Accused Egypt agent, Russia spy file pleas
Senator Robert Menendez pleads not guilty to the charge of conspiracy to act as a foreign agent
Daily TribuneSenator Robert Menendez pleads not guilty to the charge of conspiracy to act as a foreign agent
A Democrat senator accused of conspiring to act as an agent of Egypt's government pleaded not guilty to the charge while a former United States National Security Agency worker pleaded guilty to attempting to spy for Russia.
Senator Robert Menendez on Monday called the charge "outrageous as it is absurd."
The former chair of the US Senate foreign relations committee had already been indicted on charges of taking bribes and influence peddling for the benefit of Egypt, but pleaded not guilty at the end of September.
He allegedly accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from three residents of his home state of New Jersey between 2018 and 2022, and of having used his "power and influence to protect, to enrich those businessmen and to benefit the government of Egypt."
Manhattan federal prosecutor Damian Williams detailed the discovery during a search of Menendez's home of bundles of cash stuffed in his jacket pockets, three kilos of gold bars and a luxury car, all elements "that were part of the fraud."
Charged with him were his wife and three other people.
The 69-year-old veteran Democrat, whose parents immigrated to the United States from Cuba, denied last month that he had committed any crimes.
"For 30 years, I have withdrawn thousands of dollars in cash from my personal savings account, which I have kept for emergencies and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in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.
Meanwhile, Jareh Sebastian Dalke, 31, spent less than four weeks working as a cyber specialist at the NSA, the US government's huge and powerful signals intelligence agency, before he suddenly quit, citing family problems at the end of June last year.
In the few weeks he was at the NSA, he printed out top secret documents, and after leaving he offered them for sale in encrypted online communications to an individual he believed to be a Russian agent, the Justice Department said.
He was actually dealing with an undercover Federal Bureau of Investigation agent.
Dalke, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, pleaded guilty in US District Court to six counts of attempting to transmit classified national defense information to an agent of a foreign government.
