Bob Menendez Got Boeing Cash After Egypt Aircraft Deal
Embattled Sen. Bob Menendez cashed in on pro-Egypt actions in more ways than one, campaign finance filings and the latest indictments in his federal corruption case indicate.
The updated criminal complaint prosecutors filed last week describes a meeting between the New Jersey Democrat and several alleged co-conspirators—including his wife, Nadine Arslanian—on May 21, 2019, held with a member of Cairo’s military intelligence agency. This was one in a string of in-person and electronic interactions which the Justice Department presented as evidence that the then-chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his accused accomplices served as operatives for the Egyptian government in exchange for bribes.
But in this particular engagement, the feds allege Menendez, his associates, and his Egyptian contact discussed the opposition the Trump administration’s $1 billion sale of Apache military helicopters to the Middle East nation faced from some members of Congress, including then-Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT). At the core of their objections was the authoritarian regime’s use of these same model choppers four years earlier to attack a tour group it mistook for militants, an assault that left several dead and one American citizen injured.
In the following days, Menendez—whose leadership position on the Foreign Relations Committee granted him power over the sale’s finalization—allegedly conducted research on the victim, April Corley of California. Meanwhile, the Egyptian official reportedly promised accused co-conspirator Wael Hana via an encrypted messaging service that Menendez “will sit very comfortably” should he make the problem with the chopper package go away. According to the indictment, Hana texted back “orders. Consider it done,” and then relayed further material from the Egyptian agent to the senator’s wife, who passed it to her husband.
April Corley was injured and her boyfriend Rafael Bejarano was killed while in Egypt in 2015 when the military mistook the group for jihadist militants.
Menendez and Hana have disputed the charges, although the senator’s office did not respond to questions for this story. Corley, too, did not reply to emails or phone calls.
But what’s indisputable is that just weeks after the meeting outlined in the indictment, Boeing—the manufacturer of the Apache—gave its first-ever maximum contribution from its political action committee to Menendez’s New Millennium PAC. The $5,000 gift vastly outstripped the only previous donation the aerospace contractor had made to New Millennium: $1,000 in 2013, during the senator’s previous tenure as Foreign Relations Committee chairman.
The company PAC’s only contribution to one of Menendez’s political committees since that 2013 gift had been a similarly measly $1,000 pitched into his re-election bid in 2018. New Millennium is a leadership PAC, meaning it exists to enable Menendez to spread cash and clout among his colleagues.
What’s more, Boeing’s largesse didn’t end there; its PAC once again gave New Millennium the maximum allowed $5,000 in early August 2020, a little more than a month after the State Department moved to award Egypt $2.3 billion in Apache upgrades, and once again in late December 2021, shortly before contracts for the improvements began to go out.
Boeing did not respond to repeated queries from The Daily Beast about its contact with the senator, the Egyptian government, or any of their representatives or proxies.
Lobbying records for Boeing from 2019 do not mention Menendez, his committee, Egypt, or the Apache by name. However, the documents do reflect that the company expended tens of thousands of dollars that year advocating that both houses of Congress approve appropriations “for a variety of programs and activities of The Boeing Company,” including for “rotorcraft.”
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