Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
Before FBI agents raided the office a South Florida eye doctor accused of paying for young prostitutes for Sen. Bob Menendez, the Democratic senator from New Jersey helped used his influence to advocate for a $1 billion business for the doctor, the Miami Herald reports.
The Herald wrote that Menendez was urging the Obama administration in July to help Dr. Salomon Melgen, a Palm Beach County eye doctor, intervene in a contract dispute with the Dominican Republic.
According to the Herald, Melgen was hoping to enforce a contract his business won to X-ray Dominican Republic port cargo.
“You have another company that has American investors that … has a contract actually given to it by the — ratified by the Dominican Congress — to do X-ray of all of the cargo that goes through the ports,” Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, said at the July 31 hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. “And they don’t want to live by that contract either.”
Menedez’s office said the senator did nothing inappropriate.
