Ex-U.S. official says Sen. Bob Menendez pressured him to “quit interfering with my constituent”

A former top US agriculture official branded Senator Bob Menendez a villain at his bribery trial on Fridaysaying he tried to stop him from disrupting an unusual and sudden monopoly that developed five years ago over the certification of meat exported to Egypt.

A Manhattan federal court jury heard the officer, Ted McKinney, recount a brief phone call he received from the Democrat in 2019, shortly after New Jersey businessman Wael Hana was given the exclusive right to certify that beef exported from the United States to the Egypt conformed to Islamic principles. Dietary requirements.

Hana, who is on trial with Menendez and another businessman, is among three New Jersey businessmen who prosecutors say gave bribes to Menendez and his wife, including gold bars and tens of thousands of dollars in cash, from 2018 to 2022, in exchange for Menéndez shares that would enhance his business interests.

Menéndez, 70, and his co-defendants, along with his wife — whose trial is scheduled for July — have pleaded not guilty to the charges filed against them early last fall.

The monopoly Hana’s company received forced out several other companies that certified beef and liver exported to Egypt, and occurred over several days in May 2019, a rapid transition that seemed “very, very unusual,” McKinney said. .

“We immediately took action,” said the former official, describing a series of escalating actions that the US took to try to get Egyptian authorities to reconsider the action that granted a monopoly to a single company that had never completed certifications before. The overtures, he said, were met with silence.

Amid the urgent effort, McKinney called Egypt’s choice a “pretty draconian decision” that would drive up prices in correspondence with Egyptian authorities.

He said Menéndez called him in late May 2019 and told him to “stop interfering in my electorate.”

With so many words, he added, Menendez was telling him to “stand down.”

McKinney said he began to explain to the senator why the U.S. preferred multiple companies rather than a single certifying meat sent to Egypt, but Menendez interrupted him.

“Let’s not worry about that. That’s not important. Let’s not go there,” McKinney recalled Menendez telling him as he tried to explain that a monopoly would cause high prices and put at risk the 60 percent share of the beef and liver market that the USA held in Egypt.

He described the senator’s tone on the call as “serious or perhaps even very serious.”

McKinney said he knew Menéndez held a powerful position at the time as the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but told diplomats in Egypt and within his department to continue gathering facts about why Egypt abruptly changed its policies. .

He said he told them to “keep doing what they were doing and if there was any pressure to take, I would take it.”

“We thought something nefarious was going on,” he said.

McKinney said he was preparing to contact the senator a second time to discuss his concerns when he learned that the FBI was investigating how meat certification for Egypt ended up in the hands of a single company.

He said he warned other members of his department and diplomats abroad to stand down.

“It’s in the hands of the FBI now,” McKinney told them.

What was likely to be a long cross-examination of McKinney began on Friday with a lawyer for Menendez inducing that it was Egypt’s right to choose which company or companies handled the certification of meat exported from the United States to Egypt. The lawyer highlighted that Egypt concluded that the companies that handled certifications did not do so adequately.

As he left the courtroom on Friday, Menéndez told reporters to pay close attention to the interrogation.

“You know, wait for the cross and you’ll find out the truth,” he said before getting in his car and driving away.