Corrado Joins GOP Call For Probe Of Menendez' Influence At AG's Office

NORTH JERSEY — State Sen. Kristin Corrado joined Republican Senators' calls for their Democratic colleagues to investigate implications that U.S. Senator Bob Menendez influenced a criminal fraud case at the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office.

The charges against the senior Democratic senator included details about his alleged attempts to influence a state investigation.

Calling the details “a matter of grave public interest” for the public, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and all 15 Senate Republican Caucus members urged Senate President Nicholas Scutari to convene the chamber “at the earliest possible date” to initiate a bipartisan investigation.

Corrado, who represents the 40th District in Bergen, Essex, and Passaic Counties, is a ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"We are calling on the Democrats to join us in launching a formal investigation into matters contained in Senator Menendez's indictment that implicate the AG's Office. We must restore public confidence in our public institutions," she said in a social media post sharing the letter.

Included in the indictment against Menendez were allegations that the senator used his influence to try and pressure state and federal prosecutors into giving lenient treatment to friends or associates who were the subject of criminal investigations.

The indictment “raises serious concerns about whether officials at the New Jersey Office of Attorney General were in fact compromised by that pressure, potentially complicit in the Senator’s alleged crimes, or operating under inadequate or nonexistent protocols for safeguarding against public corruption,” the Republican Caucus said in their letter, sent Tuesday to Scutari.

Senate Minority Leader Anthony M. Bucco (NJ-25) and senators Corrado, Michael Testa, Jr. (NJ-1), and Jon Bramnick (NJ-21) are members of the Senate Judiciary, with Corrado a ranking member. They were joined by the 11 other Senate Republicans in the statehouse in calling for the Senate to reconvene; currently, legislators are not scheduled to return until November.

More than half of Democrats in the U.S. Senate have said that Menendez should resign, including fellow Garden State Sen. Cory Booker. Governor Phil Murphy has, as well. Menendez has said he intends to stay in the Senate, saying he is certain he will ultimately be exonerated.

His wife Nadine Arslanian Menendez , and three businessmen are included in the fraud charges. Also this week, new details surfaced about a December 2018 crash in which Arslanian, the senator’s girlfriend at the time, struck and killed a dad who was crossing a Bergen County street.

Arslanian, who lived in Englewood Cliffs at the time, was indicted on Sept. 22 for accepting bribes, including cash and a Mercedes Benz convertible, along with her husband.

Reports revealed that Arslanian needed the car because her own Mercedes had been destroyed in the fatal accident months earlier.

In 2019, according to the indictment, businessman Jose Uribe — whom Arslanian had introduced to Menendez at one point, and who has been indicted along with the couple — agreed to finance a new car for Arslanian if the senator did him a favor.

According to the indictment, Menendez intervened to try to have a New Jersey-based criminal insurance fraud investigation of Uribe's employee resolved favorably. The senator agreed to call a senior prosecutor at the state Attorney General’s office about the case, and first made contact with him in late January of 2019, according to the indictment.

"In exchange for the promise of the luxury convertible, Menendez contacted a senior state prosecutor at the NJ AG’s Office who supervised the prosecution and investigation (“Official-2”) at least twice," the indictment states. "During those communications, Menendez attempted to pressure Official-2 to resolve the prosecution more favorably to the defendant. Official-2 considered Menendez’s actions inappropriate and did not agree to intervene."

The indictment also states that the unnamed official “did not share with the prosecution team that Menendez had contacted him about the matter.”

Uribe facilitated Arslanian’s replacement Mercedes in early April 2019, when she texted a photograph to Menendez with a heart emoji — as detailed in court documents.

Menendez also met with the official from the state Attorney General’s Office in September, and Uribe told a business associate the meeting was “very positive,” court records allege.

New Jersey Senate Republicans said this “troubling sequence of events” and the willingness of the official to meet with Menendez “raise serious questions as to whether proper protocols were followed, or if such protocols were even in place in the first right.”

“As you are aware, the indictment of Senator Menendez has dramatically shaken the faith of New Jersey residents in their government officials,” the Republican senate members wrote to Scutari. “We trust that during these difficult times you and your colleagues in the Senate Democratic Caucus will join us in making every effort toward restoring confidence in our public institutions.”

Patch has reached out to the NJ Attorney General’s office for comment.

In addition to the case under the Attorney General's office, the indictment also states Menendez attempted to influence a federal criminal investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey into Fred Daibes, another associate. The indictment alleges that Menendez recommended that the President nominate someone as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey that Menendez "believed he could influence" in one of the cases.

This article contains reporting from Patch’s Caren Lissner.

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