Embattled Sen. Robert Menendez has more in common with his new attorney than may meet the eye: their apparent affinity for gold bars.
The New Jersey Democrat, who’s pleaded not guilty to acting as a foreign agent and accepting lavish gifts such as gold bars as bribes, has hired a new defense attorney known as Robert “Gold Bars” Luskin.
Unsealed court filings show Mr. Menendez brought Mr. Luskin onto his legal team in recent days after parting ways with the firm of high-profile lawyer Abbe Lowell, who represented the likes of Hunter Biden, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.
Mr. Menendez’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the gold ingot irony.
Mr. Luskin, a partner in the Investigations and White Collar Defense division of the Washington-based firm Paul Hastings, earned his Gold Bars moniker decades ago for receiving more than $500,000 in the treasure for his legal work appealing the 1993 conviction of Stephen Saccoccia, a Rhode Island precious metal dealer.
Mr. Saccoccia was convicted of using his business in the 1980s to launder hundreds of millions of dollars of Colombian drug cartel money. The appeal was unsuccessful.
Then-Rhode Island U.S. Attorney Sheldon Whitehouse, now a U.S. Democratic senator who is among the few not to call on Mr. Menendez to resign, accused Mr. Luskin of engaging in “willful blindness” by accepting the payment, according to The Daily Beast, which first reported on Mr. Luskin‘s new job.
Mr. Luskin settled with the federal government in 1998 and paid a $245,000 fine but made no admission of guilt.
Mr. Menendez is accused by New York prosecutors of receiving roughly $150,000 in gold bars, in addition to cash payments and a Mercedes, from New Jersey businessmen in exchange for sensitive information to benefit them and the government of Egypt.
Mr. Menendez heads to trial in May and has refused to resign.
The judge still needs to sign off on Mr. Luskin joining the defense team.
