It’s been a while since the Gret Stet of Louisiana has had a major political scandal. New Jersey is the place to look for corruption on a massive scale. Senator Bob Menendez is a walking, talking, lying scandal on two legs.

This is the Garden State Grifter’s second go-around with federal prosecutors. In 2017, there was a hung jury in his corruption trial. The feds decided NOT to refile charges. Menendez claimed that this exonerated him and made him fit to serve in the senate. He was wrong. It wasn’t an acquittal; it was a mistrial. Hit it, Lou:

This case against the Garden State Grifter seems stronger than the first:

The indictment against the senator and his wife, Nadine Menendez, as well as three associates, lays out wide-ranging abuses of power. At one point, Menendez is alleged to have pressed the Biden administration to nominate a U.S. attorney in New Jersey who he thought would be sympathetic to one of those three associates, Fred Daibes, a real estate developer who was facing federal fraud charges. In another instance, prosecutors alleged that Menendez held meetings with Egyptian military officials as part of an arrangement that secured his wife a “low-or-no-show” job with another of the associates, Wael Hana, an Egyptian American business executive.

The charges against Nadine Menendez increase the pressure on her husband to cut a deal with feds. This is a classic prosecutorial squeeze play.

Menendez didn’t help himself at yesterday’s press conference:

For 30 years, I have withdrawn thousands of dollars in cash from my personal savings account, which I have kept for emergencies and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba. Now, this may seem old-fashioned. But these were monies drawn from my personal savings account based on the income that I have lawfully derived over those 30 years. I look forward to addressing other issues at trial.

Menendez is lying. He was born in New York City in 1954. His parents left Cuba not long before that. It was during the Batista, not Castro government. The confiscations Menendez alluded to didn’t start until after the Cuban revolution. Even if it were true, it’s a lame excuse: Menendez’s father was a carpenter and his mother a seamstress. They came to America for economic, not political reasons.

It’s a classic dodge for Cuban American politicians: Blame Fidel Castro. Fidel had nothing to do with the gold bars found at stately Menendez manor. I don’t think Raul Castro had anything to do with the senator’s Mercedes. Of course, Fidel is dead and Raul is retired, but blaming them for everything is a Cuban cottage industry.

Shorter Menendez: the Cuban Commies made me do it.

When I heard that $480K was discovered at casa Menendez, I thought of my former Congressman Dollar Bill Jefferson. He’s best known for this:

That was $90K in cold hard cash. Make that frozen money or is that Blue Money?

Dollar Bill was convicted on corruption charges in 2009. Upon his released from prison in 2017, I wrote about it for Bayou Brief. This passage could apply to Senator Bob Menendez as well:

Dollar Bill’s political legacy was swept away in a tide of graft, greed, and corruption. He got away with it for so many years that he thought he was bulletproof. He was not.

I’ll leave the reaction of the media and other Democratic pols to Jamie O who’s filling in tomorrow for the vacationing Cassandra. Suffice it to say Menendez is experiencing a world of hurt, especially at home in New Jersey where prominent pols want his head on a pike. Menendez is so slippery that his head might slide off the pike.

The last word goes to The Kinks: