Unless somebody has a time machine, this could become major trouble for Democrat Bob Menendez.
In a little-noticed email published online Wednesday by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a young Dominican woman wrote nine months ago that she slept with 59-year-old New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez at a series of sex parties organized by Dr. Salomon Melgen, a longtime Menendez campaign donor.
“That Senator also likes the youngest and newest girls,” the woman wrote on April 21, 2002, according to an English translation provided to The Daily Caller by a native Spanish speaker.
“In the beginning he seemed so serious, because he never spoke to anyone, but he is just like the others and has just about the same tastes as the doctor, very refined. I think they were taking us more often to get us checked [medically] because of him.”
“The doctor” is evidently Dr. Salomon Melgen, whose office was raided after authorities saw document shredding trucks outside.
The young woman wrote that she was recruited as an escort from an adult escort service called the Doll Palace, and that the code word “chocolate” would summon her and other girls to Melgen’s sex parties.
Menendez insists that the allegations are false. But. This evidence is more than 10 years old. Menendez’s scandal only came to light shortly before the election. Does this 2002 evidence not lend a certain weight to the allegations he faces — that he used the doctor’s personal jet to fly to the Dominican Republican to procure the services of prostitutes, and young ones at that, in 2009?
By the way, the scandal could spread. It turns out that Dr. Melgen, who is being investigated for Medicare fraud, has big-name friends besides Menendez.
Among the politicians whom Melgen has befriended, and for whom he has hosted private fundraisers at his 5,000-square-foot home: former U.S. Sens. Christopher Dodd and Bob Graham, late Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles — who also was a patient of Melgen’s — former President Bill Clinton, and Leonel Fernández, former president of the Dominican Republic.
Goodman noted that Bill and Hillary Clinton vacationed at the doctor’s home in Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic, and that he became good friends with Terry McAuliffe, former Democratic National Committee chairman and co-chair of Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign.
“He used to go to Dr. Melgen’s home in Casa de Campo and play golf all the time,’’ Goodman said of McAuliffe.
This week, Menendez hastily reimbursed the doctor for the use of his plane. He claims that his failure to pay the doc before now was an “oversight.” It could also have been an attempt to keep the flights off the books, and out of the public eye.
The Washington Post says that of all the pols in the den of villainy known as DC, Menendez had the worst week of them all. He may have even worse weeks ahead.
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