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tv   The Faulkner Focus  FOX News  September 22, 2023 8:00am-9:00am PDT

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help with their legal fees i'll be the first to donate. >> he is running for mayor of memphis and tyree nichols died from a beating. five former memphis police officers charged in that murder. >> bill: two big cases. steve harrigan in atlanta. thank you, steve. >> dana: switching gears a bit before we go, guess what? do you remember when you first held percy up for everybody? he is two years old today. the fastest vizsla i've ever seen. a good boy. loves to play ball. quite an athlete and he has brought a lot to joy to all of us. >> bill: he is all grown up in two years. a handsome man right there, percy, happy birthday to you. >> dana: martha maccallum is in for harris faulkner next. "the faulkner focus."
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hi, martha. >> martha: happy birthday to percy. good to see you all today. we have a very big story that is about to break here on "the faulkner focus." powerful, long-time senate democrat and his wife are both about to be indicted. new jersey senator robert menendez, chairman of the powerful foreign relations committee, faces criminal corruption charges for the second time in just six years. welcome, i'm martha maccallum in for harris this morning. a 2017 corruption case against menendez ended in a mistrial. now he and his wife are accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for using his power and influence as a senator. these are very serious charges as we heard from chris christie just a short time ago. the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york is
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set to announce the unsealing of an indictment and that's going to come any moment. we will take you there live. but first senior congressional correspondent chad pergram on capitol hill with more on this breaking story. hi, chad. >> good morning. he is supposed to show up in court next week on wednesday, the 27th. it is the second indictment on corruption-related offenses for menendez in a decade. the senator and his wife are charged with taking bribes. earlier this year he said he did not do anything wrong. the feds accuse menendez of using his influence and power and breach his duty to benefit egypt. they accuse menendez of providing sensitive information which, quote, secretly aided the government of egypt. the feds also contend that menendez used his position to try to disrupt the criminal investigation. as to the bribes, prosecutors say it includes home mortgage payments, gold, cash, and a
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luxury car. menendez won acquittal in 2015 of charges of conspiracy, bribery and fraud. this is what he said back then. >> let me be very clear, very clear. i have always conducted myself appropriately and in accordance with the law. every action that i and my office have taken for the last 23 years that i have been privileged to be in the united states congress has been based on pursuing the best policies for the people of new jersey and of this entire country. >> menendez first came to the senate in 2006 after serving in the house. menendez stepped away from his post as the top democrat on the foreign relations committee amid the first indictment. he chairs that panel now and must relinquish that gavel. he is up for re-election next year. >> martha: big story this morning. chad pergram reporting from
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capitol hill. let's bring in phil hollway former district attorney and police officer. we're waiting. we'll hear this breaking news from the prosecutor's office in just moments in new york city from the southern district of new york at the u.s. attorneys take on this. what is your take based on what you know so far. there is a lot we are still about to learn. >> great to be with you. this indictment is very detailed. it goes so far as to allege that they found fingerprints and dna on cash envelopes that they can link back to the co-defendants. gold bars, mortgage payments. it is very, very detailed all of the things that they say that menendez took illegally in exchange for using his official position as a very powerful senator to influence other people and even to advance the interests of the nation of
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egypt. so this is a very compelling indictment. if you just take it on its face, if they can prove the things that they allege, menendez is in deep trouble. it is worth pointing out that the feds just don't sneak up on people and one day there is an indictment. menendez and others had to have known for some time this was going on. the search warrants they referenced were from june of 2022. in the meantime he is conducting business as a senator just like nothing at all is happening. it strikes me that the moral thing and right thing to do might be to go ahead and step down once you know you are under investigation for selling your office. that's what this is about. he is accused of selling the power and prestige of his office illegally for the corrupt benefit of others. i think once you know that you are being investigated and that there might be legs to the investigation, he should have stepped down once he knew this
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was happening. >> martha: we are yet to hear his side of this story and his defense in this. we saw a piece of the last time around because this is the second time in six years that he has been brought up on similar charges. give us a sense, if you can, of what fell apart that time, how different that time was from this time to the best of your knowledge, phil. >> as i recall, that seemed to have been a situation where there might have been a hung jury, might have been some people who said this guy is a powerful senator and they just couldn't quite bring themselves to convict. they got very close but, of course, there was a mistrial and there was no efforts to i guess retry the case. this time i think the prosecutors in drafting this indictment, they spell it all out. it is a very powerfully worded indictment. they go so far as to detail all
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of the evidence. we are talking about wads and wads of cash, half a milosevic -- they're asking for the for tour of the family home for that reason. they appear to have done a very thorough investigation. if the indictment is an accurate reflection of that investigation, he is in very, very real trouble and stands to spend quite a bit of time in pr prison >> martha: it's a stunning indictment. stay with us as we wait to bring everyone in at home. we're about to bring in marc thiessen. we heard them getting ready in the room. they are about to come out and lay out this very forceful indictment in the words of phil holloway and governor chris christie who looked at it as
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well this morning also from new jersey against senator menendez, who i want to remind people, is the chairman of the foreign relations committee. he is a long-time senator. former new jersey congressman as well and been in the halls of power for decades. and accumulated a fair amount of wealth during that time based on this indictment. i want to bring in fox news contributor "washington post" columnist and former speech writer marc thiessen. what is your take so far on this? >> another politician indicted. just what america needs, right? good lord, what is wrong with these people? menendez was charged with bribery before. he got away because there was a mistrial and so you would think he would take that -- he would be chastened by that experience and not give prosecutors even a pretext to go after him.
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talking about gold bars? seriously? gold bars? is this the 18th century? it's remarkable that he would do this. it has got real foreign policy implications. menendez as you mentioned, the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee. an important voice on issues like venezuela, iran, cuba and the region where he has been critical of the biden administration and obama administration. very critical. key player when it comes to teaming with republicans to push back on the iranian regime. it has foreign policy implications. >> martha: if you're in a position of power and accumulating wealth you better have a clear line between that money and either your spouse's business. it has to be crystal clear where that wealth has come from. there is a lot of very wealthy
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politicians in washington. and in many cases it raises a lot of question marks about how they got that money. of course one thinks of the million dollars that hunter biden made as well. now, they are in the process of seeing if they can two plus two equals four in that situation. that's a separate situation. but when you take money especially from a foreign government, if this bears out, this indictment, you better be crystal clear on the line of that money exactly where it came from, where it is legitimate and as soon as they start digging into what you are doing, which as phil holloway points out they are doing for some time in this case with menendez you perhaps want to come forward and start to explain or step aside. >> 100%. you are absolutely right there are a lot of wealthy people in the united states senate. most of them got wealthy before they got to the united states senate and were able to use that wealth to fuel their campaigns
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to get political office. the normal way things worse. you make a lot of money and go out and people say buy a senate piece. not a lot of people that can go to the senate make $2 hundred thousand a year or so and get a mansion, right? people like joe biden who was in politics for, you know, 40 years but seems to have multiple homes and lots of money. where did that all come from? this is an -- seems to be an example of somebody who got wealthy after taking office. when you do that you are right, you better be crystal clear how you got that money and why it's legitimate. >> martha: phil holloway is here as well. let's talk about the investigation process here. the job for this u.s. attorney and his team is to show that clear connection, where did the money come from, how can they prove the money was linked to decision making, which is what
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makes it a bribe, which is what they are about to lay out their case for here, phil. >> they've got, in addition to dna that links this cash money to the people that were paying him these bribes, they have text messages and emails and circumstantial evidence. they have witness statements. i guarantee you they have interviewed lots of people who have gone on record and given recorded statements. they will be able to connect all of this, you know, crazy gold bars and cash and cars and mortgage payments and all these things, they will draw a line using circumstantial and direct evidence directly to actions that he took in his official capacity as a senator. even if it's leaning on somebody, making a phone call. all of those types of things
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that would show that he is using his official position in an illegal way for corrupt purposes. they also have charged the people that were supposedly paying the bribes. so would not surprise me if they don't try to cut a deal with them to get them to flip on menendez. they may have already secured something like that, we just don't know exactly what the feds are doing. this does seem to be an indictment that was very well put together. very detailed. like i said, if they can prove the allegations that they have made, it is going to be a slam dunk. >> martha: marc, senator bob menendez indicted on corruption charges again. he has been down this road before. there was a mistrial in that case. i'm pulling together my memory of the situation around that case. i believe it had to do with cuba and if you can fill in any of
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the dots here. it had to do with airplane trips and gifts as well in that situation. and that one ended in a mistrial, marc. >> what he will say this is a politicized prosecution. they tried to get me once already and they failed and now they are coming after me again and that this is because i have been a thorn in the side of first the obama and then the biden administration on their foreign policy. he opposed the iran nuclear deal. he was critical of the $6 billion ransom that bide app just paid. opposed biden's lifting of sanctions on venezuela to increase its oil production. he opposed their efforts to lift sanctions on cuba. so he has been a critic and somebody who has reached across the aisle to work with republicans to thwart democratic presidents when they thought they were doing the wrong thing. he will say they are going after me because i'm a thorn in their side. unfortunately because our justice system has been so politicized in recent years a lot of people will believe that
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and look at that and say look, we believe that the biden justice department goes after its republican political opponents. why wouldn't they go after one of their democratic political opponents? we have so decimated trust in our justice system. unless this is such an open and shut case as phil makes out and we'll see what the evidence is here and -- unless it is clear to everyone if there is any ambiguity on these charges, a lot of people will believe this is just another weaponization of the justice system. >> martha: phil, going back to 2015. he was indicted in new jersey for allegedly offering public favors to a florida eye doctor. in turn for that, according to that case, he got lavish gifts, he got a private jet flights, political donations. as you see at the bottom of your screen, this time around they found gold bars, $480,000 in his
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home. his defense team's job will be explaining where all that money came from. you have income tax returns, you have your sources of income that lay out what you pay taxes on, and what you legitimately earned. explain to us when you look at these images. you are a former police officer as well, what do you think has gone into this investigation? >> i think maybe they learned something, martha, from any mistakes they made the first time around. ordinarily people don't just have hundreds of thousands of dollars stuffed in cash envelopes strewn around various places inside their home and don't ordinarily get gold bars. there is an allegation that his wife was given a fake job, basically, for doing nothing. they have spared -- they have covered all their bases here. they have the physical evidence. back to the previous case, as i
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recall, you know, this was tried in new jersey. he won statewide election in new jersey. so prosecutors have to take that into account. if he is a statewide elected official your jury will come from people who are potentially supporters of menendez. a lot of times they may say look, i don't know what he might have been doing with respect to all this stuff, but i like him and doing a good job of my senator and i want to keep him. that tends to creep into a jury room. they built the case this time that i think is strikingly more powerful. just the visual images we're seeing on the screen now of gold bars and cash just makes the point that this is not how a typical public government servant would live their life. this would not be the kind of
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lifestyle they would have unless they were using their official position in some nefarious or illegal way. >> martha: this news conference is happening in new york. any chance that this case would be carried out in new york? the southern district of new york is bringing the charges. could there be a possibility of that? >> that's where they will pull the jurors will be from the southern district of new york where the indictment is pending. he won't have the same benefit of his hometown jurors so to speak this time around. he is facing an uphill battle. he set up a legal defense fund i just found out a few months ago, earlier this year. so he has been preparing for this. he has known this is coming. it's kind of rich to go and ask people to donate money when you've got hundreds of thousands of dollars allegedly laying around and you are getting all these other perks.
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he set up an online defense fund for people to give him more money for his defense. he knows he has a big hill to climb if he will survive this indictment as a free man. >> martha: let's get the details from the southern district of new york. >> four others and we're not going to take any questions today. we'll start in about a minute. okay? >> martha: they will start in just a minute. marc,let me go back to you. this kind of crime, if it's proven, is as old as the hills. you know, people who get into political office and you don't make a lot of money in this job but they find other ways to do it by promising people favors if indeed that's what happened here. >> i just am looking at the pictures of the gold bars. i keep my gold bars in a safe deposit box, not under my bed. seriously, gold?
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it's a chararicaricature. it used to be before the internet and everything you could take a gold bar from somebody and no one would ever happened it happened. in this day and age there are so many ways to track transactions and ways to find this stuff out. i don't understand why people do this. bob menendez, he can go out, he is the chairman of the foreign relations committee. one of the most powerful members of conference. he could leave office and make millions of dollars legitimately every year. why would you do it while you are in office? >> attorney here in the southern district of new york. i'm announcing my office obtained a three-count indictment charging senator robert menendez, his wife nadine, and three new jersey businessmen hana, daibes and
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uribe for bribery offenses. the investigation has been run out of the southern district of new york. the indictment alleges that between 2018 and 2022, senator menendez, the senior u.s. senator from new jersey, and the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee, and which is wife, nadine, engaged in a corrupt relationship with hana, uribe, and daibes. the indictment alleges through that relationship, the senator and his wife accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes in exchange for senator menendez using his power and influence to protect and to enrich those businessmen and to benefit the government of egypt. the indictment alleges that hana, uribe and daibes provided bribes in the form of cash, gold, home mortgage payments, a low show or no show job for
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nadine menendez, mercedes benz and other things of value to the senator and his wife. now constituents service is part of any legislators job. senator menendez is no different. as we explained in the indictment, there are things senator menendez says he can do for his constituents and things that he says he cannot do for his constituents. he put it all on his senate website. so for instance, it says he cannot compel an agency to act in someone's favor. it says he cannot influence matters involving a private business. it says he cannot get involved in criminal matters or cases period. but we allege behind the scenes he was doing those things for certain people. the people who were bribing him and his wife. let me say a little bit more about the conduct alleged in the indictment. the indictment alleges that senator menendez took several actions as part of this corrupt
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relationship. first, it alleges senator menendez used his power and influence including his leadership role on the senate foreign relations committee, to benefit the government of egypt in various ways. senator menendez allegedly provided sensitive, non-public, u.s. government information to egyptian officials and otherwise took steps to secretly aid the government of egypt. we also allege senator menendez improperly pressured a senior official at the u.s. department of agriculture to protect a lucrative monopoly that the government of egypt had awarded to hana. hana then used it to fund certain bribe payments. second, the indictment alleges that senator menendez used his power and influence to try to disrupt a criminal investigation and prosecution undertaken by the new jersey attorney general's office related to an
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associate and relative of uribe. third, the indictment alleges that senator menendez used his power and influence to try to disrupt a federal prosecution of daibes in the district of new jersey in two ways. first, by seeking to install a united states attorney who he thought could be influenced with respect to daibes and second, by trying to influence that office to act favorably in daibes's case. as we allege in the indictment the senator agreed to do these things and use his power in this way because hana was paying bribes, and uribe and daibes were paying bribes. fortunately the public official the senator sought to influence did not bend to the pressure. that's a good thing. as part of this investigation, special agents with the f.b.i. executed search warrants on the residence and safe deposit box of senator menendez and nadine menendez in new jersey.
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when they got there, they discovered approximately $5 hundred thousand of cash stuffed into envelopes in closets. some of the cash was stuffed into senator's jacket pockets. some of the cash, some of the envelopes of cash contained daibes fingerprints and daibes dna. that's not all. agents also discovered a lot of gold. gold that was provided by daibes and hana. the f.b.i., of course, found the mercedes benz that uribe provided them. the items that f.b.i. uncovered are discussed in the indictment which i encourage all of to read carefully. let's take a look at some of the items. as you can see here, this is the mercedes benz that we allege that uribe provided as part of the scheme. you see here are three kilograms of gold.
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these three kilograms together are worth approximately $150,000. of course, here you can see just a fraction of the cash that was uncovered as part of the scheme. i want to make a couple of things very clear. first, my office remains firmly committed to rooting out public corruption without fear or favor and without any regard to partisan politics. that's in our dna. always has been and always will be. second, this investigation is very much ongoing. we're not done. i want to encourage anyone with information to come forward and to come forward quickly and they can do that by reaching out to the f.b.i.'s tip line at 1-800-call f.b.i. a case of this magnitude requires tremendous partnership and i want to thank our partners at the f.b.i. who have been with us since day one and absolutely
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incredible every step along the way. i also want to thank our partners at the i.r.s. for their assistance in this investigation. i want to thank our colleagues from around the department of justice who are far too many to name here and to thank specifically. they have also been invaluable. of course, i want to thank the career prosecutors from my office who are handling in investigation. they have done tremendous work. and their supervisors. the chiefs of our office's public corruption unit. i now want to invite up to the podium f.b.i. assistant director in charge, james smith. jim. >> good morning. i won't go any further into the case as u.s. attorney williams explained but what i want to
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talk about is the f.b.i.'s p investigative public corruption is one of our top priorities and we'll continue to investigate public corruption cases. i want to thank the agents, the team over here from the f.b.i., the i.r.s. for their hard work into this investigation. they've spent many hours, days and weeks and months working this investigation. i would also like to thank all the prosecutors from the southern district of new york. like to thank damien williams for his support and the i.r.s. for all their investigators who worked tirelessly along with the team to investigate this case and finally like to thank d.o.j.'s public integrity section. thank you very much for all your support in this. >> thank you, everyone.
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>> martha: quite something, a stunning indictment against senator robert menendez of new jersey, long-time senator who has served the state of new jersey and these accusations are very, very serious as we had learned earlier. they deal specifically in the first -- there are three counts in this indictment. let me give you a part of the overview here. it says robert menendez, the defendant, senior u.s. senator, i would point out separately and the chairman of the senate foreign relations commission. huge influential position he has served in for several years. so it says that the defendant engaged in corrupt relationships with three new jersey associates and businessmen, hana, uribe and
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daibes, in which menendez and his wife, nadine, agreed to and did accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for using menendez' power and influence to properect and en rich these individuals and benefit egypt. he went on to say, damien williams, that there was in this indictment, that menendez provided sensitive u.s. government information to these sources for the benefit of egypt. jonathan turley is watching all of this with us today. it is a stunning indictment. jonathan turley, george washington law attorney and fox news contributor. you know him well. jonathan, your thoughts as you hear what was just laid out and we all get a look at this actual indictment. >> it's breathtaking. this is a city that has a fair amount of corruption in it.
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it is not the inclination of corruption that makes senator menendez stand out. it is his appetite according to the u.s. attorney's office. after just six years ago dodging a bullet with a hung jury on what many thought was a strong corruption case, the government is alleging that menendez went right back and continued the same pattern. what's really striking here is the payment of things like gold and cash. this is a city that has a little more finesse when it comes to influence peddling and access. this is old school bribery. what's really striking about the indictment is the level of evidence that they've gathered. they are saying that they have fingerprints of menendez, dna evidence connected to some of
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these gifts. that's going to be really overwhelming in a trial. >> martha: there is a long history of corruption in new jersey politics. perhaps things are done differently there. nothing has been proven in this particular case. i'm from new jersey and i can say that. it has gone on for a long time. and this is one side of the story that has been laid out by the southern district of new york. but it is stunning. jonathan, the thing that really leaps out, i think, is the allegation of providing sensitive u.s. government information to the government of egypt. your thoughts on that. >> well, that's what makes this particularly serious. he was the chairman of the foreign affairs committee, and they reupped him as chairman even with all his past
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corruption allegations, the majority still made him chairman again. that gave him a position of considerable power, particularly with regard to foreign interests. and many of these countries have long corruption histories themselves. what's really telling about this indictment, you are right to say it is just an accusation. it is an indictment that has to be proven. but what the government describes as finding cash stuffed in clothes and hidden in spaces, finding gold bars, having a luxury car that they claim was not paid for by the menendezs. all of that presents a real nightmare for defense counsel. ultimately, i don't believe the court will let in senator menendez's past history. it is very likely the jury won't know about that. but just on the face of this indictment, he has a major problem here.
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the last time when the jury hung, many were surprised when the department of justice just dropped all the charges. that's not going to happen here. this is an even stronger case and the evidence is quite overwhelming on first look. >> martha: it talks about an effort to put pressure on u.s. agriculture secretary in a case that related to these individuals. also to disrupt a criminal investigation going on in the attorney general's new jersey office who was a relative of uribe. that's one of the counts. then another criminal investigation that was going after daibes. it is interesting that according to this indictment, he was willing to try to use his influence to let these guys off the hook. if that's the case, what does your experience tell you they had on him where he would be willing to step in and interfere
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in these different cases to try to get this individual and the other individual's relative off the hook with the new jersey attorney general? >> if these allegations are true and these gold bars and cars and other luxury items were indeed supplied by these same individuals, that is precisely what they have on him. this is a -- as i noted, an old-fashioned form of corruption. the actual handing over of pieces of gold and cash. that gives them a great deal. once you engage in a corrupt conspiracy, you are in for penny or a pound because not only do they have need of you, you suddenly have need of them because they have the goods on you. they have delivered these types of things. so if this pans out, if these facts are borne out in trial, he could be looking at very significant time in jail.
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the intervention in the criminal case is particularly stunning because you are talking about an individual who has been accused of bribery and corruption for decades. he was tripping wires all over the field. he was doing things connected to his position as chairman of the committee, he was getting involved, according to the department of justice and pending criminal prosecutions, i think you are absolutely right here. that even for someone who may be inclined to a certain degree of corruption and even someone that had an appetite for it, this was incredibly reckless. menendez knew that he was sort of a marked man after that first trial, yet something prompted him to take all of these risks. >> martha: it is stunning and also risk his wife going to jail
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and, you know, her role in all of this is under investigation as well. hang with us if you can for a moment. i want to give marc thiessen's and phil holloway's thoughts. >> the mistrial was in november 2017. the u.s. attorney there just said they're investigating c corrupt acts from 2018 to 2022. he beat the charges last time and immediately started corruptly within the next few months. it is stunning. they allege all these official acts. put aside the official acts. i'm interested in how a guy in new jersey is connected to the egyptian government and love it play out in the allegations and how giving information to the egyptians is connected to this guy. but put aside the official acts,
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a senator can't accept a concert ticket to go to a show. a senator -- sitting senator can't accept a free meal unless it's a widely attended event. you can't accept a mercedes or gold bars or literally -- this is stunning. the envelopes full of money with the dna of the guy who gave it to you in your closet. so even if there were no corrupt acts attached to this, the bribery, just the acceptance of those gifts in and of itself is criminal if it's all true. it is just amazing to me that this unfolded the way it has. >> martha: the temptations are there always for politicians. the need to avoid them is what american voters and citizens absolutely expect, right? these individuals are surrounded by people who make a lot of mope. they go to them to fundraise all the time.
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and the temptation is there and if senator menendez succumbed to it, he will have a high price to pay. let me bring in phil holloway. you have had a chance to listen to the presentation by the u.s. attorney damian williams in the southern district of new york. what is your take on it? >> i also believe like jonathan said it is a breathtaking indictment. i have had time to look at more of it since we last spoke. one of the things that jumps out to me, martha, is with respect to nadine menendez and this $60,000 mercedes. what they are saying is that nadine menendez was sending text messages back and forth with defendant uribe and with her husband about this thing and they have evidence that he gave cash to her to help make that down payment.
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she allegedly lied to get a consumer loan for the rest of it and that uribe went and actually made the payments on that to help disguise the way that they got this. so they clearly went out of their way to try to hide what they did but they did a terrible job of hiding it. to jonathan's point earlier about the prior case that ended in a mistrial, i do think it might be unlikely that prosecutors can tell a jury about the allegations in that case but they might try. there is a mechanism under the law under 4b, evidence of prior crimes, if they are so similar that they basically bear what we call the criminal signature, so to speak of how a defendant operates. it is possible they may try to get into that. that would be a question for the trial court, of course. >> martha: thank you very much.
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always great to have you with us. obviously there will be a lot more on this story to come, and our programming to follow throughout the day. very big story, huge scandal surrounding senator menendez of new jersey. and a three-count indictment for bribery, shareing information with the egyptian government and trying to get the attorney general in new jersey to push past criminal investigations that were going into two people that he reportedly was accepting these bribes from according to this indictment. stunning. absolutely stunning for a long-time u.s. senator in a very high-level position as chair of the senate foreign relations committee. more on that to come. in the meantime border en encounters fiscal year blew past last year. thousands of immigrants every day pouring into our country.
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many say it is because president biden has sent the message that the border is open. we have been showing you these stunning images all week long. eagle pass, texas now under a state of emergency as single day migrant numbers hover around 10,000 people. it used to be you caught a few people coming across the border and caught it on video. look, someone just crossed the border. this is a march that has continued day after day. our own peter doocy butting heads with the white house yesterday when he asked what is going on at the southern border? watch. >> we have taken steps without the help of republicans in congress to do everything that we can to deal with this issue. they are doing the opposite of what the president is trying to do. actually move forward in a way that is humane, safe and has an orderly enforcement pathway process here. >> thanks, karine jean-pierre. what do you call it here at the
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white house when 10,000 people illegally cross the border in a single day? >> what do you call it, peter, when gop puts forth a -- wait, no, no, no, okay, we'll move on. no, no, we're moving on. >> you said you stopped the flow at the border, 10,000 migrants. >> peter, i tried to answer the question. you stopped me. >> martha: very legitimate question from peter doocy. what do you call this? is it a crisis? requires an emergency order from the president? look at these people coming through razor wire. this is not a system of migrating into this country. the texas national guard reinstalled the razor wire along the rio grande river because they are absolutely at the end of the rope. how do you make a safe border when you don't have one? when one doesn't exist? when nobody comes through the path that is supposed to be
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there for them to process, which is on the bridge just over everyone's head. texas governor abbott declared this surge an invasion and this is what he is doing to try to prevent it. the president last night took aim at republicans over this. watch. >> president biden: maga republicans in congress and my predecessor spent four years gutting the immigration system under my predecessor. they continue to under mine our border skurtd today. we've already delivered over $1 billion to states and cities receiving immigrants. migrants. i requested more funding but instead of stepping up with solutions, republicans are threatening to shut down the government. >> martha: griff jenkins in eagle pass where the wave shows no signs of slowing down. hi, griff. >> you are right. it is showing no signs of slowing down. i've covered the border for more than a decade and agents tell me they've never seen anything like
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this in their adult lives. many of them dedicating their professional careers to trying to secure the border and all of the miles of razor wire not deterring migrants. the river, which has claimed three lives in just 72 hours. an air boat is doing a body recovery about a mile up the river from me behind me right now. they are coming in droves. let me take you to the fox drone right now. you are looking at a group of 50 to 60 that just crossed. majority of them from venezuela coming because they know that they are going to be released and protected from deportation under the tps, even though the administration says it doesn't apply to recent arrivals. that's not the message they're hearing. meanwhile, over in el paso, another ground 0 for migrant numbers, we confirmed there are three cases of tuberculosis in recent migrant arrivals. it is hard to really overstate how difficult it is to mitigate
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cases of tuberculosis among our migrant populations and try to do contact tracing and isolation. it has become a crisis whether the administration wants to call it that. that's why eagle pass's mayor is now pointing the finger, a democrat, by the way, pointing the finger at president biden's administration saying he feels abandoned. >> i don't know what the president is think. it is obvious there is no consequence to thousands of people coming into the united states of america. at the very least, somebody out there in the white house needs to give us a plan of action. i haven't had that. >> let me show you quickly record breaking numbers, cbp confirming today that there have been fiscal year-to-date 2,000,388 40u re thousand 350
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plus. the other number was the total last year. that set a record. we're beyond that with eight more years. fiscal years run october to october. that's the situation here. don't take it from what i'm saying. take it from the images we're showing you and the numbers we're giving you and decide whether or not we have a crisis here. >> martha: people are changing their tune as they look at the images that fox has been covering for a long time at the border. great to see you today. republican congressman lance gooden of texas joins us now. thank you very much for being with us. you heard what the president had to say about the blame here and the fact that he would like to see more money going to this problem but republicans are holding it up. >> well, you actually misquoted him. he would like more money to process migrants. he doesn't want money to solve
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the problem. we want to send money in the form of security at the border. he wants money in the form of give us more money to process migrants and encourage the rest of the world our border is open and if you get here we'll show you whatever city i want to go to. this policy by this administration is the reason the border is open. the reason we see these mass camps of migrants coming across, the reason new york is full of migrants and they are buckling. they have over 100,000 migrants in new york. they are too busy worrying about greg abbott. he has only sent 13,000 my granulitis. the other 97,000 are because of the sanctuary city policies which our whole country thinks joe biden has sent the message to the world we're a sanctuary nation and this problem is not going away as long as republicans just sit back and let them do it. which is why you see the stalemate in congress and why it will come to a boiling point in the next ten days and the
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government will shut down. republicans like myself refuse to negotiate with a president that refuses to secure the border. the border is wide open. the government is already shut down on the border. my constituents and constituents like them across this nation are frustrated. they are prepared for a government shutdown if it means at the end of the day we get real security at our border. >> martha: give us the sense of the numbers and how it will work? how will it happen? i talked to byron donalds we won't sign a c.r. that doesn't have border security and right to point out when the white house talks about border security they talk about more money for processing people. >> that's right. they have no intention of securing the border unless they're forced to. the only lever and pull we have in congress now is the slim majority in the house and we have to use that to get something out of this deal whenever it comes to fruition. we are going to start passing appropriations bills this week. i suspect the senate will send over a continuing resolution. they want to just continue the
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spending and the appropriations that were put in place last christmas. if you recall, last christmas kevin mccarthy said let's not pass this bill. the senate leadership along with republicans who helped them get it across the line. they funded the government through september. which ends next week. now we're in the position of telling the senate, of telling the white house we're willing to come to the table only if you are willing to secure the border and that's something that i think we will get at the end of the day. it will be different along the way. >> signing crs and kicking it down the road and then you are back where you started. >> we can't keep doing that. >> martha: how many im granulitis has mayokas's agency lost track of, about 180,000 that have entered this country, 84,000 are children. what kind of response did you
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get from the head of the department of homeland security about where these people are? >> the same response that i got in a committee hearing judiciary when he came before us a few weeks ago. he denies it and says the border is secure. democrats on the hill walking out of the chamber doing interviews lying to the american people saying there is an orderly process. there is no orderly process. we have immigrants coming across the border giving fake addresses and addresses to charities to phony addresses that they have no intention of ever showing up at. that's why we have lost place of all the immigrants that have come across. the secretary turned up his nose of congress. no oversight that we provided and he should be impeached. unfortunate we have not gone down that road yet. i believe secretary mayokas is the worst actor of all the cabinet members and doing the bidding of the far left. >> martha: level with the american people that the
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situation they see before their eyes. they know the cartels are running our southern border, right? they control -- the biggest business they've ever had. bigger than the drug business is their human trafficking business right now. isn't that right, sir? >> it is right. democrats know it is a problem. some of the reasonable ones if there is such a thing have come to me and other republicans saying you guys have to do something on the border. our leadership won't. we have the governor of new york saying they can't any more migrants. democrats are starting to realize what a political problem this is. the mayor of dallas switched party. he have is a republican as of today. he doesn't want anything to do with this country running our country into the ground. americans need to wake up and be what is happening at the border. the single biggest issue in the next elected and why donald trump will get reelected. >> martha: thank you very much. completely different note.
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this one is a battle that is being watched by millions on social media. bar stool sports founder dave portnoy fighting back against a "washington post" reporter that planned to run a heat piece on him ahead of his new york city pizza festival. who wants to disrupt that? critics accuse the reporter of trying to shame his advertisers and sponsors for this event if you can believe it. portnoy says it's about media bias, watch. >> the only thing i come up with is in this era ever since trump came on the scene, i feel like people's brains got broken. the "washington post" is wildly left leaning organization like "the new york times." i know whether i'll be talked about positively or negatively just by the name of the organization that i'm about to read. >> martha: bryan llenas has the story and it has gotten epic. >> dave portnoy says the
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"washington post" is set to publish the hit piece against him and his inaugural one bite pizza festival sometime today. his effort to support pizza restaurants nationwide. his pizza reviews receive millions of views and attract business and raised millions of dollars for them and other small businesses to help keep them open during covid. when the "washington post" reporter reached out to the pizza festival sponsors in an email questioning how they could support such an event given criticisms of portnoy's history of misogynistic comments and other problem behavior portnoy said this about the media last night. >> they are all fighting to shut these people down two years ago. they didn't want them open. i'm the one who was fighting to keep them open, raise money, keep small business and they turn around to these very people we were trying to help save and say you shouldn't do business with him.
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>> portnoy called the "washington post" reporter after he heard about the emails. that recorded call has about 40 million views on x. the moments that was revealing was when the reporter admits her email bashing portnoy to sponsors was just a tactic. >> it is a reporting tactic. when you want someone to respond there might be something negative and get them to engage. that's all i was trying to do. >> that's the only time i've ever talked to who has written a hit piece about me. it is crazy. that's the state of journalism. they're activists, no interest in the truth. >> back to you. >> martha: thank you very much. i'll see you at 3:00 on the story. "outnumbered" comes up right after this break.
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