It's not like it hasn't happened before, political officials take bribes and it makes the government look bad. But when the individual is indicted for 14 counts of illicit activities, mostly accepting bribes for the exchange of favors from a wealthy eye doctor friend and political donor named Salomon Melgen. When bribery and debauchery is projected onto a political scale it seriously becomes a big deal.
The individual in question is Senator Robert Menendez. Allegedly since he began in the Senate in 2006, he had accepted close to 1 million dollars in gifts and campaign contributions from Melgan. Menedez accepted these gifts in exchange for helping Melgan bring girlfriends and mistresses across the border from the Dominican Republic and other Central/South American nations. Menedez helped Melgen's cause by supporting visa's for the women as well as lobbying on the doctor's behalf when he would have any Medicare financial interest disputes. Lastly, Melgen has a port security contract in the Dominican Republic, no secret now as to who (Menendez) helped him with it. The indictment started with the 2006 action and continued into 2012. Reports eventually were leaked that when Menendez and his close associate Melgen were not having women flown in from exotic places, they were going there themselves, most of the trips that the men took were way above Menedez's pay grade. The Senator had reportedly taken many flights aboard Melgen's private jet and repaid Melgen by doing him many lobby favors as well as supporting him on financial issues with the government.
So all in all, this political figure is doing some really illegal and really inappropriate activities. Senator Robert Menedez has been pushed to resign from his position, but has favored instead to fight the charges and is using an obscure "Speech and Debate Clause" within the Constitution to defend himself and not answer questions. While it has been working with mixed success most political scholars are stating that Menendez will not have long before he is in very hot water with the legal system. The Clause, when put into layman's terms, says that Sen. Menendez has immunity to his felonies and speaking about them until "smoking gun" evidence is found. This is quite a large Congressional issue because it shows where the weak points with our Congressional members are. It affects the integrity of the Senate and also affects the integrity and trust of our Congress members as a whole. Events are still playing out so the final result still has yet to be seen and developed. As a final question to be posed, what does the Senator's (former) wife think about all of this?
More information can be found here:
Huffington Post
Does Menedez have Immunity to taking bribes with Impunity?
