Sen. Menendez Helped Revoke U.S. Visa of Pal’s Romantic Nemesis

The New Jersey senator embroiled in a Dominican prostitution scandal abused his power to revoke the U.S. visa of his shady doctor pal’s romantic nemesis, according to a news report in the nation’s largest Spanish-language network.

It may sound like a bad telenovela, but it’s the real-life story of a United States Senator, Robert Menendez, who just recently won reelection. Menendez, the new head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been in hot water lately for a variety of transgressions involving a rich Dominican doctor friend (Salomon Melgen) who’s also a major political donor.

A few weeks ago the FBI raided Melgen’s south Florida office and spent two days confiscating boxes of files and records. Local news reports say Melgen owes Uncle Sam more than $11 million in unpaid taxes and he is being investigated for Medicare fraud. Melgen and Menendez are longtime buddies and the doctor has flown the Democrat senator to his luxury Dominican estate in Casa de Campo on his private jet several times.

Last fall a conservative website published a piece in which two prostitutes offered alarming details about the senator and Melgen paying them for sex in the Dominican Republic. Earlier this month a mainstream newspaper reported that Menendez took action as a legislator to benefit a top aide as well as Melgen, who has filled the senator’s campaign coffers with big bucks over the years.

According to the story, Menendez actually pushed the U.S. government to enforce the lucrative port security contract of a company operated by his former national security advisor and senior legislative aide (Pedro Permuy) and owned by Melgen, who remains under intense federal scrutiny.

This week Univision reports that Menendez used his connections and authority as a federal lawmaker to retaliate against an adviser to former Dominican President Hipólito Mejía because he helped an ex-lover of Melgen’s. You can’t make this stuff up. Here is the story posted on the Spanish-language network’s website.

The one-time presidential adviser’s name is Guido Gómez Mazarain and he says Melgen and Menendez orchestrated a smear campaign against him over his association with Melgen’s ex-lover. Part of the punishment included stripping Mazarain of his visa to enter the United States. The doctor warned Mazarain that Menendez had the power to revoke the visa and Mazarain says the senator pressured the American embassy to do it.

Menendez has long been embroiled in illegal behavior. In fact, Judicial Watch has for years reported the senator’s many transgressions. As far back as 2007 JW wrote about a federal grand jury investigation into Menendez, a former member of the U.S. House, illegally steering lobbying business to a girlfriend that also served as his chief of staff. The former aide/girlfriend built an unusually successful lobbying firm in a very short time after leaving Congress thanks to Menendez, according to news reports.

In 2010 Menendez and his colleague in corruption, New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg, allocated $8 million for a public walkway and park space adjacent to upscale, waterfront condos built by a developer that had donated generously to their political campaigns. The veteran legislators received about $100,000 in contributions from the developer, according to federal election records. In 2012 Judicial Watch put Menendez on its list of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.”

JW is also investigating whether the Obama administration recently blocked the deportation of an illegal immigrant sex offender who worked for Menendez to dodge a scandal that could cost the politician reelection this past November. A national newswire broke the story of how the White House apparently protected Menendez from yet another public relations crisis by delaying the removal of the illegal immigrant from Peru with an expired visa (like the 9/11 hijackers) and a criminal record for sexual assault.