Planning Menendezs trip to Egypt got weird, staffer testifies at trial [Video]

A Senate staffer testified at a bribery trial that planning for Sen. Bob Menendez’s 2021 trip to Egypt and Qatar got “weird” after the Democrat directed that Egypt be included in the process, a Senate staffer testified Monday.

Sarah Arkin, a senior staffer with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, testified as a government witness at a trial over bribes of hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold and cash allegedly paid to the senator in return for benefits he supposedly delivered to three New Jersey businessmen from 2018 to 2022.

Among favors he allegedly carried out, one included helping Egyptian officials in exchange for one businessman gaining a monopoly on the certification that meat sent to Egypt met Islamic dietary requirements.

Then, prosecutors say, he aided a prominent New Jersey real estate developer by acting favorably to Qatar’s government so the businessman could score a lucrative deal with a Qatari investment fund.

Besides …