Anti-Iran senator set up legal defense fund

US Senator Bob Menendez, who has introduced a new anti-Iran bill in the Senate, has paid $250,000 to a Washington law firm for legal costs related to investigations into his ties to a major donor.

Disclosure forms filed on Friday also showed that the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee paid $11,250 to his close friend and major donor Dr. Salomon Melgen for another flight he took on Melgen’s private plane.

Menendez came under fire more than a year ago when an FBI inquiry focused on his repeated trips to the Dominican Republic with Melgen.

The scandal exploded in January 2013 when the FBI night raided the West Palm Beach office of Melgen in Florida.

Before Menendez’s re-election in November 2012, the conservative Daily Caller website also reported that Melgen had paid for Menendez to take trips to the Dominican Republican and even arranged prostitutes for the New Jersey Democrat.

Menendez was forced to repeatedly deny allegations that he had engaged with prostitutes in the Dominican Republic but his office paid Melgen $58,500 for several flights aboard his biggest political donor’s plane.

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW), a watchdog group in Washington, has put Sen. Menendez on the list of 13 most corrupt members of Congress due to his ties to Melgen.

The hawkish senator, who is the key architect of unilateral sanctions against Iran, is also under criminal investigation for ties to two Florida businessmen who are fugitives from Ecuador.

According to WNBC, the US Justice Department is investigating whether Menendez intervened with Homeland Security and the State Department to help brothers William and Roberto Isaias, who are wanted in Ecuador for embezzlement, escape extradition.