Indicted Sen. Bob Menendez taps Hunter Biden attorney Abbe Lowell to defend him
Sen. Bob Menendez is getting his legal team back together.
The New Jersey Democrat has picked defense attorney Abbe Lowell — who got Menendez off on corruption charges six years ago — to defend him against three federal bribery counts, according to the Justice Department.
Menendez, 69, tapped Lowell to represent him after the indictment was unsealed Friday, a spokesman for the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office confirmed Monday.
Lowell — who has been busy representing first son Hunter Biden — did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The high-profile Democrat-tied attorney handled Menendez’s last federal case, when the senator was accused of accepting improper gifts from a Florida eye surgeon. That case ended in a hung jury.
Lowell also won an acquittal last year of Matthew Grimes, an employee of Trump supporter Tom Barrack, on charges of unlawfully acting as a foreign agent. He also represented Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, during the FBI’s long-running Russia investigation.
Lowell is advocating for Hunter Biden against a three-count indictment on gun charges after the first son allegedly lied on a firearm purchase form in 2018 about his addiction to crack cocaine.
Menendez and his wife, Nadine, allegedly engaged in a “corrupt bribery agreement” with three wealthy New Jersey businessmen and the government of Egypt, according to the Manhattan indictment.
The New Jersey senator and his wife both face up to 45 years in prison if convicted on all charges.
The couple took gifts — including $486,461 in cash, more than $150,000 in gold bars and a 2019 Mercedes-Benz C-Class convertible — that were discovered in their Englewood Cliffs home during a June 2022 raid by federal agents, prosecutors say.
In exchange, the Garden State Democrat protected the interests of businessmen Wael Hana, Jose Uribe and Fred Daibes — and tried to intervene in a separate criminal case against one of them, the indictment alleges.
Menendez also purportedly used his “power and influence” as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to help the Egyptian regime by sharing sensitive US government information and secretly lobbying to release $300 million in aid to Cairo.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, former US Attorney General Eric Holder and a handful of House Democrats have called on him to leave office over the charges. Sens. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) have also asked Menendez to resign.
Menendez, who has served in the Senate since 2006, stepped down from his committee position on Friday at the behest of Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) — but is refusing to resign.
Hunter Biden, 53, is scheduled for an Oct. 3 initial appearance in federal court for arraignment on the firearm charges. Lowell said in a court filing last week he expects his client to plead not guilty.
