Menendez staff recalls senator acting ‘unusual’ and ‘weird’ about Egypt – Washington Examiner

A former aide of embattled Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) is speaking out about unusual behavior from her former boss that she witnessed, specifically concerning his relationship with Egypt.

Sarah Arkin, a staffer who worked for Menendez when he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, began to notice “unusual” and “weird” behavior from the senator surrounding Egypt as revealed in Monday’s testimony during Menendez’s trial. Menendez is currently on trial on multiple charges of bribery, fraud, extortion, obstruction of justice, and acting as a foreign agent to Egypt.

One of the earlier incidents that Arkin noticed was in 2018 when Menendez sent out two handwritten invitations to the Egyptian defense attache in Washington, Maj. Gen. Khaled Shawky, and Wael “Will” Hana, an Egyptian American businessman from New Jersey. She said the nature of the notes being handwritten was “unusual.”

She said Menendez’s new girlfriend at the time, now his wife, was also present at the meeting, which was strange. Nadine Menendez is now facing bribery charges for her role in the alleged scheme.

Arkin also testified that she began noticing conversations and meetings with Egyptians were taking place behind her back. She said the head of Egypt’s intelligence service, Abbas Kamel, wrote a letter to the senator titled “Dear Bob,” which she said is an uncommon introduction to a senator from a foreign official.

As Menendez began planning a trip to Egypt in the fall of 2021, the move piqued other staffers’ interest due to the unusual nature of such an event.

“All of this Egypt stuff is very weird,” Damian Murphy, another staffer, texted Arkin. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Trips like that are normally planned by the State Department, but Menendez requested that the trip be planned by an Egyptian intelligence officer, Mai Abdelmaguid, from Egypt’s Washington, D.C., Embassy.

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Text messages also revealed chains of messages between Nadine Menendez and Abdelmaguid discussing hair salons and Egyptian interests as it related to U.S. foreign policy.

“There was no one harsher on Egypt than I was,” Menendez told reporters after leaving the courthouse on Monday.