In his unfolding corruption case, Sen. Bob Menendez asks for no special favors.
He merely asks to be treated like Hunter Biden.
The “embattled” senior senator from New Jersey has already won an earlier photo finish with a jury, in Newark. He was tried by a jury of his Democrat peers, one of whom asked in court, “What is a senator?”
The new indictment runs 39 pages. Naturally state-run media is giving it a good leaving alone because… professional courtesy.
However, despite what some deplorables are claiming, there are great differences between the Biden and Menendez cases.
Of course, Menendez is, or was until last week, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Joe Biden used to be chairman of that same committee, which is apparently a golden goose when it comes to, uh, whatever.
But beyond that, there is no connection between the Biden and Menendez scandals.
For example, Menendez is accused of shaking down Egypt. The Bidens, on the other hand, are accused of taking payoffs from sinister foreign nationals in Ukraine, Russia, China, Rumania and Kazakhstan.
Biden threatened to stop $1 billion in aid to Ukraine. Menendez didn’t stop Egypt from getting $2.5 billion in foreign aid, but then had his wife send the Arabs a newspaper story about the grant he’d facilitated:
“Bob had to sign off on this.”
Menendez is accused of accepting bribes in the form of gold bullion. Hunter Biden took diamonds.
When the big bucks started flowing, Mrs. Menendez set up a corporation because “every time I’m a middle person for a deal I am asking to get paid and this is my consulting company.”
Hunter became an “artist.”
Mrs. Menendez got a brand-new Mercedes Benz C-300 convertible worth $60,000. Hunter Biden grabbed a brand-new Fisker Karma EV sports car worth $142,000.
After the delivery of the new car, the oligarch who bought Hunter’s car got to have dinner with Hunter and Dementia Joe in Georgetown.
The convicted felon who bought Mrs. Menendez her car had his celebratory car dinner with the Menendez’ in Manhattan – and took a photograph while toasting one another with champagne.
So you can see, these two Democrat corruption stories have absolutely nothing in common.
At the traditional I-am-not-a-crook press conference Monday, Menendez said he always kept a little cash around the house ($486,461 to be exact) because of the history of “confiscation” of his family’s funds in Cuba under Communism.
For the record, Menendez was born in New York City in 1954 – five years before Fidel Castro took power.
So what though? Joe Biden has claimed he was raised in “the Puerto Rican community” in Delaware, even though there were fewer than 2000 of them living in his state when he was a boy in the 1940’s.
The Bidens were a little slicker. For one thing, compared to the Bidens’ mind-boggling tens of millions of dollars, Menendez was a piker. According to the indictment, the Menendez had much less understanding of how much he was getting paid off.
After being handed some gold bullion in October 2019, Menendez googled:
“How much is one kilo of gold worth?”
In January 2022, Menendez again went onto Google to search for “kilo of gold price.”
Is Menendez is starting to have the same kind of late-life memory problems as Brandon?
(For the record, the indictment says that a kilo of gold is worth about $60,000.)
The Bidens and Menendezes both consorted with dodgy people. Biden “served” with a killer (Ted Kennedy) and a grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan (Robert Byrd), among other reprobates.
Menendez’ codefendants include Jose Uribe who was “previously convicted of fraud and had his insurance broker’s license revoked.”
Another of their indicted pals was a Democrat fundraiser named Fred Daibes, who in 2018 was accused by the feds of “obtaining loans under false pretenses” from his own bank.
Both families keep their friends close – very, very close. Hunter had a sister-in-law who was also his girlfriend. Another of the Menendez codefendants is an Egyptian named Will Hana who was “friends for many years” with the senator’s codefendant wife Nadine, according to the US attorney.
The two “friends” exchanged “thousands of text messages.” At one point, when Nadine’s house was being foreclosed upon, her “friend” paid $23,000 to get it out of arrears.
That’s a good friend, I’d say. Which probably explains why the former Nadine Arslanian was so angry after her new husband the senator “ghost wrote” a letter to get another $300 million in aid for Egypt, and then her old “friend” refused to pay the bill.
Nadine wrote to her new husband about her old “friend” the Egyptian:
“I have been so upset all morning. Will left for Egypt yesterday supposedly and now think he’s kind of the world and has both countries wrapped around his pinky. I really hope they replace him.”
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
Like Hunter, Nadine became frustrated with her past-due accounts receivable. It is the eternal lament of the bagman.
Hunter told his daughter that when she graduated into the family shakedown business, he would never require her to kick back 50 percent of the shakedowns like “Pop” had done to him.
Nadine, however, just whines about being stiffed on the payoffs to her husband: “I am soooooo upset.”
Nadine, learn something from Hunter. Don’t complain, explain – what’ll happen to the deadbeats if they don’t pay up. When one of his Chinese marks was past due in 2017, Hunter sent him a WhatsApp message that began:
“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled.”
Within days, the Red Chinese had wired $5.1 million to Hunter’s “firm.”
The one advantage Mr. and Mrs. Menendez have over the Bidens? They have spousal privilege – Bob and Nadine can’t testify against one another.
If I were Menendez’ lawyer, I would only counsel him to do one thing before he appears in court today.
Change his last name to Biden. It works every time.
(Order Howie’s new book, “Paper Boy: Read All About It!” at howiecarrshow.com or amazon.com.)