Frequent news on corrupt American politicians who have been ardent advocates of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) once more came to Bob Menendez, after John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani’s disgraces.
Nadine Menendez, the wife of the convicted former US senator Bob Menendez, was sentenced to 4.5 years in prison for selling the powerful New Jersey politician’s influence in exchange for bribes of cash, gold bars and a luxury car, the Guardian reported.
Bob Menendez, 71, is serving an 11-year sentence after his conviction last year on charges of taking bribes, extortion, and acting as an agent of the Egyptian government.
In January 2025, Menendez was found guilty on 16 counts, including bribery, corruption, and conspiracy to act as a foreign agent, after receiving more than $500,000 in cash, $100,000 in gold bars, and a Mercedes-Benz.
In June, Menendez arrived at a federal prison to begin serving an 11-year sentence for accepting bribes of gold and cash and acting as an agent of Egypt.
Menendez was also a top recipient of campaign contributions from donors with ties to the MEK. He met Maryam Rajavi and continued to address MEK rallies to promote it as a government-in-exile. He did not hesitate to state that he was a friend to the formerly designated terrorist group with cultlike attitudes called under the names of National Council of Resistance.
This is while the 2004 FBI report details the MEK’s engagement in “a complex international money laundering operation that uses accounts in Turkey, Germany, France, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates.” This report also revealed “a complex fraud scheme involving children and social benefits” which is related to the group’s exploitation of the social assistance of children of Mujahed parents who had smuggled from Iraq to Europe and North America in the early 1990s.
Following Menedez’s trial, in March 2024, the Intercept reported that an analysis of the donor rolls shows that about 15 percent of the people who gave money to Menendez — including Moeinimanesh and Afshari — are linked to an Iranian exile group called the MEK.
According to the Intercept, Moeinimanesh, the chair of OIAC –Organization of Iranian American Communities, a front group for the MEK– who contributed $2,500, was one of a dozen Iranian Americans with links to the MEK or its affiliates that donated Menendez.
Afshari gave $1,000. “Giving money to people I think are nice is not illegal,” Afshari told The Intercept, of his contributions to Menendez’s legal fund. In total, MEK-affiliated individuals made up approximately 5 percent of the total funds raised, over $20,000, the Intercept assessed.
However, Menedez is not the only corrupt supporter of the Cult of Rajavi. In August, the FBI raided the home of John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s former national security advisor. The search was part of an investigation into whether Bolton illegally shared or possessed classified information. And, in December 2023, a federal jury in Washington, D.C., ordered that the former New York City mayor, Rudy Giuliani, pay $148 million to two Georgia election workers whom, as determined by the judge in the case, Giuliani had defamed by claiming they had helped steal the election from Donald Trump. Bolton and Giuliani are among the most out-spoken supporters of Maryam Rajavi. They have so far received six-digit sums of money from the MEK multi-million-dollar lobbying campaign.
It seems that those who admit to advocate the MEK, are either naïve or corrupt. The list of MEK’s ardent supporters who are under investigation, trial or convicted as criminal is getting longer. This indicates that corrupt politicians are proper targets for MEK agents to buy their support in exchange for hefty sums.
By Mazda Parsi