Sen. Bob Menendez's Egypt trip planning got "weird," staffer recalls at bribery trial

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.

Sarah Arkin, a senior staffer with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, testified Monday 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 improperly pressuring a Department of Agriculture official to protect a lucrative halal certification monopoly the Egyptian government had awarded to one businessman.