he approached it as if it was going to happen from day one.

And so when you have that type of mindset, what happens is you almost get convicted in 2017, you get out of the trial on a hung jury, and you announce to the world that you're resurrected like Jesus Christ, which is what he did.

So that's the mentality.

The mentality is, is that I didn't get caught because God's on my side and I'm right there with God, the Son of God, resurrected just like Jesus.

And that gave him the type of confidence he needed to double down and become even more corrupt coming out of it.

- So hold on one second.

So I remember meeting, it was at a holiday party.

It was the first time I, and I'd known Bob Menendez for years.

He introduces us to, my wife and I were at a party, he introduces us to Nadine, who becomes his wife.

What does that relationship have to do with the charges, the trial, the conviction, and Menendez in jail and Nadine going to jail?

What the heck does the marriage have to do with the corruption charges and conviction?

- Okay, well, the relationship, not the marriage, so because they started down the road of getting involved with the Egyptians before they officially got married.

- To do what?

- Well, they started planning on the halal contract, the rigging of that contract.

That's when the first seeding of those plans started.

And the idea was for her to get a no-show job, right?

Where she- - Explain to folks the halal contract.

- And so what happens is Egypt has a rule where in order for them to bring in beef or any type of meat from the United States or Brazil or anywhere in the world into their country, you have to be certified, it has to be certified halal.

And in order to do that, they have people all over the world who are approved by the Egyptian government to certify the meat as halal before it gets sent on a boat out to the United States.

- What did Menendez do?

- So what Menendez did was he moved in and, and this was started by Nadine and her Egyptian friend, Wael Hana.

That's where this started at.

It started with those guys.

But they came in with, the Menendez, with the idea.

And what they did was they said, "Let's just get rid of all of these guys who sign off on the meat being halal certified and let's just decide to, we'll be the only ones to do it.

And after we decide that we'll be the only ones to do it, we'll charge 3,000% more than what you would normally charge to get certified and we'll just get super rich."

- How did Menendez help him?

- Well, Menendez went in and started pressuring USDA officials who were saying, "Hey, this doesn't make sense.

This isn't safe actually to just have one company do all of this.

And they've never done it before.

When we're working with all these other inspectors, these certification guys who we know are good, why are you getting rid of them and you're bringing in people we have never worked with before?

This is not-" - And then Menendez, what was his explanation?

- Menendez basically said, "You better leave my constituents alone or you're gonna, like, lose your job."

Like, the guy testified, like I said, he felt the pressure.

- The government official?

- Yes.

Yeah.

- So what happens?

They get approved?

- Yes, and they're- - So they're making tons of money.

- Yes.

- And then what happens, is this where the gold bars and the cash come in?

- Now you start- - The car, the Mercedes?

- That's when all this other stuff starts happening 'cause once you have the Egyptian government approving to get you and your inner circle all of this money through this halal thing, now they start asking for favors, right?

And those favors- - Who?

You're talking about Bob and Nadine?

- Well, through Nadine into Bob.

So they were- - What are the favors?

- So one of the favors was they wanted him to give them the entire roster of all of our employees at the embassy in Cairo.

And that's everyone.

So what that means is that within that roster, he revealed our CIA officers.

- Okay, when does it get to the gold bar and the cash and the Mercedes?

- That was a part of it.

So he was getting gold bars all between.

So every time they had a request, he would come through.

And so the other request they had was, you know, after they were in on murdering a journalist from- - Khashoggi.

- Exactly.

The Egyptians were in on that.

They told Bob, "Hey, man, like, we're gonna get busted.

We need you to help us clear us to make sure no one looks at us."

- Well, what would Menendez have to do with the murder of Khashoggi?

- Well, see, this is what happens when you start getting involved in Middle Eastern politics, and this country, Egypt, gives you the right to certify all of the meat that all of the Muslims are eating in the Middle East.

When you cut that kind of deal, then, well, they want other things like, for example, they don't want any restrictions on weapons, which Bob released all of the restrictions.

Egypt has always had restrictions on the type of weapons they can get from us because they are habitually human rights violators, okay.

And there's always been restrictions on them.

Bob removed them all.

- As the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

- That's right.

Yes.

- So they get the gold bars.

We don't know how much cash, but when did the FBI raid- - About $500,000 in cash.

- When did the, so the FBI goes in and raids the house, the Menendez house.

- Yeah, five times.

- They find the gold bars, they find the cash in shoes, in his pockets of his- - Pocket.

- Okay, and his argument is, "I'm from Cuba.

We never knew when Castro's people were gonna come in, the military, so we had to hide our money."

- That's it.

Yes.

- Is that right?

- That's what he said.

- And the Mercedes is in there too for Nadine, is allegedly.

Not allegedly.

They're convicted of that, right?

- Yes.

- Okay.

Am I correct in saying that at a certain point, the trial for Bob Menendez and trial for Nadine Menendez were separated, correct?

- Yes.

- Did they blame each other?

- Yes.

- Do you think that's for real, Thomas?

Or some sort of legal strategy?

- It was a legal strategy for their case to be separated.

That was Bob's idea as well.

Like, he pushed hard.

I won't say it was his idea because it got separated because she had breast cancer, okay?

So I can't say- - Yes, I wish her all the best health wise, but I wanna be clear.

- Yes.

- Did Bob say publicly it was Nadine, it was her idea?

- Yes.

Yes.

- Did he say, "She pushed me?"

- Yes.

He didn't say it.

His attorney said it in the trial, in their opening argument.

Their argument was, "Hey, she was money hungry and she was power hungry and she was starstruck and so she manipulated me."

- Couple minutes left.

Bob Menendez was seeking, not sure he is, seeking a pardon or commutation of his sentence, I'm not sure what, from President Trump.

What are the odds?

- Well, you never know with President Trump, because you just don't know what makes him tick on these things.

And on this, people say, you know, "Oh, you just have to pay him off."

I don't think so.

I think with Trump on this, there's some personal in this because Bob voted twice to impeach him, right?

And Bob also, we have it in the book, Bob instigated, Bob pushed other countries throughout the world to open up basically investigations into Trump's private businesses, into his families, his kids and stuff.

So it wasn't just lawfare happening from the Democrats in the United States.

Bob had other countries around the world digging into them as well.

So I think about that and I say, "I just don't know if he's gonna get the pardon."

- Okay, the book is "Gold Bar Bob: The Downfall of the Most Corrupt US Senator," Thomas Jason Anderson, Isabel Vincent.

Real quick.

30 seconds.

You call it a cautionary tale.

Cautionary regarding what?

- For the future of the United States politically because Bob, and when you read the book, and we try to do this, we try to show that Bob is a product of a system, and that system didn't go away when Bob went to jail.

It's still there, right?

And that system that's in place is one in which, if you look at the Democratic party now, they're suffering because of this system.

It's not that they don't have ideas.

It's not that, you know, that they lack energy or they lack funding.

It's none of that.

They have all the experience they need and everything.

The problem that they're having is structurally, they're corrupt, okay?

And that corruption shows in many, many, many ways but what it really comes down to is their party, just as Bob as a leader within the party for decades, took them to a place where they became basically pay to play, where their constituents became the people who paid them the most campaign cash.

And that's the cautionary tale.

We don't get out of that, we're gonna be in big trouble as a nation.

- Wow.

Read the book about Bob Menendez.

It's about the United States Senate, about politics in New Jersey and Hudson County and Union City.

It's about Bob Menendez's relationship with the Clintons and a whole bunch of other folks and the political stratosphere at the highest levels.

Bob Menendez had extraordinary power.

And finally, as some of us who grew up in politics and media in New Jersey, Bob Menendez was a giant.

It's just incredibly sad on so many levels.

Hey, thank you, Thomas Jason Anderson.

We appreciate all your time.

Read the book, folks.

- Thank you.

Appreciate it.

- All the best.

You got it.

I'm Steve Adubato.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by Bergen New Bridge Medical Center.

Delta Dental of New Jersey.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Rutgers University Newark.

The Fidelco Group.

NJ Best, New Jersey’s five-two-nine college savings plan.

New Jersey Manufacturing Extension Program.

New Brunswick Development Corporation.

And by Garden State Initiative Promotional support provided by NJ.Com.

And by BestofNJ.com.

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