Bob Menendez Hires Attorney Nicknamed ‘Gold Bars’ After Prosecutors Say He Took Gold Bars as Bribes

AP Photo/Seth Wenig

The writers’ strike may be over, but the latest twist in Sen. Bob Menendez’s bribery case has all the hallmarks of scab work.

The U.S. senator from New Jersey was indicted in federal court in Manhattan in September for allegedly using his position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to benefit the government of Egypt. In exchange, prosecutors say he and his wife received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in the form of cash, a convertible, and gold bars.

According to the Department of Justice, in October 2021 Menendez googled, “how much is one kilo of gold worth.”

The senator, his wife, and three associates all pleaded not guilty.

On Tuesday it was revealed that Menendez has hired Robert “Gold Bars” Luskin to represent him, according to a filing dated Nov. 17.

Luskin got the nickname after he accepted $500,000 in gold bars as payment while representing Stephen Saccoccia, a former coin dealer who is serving a 660-year sentence over a money laundering scheme involving Colombian drug cartels.

Menendez maintains he did nothing illegal. Instead, he cited his Cuban heritage as the reason why federal agents found hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash at his home. He did not address the presence of the gold bars, however.

“For 30 years, I have withdrawn thousands of dollars in cash from my personal savings account, which I have kept for emergencies, and because of the history of my family facing confiscation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,” he said shortly after his indictment.

Menendez’s parents fled Cuba during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1953.

This isn’t Menendez’s first bribery rodeo.

He was indicted in 2015 on bribery charges. In 2018, a judge tossed several of the counts against him after the Supreme Court drastically narrowed the scope of federal anti-bribery law. The Department of Justice subsequently dropped its case against the senator.

Several of Menendez’s Democratic colleagues in the Senate have called on him to resign.