Sen. Bob Menendez’s new lawyer is a fellow member of the bar association—and we’re not talking about his legal credentials.
The embattled Garden State senator faces charges that, among other things, he and his wife accepted slabs of prospectors’ treasure to do the bidding of shady New Jersey businessmen and Egyptian intelligence agents. And a nugget pulled from federal court filings show he’s hired an attorney with a rich trove of personal experience: Robert “Gold Bars” Luskin.
Luskin, who supervised the Abscam probe immortalized in the movie American Hustle, vaulted to national prominence in 2005 as defense counsel for GOP strategist Karl Rove. A Democrat himself, he had previously repped Clinton aide Mark Middleton and gained some minor notoriety for being the first lawyer to ever wear an earring while arguing in front of the Supreme Court.