Congressman Menendez and the influence of money and Egypt in America

The pages of American magazines, newspapers and media outlets these days are filled with news and repercussions of the bribery scandal in which Cuban-born American Congressman Bob Menendez and his wife Nadia (of Lebanese origin) are accused. Menendez, according to the federal indictment, is accused of receiving bribes from three businessmen of Egyptian origin, consisting of money, gold bullion, and a Mercedes car, in exchange for exploiting his position for the benefit of the Egyptian government, specifically with regard to providing information and facilitations on the issue of American aid and military sales to Egypt. It is known that Egypt receives annual financial aid. From America, it is often used as a pressure tool on the Egyptian state to adopt certain policies, and large parts of it have been blocked since 2013 for issues allegedly related to the human rights file in Egypt.

Menendez pleads his innocence in the face of these accusations and refuses to appear at the request of half of the Democratic senators who are demanding that he resign from his position as a senator, even though he stepped down as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee due to the scandal, which is the same position that Joe Biden held before he became vice president and then president of the states. United..
The truth is that this is not the first time that Menendez has faced accusations of this kind. In 2015, the Democratic senator faced 14 charges of corruption, including bribery of about a million dollars in the form of gifts and trips from one of his friends. All charges were dropped after he proved his innocence.

The Menendez case reconsidered the influence of money power in the American political system. Money alone in America decides who the candidate is, what are his chances of winning, and what are his programs and priorities. The course of the electoral process in Congress can be summarized by saying to one of its members: “If you have a good idea and ten thousand dollars, and I have an idea that is not worth anything but I have a million dollars, then I will succeed in convincing people that my idea is the good one.”

American law is full of loopholes that can be accessed to justify the money received by candidates and members of Congress. As Menendez did the first time the charges were dropped against him, he defended himself in a press conference by saying that the money they found in his home was withdrawn from his savings account. But the problem he must solve this time lies in the presence of fingerprints on the envelopes filled with money that were seized in his house belonging to the businessmen accused of bribing him.

The repercussions of the resounding case will not stop at accusing a member of Congress of receiving a bribe, but rather will affect Egyptian-American relations and voting trends in Congress regarding Egypt in the coming days.. Egypt has many enemies inside Washington who took advantage of the issue and began to demand that it be a case of national treason and espionage, and the voices calling for stopping aid increased. American aid to Egypt or withholding large parts of it, the latest of which was stated by the senior Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives, who called for the suspension of $230 million in American aid to the Egyptian state due to the human rights file. Even Menendez himself called in his latest press statement to focus on human rights in Egypt.

In 2009, the US government dropped spying charges against two members of AIPAC, the most powerful Israeli lobby organization responsible for collecting donations for members of Congress, because they provided major security secrets to the Israeli embassy related to US policy towards Iran. In the same case, the investigation was closed against Congresswoman Jane Harman, who told an Israeli agent in a recorded phone call that she would pressure the Department of Justice to reduce espionage charges against Israel. In return, the Israeli agent promised her to obtain a wealthy donor in the campaign of Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the Democrats in Congress, to pressure her to appoint Harman to the Intelligence Committee in the House of Representatives!

The story of Bob Menendez is not the first and will not be the last in a Congress whose electoral battles are not fought in the arena of voters, but rather through the power of exploiting money, suspicious deals, and secret settlements. There is no one more brilliant than the Israeli lobby in this matter. Robert Kennedy was right when he once said: It is the best Congress that money can buy. The question is: Who is accused, Egypt or Menendez?