we're following a new update in the case of EMB battled senior senator Bob Menendez the State Attorney General is reviewing the conduct of former New Jersey attorney general gerer greywall and top Deputy Andrew Bruck after it was disclosed in the indictment that Menendez in 2019 reportedly tried to quote favorably resolve criminal manners with the officials here in New Jersey this inquiry comes after Menendez was indicted on both bribery charges and for acting as a foreign agent for Egypt in late September the AG is describing the investigation into grey wal and Brooke as an internal inquiry and neither officials have been interviewed by New Jersey prosecutors to talk about what this all means I'm joined by Bloomberg news reporters Austin Weinstein and David Voreacos who have been reporting on the inquiry David Austin thanks for joining me it's clear that neither grey Wald nor Brook were directly named in the Menendez indictment and or directly accused of any wrongdoing in the Menendez case it seems that this investigation by the AG's office is more of an internal inquiry coming off what the indictment Loosely alleged So based off your reporting what really happened here David can start with well uh we reported that in January of 2019 Senator Mendez called Gurbir Grewal out of the blue uh Grewal was then the New Jersey attorney general and he asked him um about about the what he said was the disperate treatment of Hispanics in the trucking industry by the office of insurance fraud prosecutor and then Grewal asked him is this about a particular case and um grair um Menendez said that it had to do with a case that defense attorney Michael kitley was representing someone on but he did not actually say the name of the person who had been indicted or just what he wanted done so we reported it as a very sort of subtle approach to greywall then fast forwarding uh several months later to September of 2019 bendeez arranged for a meeting with Gurbir Grewal who came with one of his top deputies Andrew Brook and in that meeting at uh menendez's office in New Yark um the senator again raised the disperate treatment of Hispanics in the trucking industry and Grewal cut him off and said that uh he asked him is this about what the other case was about and uh the senator said it was and Grewal said that he couldn't talk about it so what's happened now is the attorney the current attorney general is looking at the conduct uh in totality of the Attorney General's office off in 2019 in dealing with two cases that Federal prosecutors say um Menendez wanted favorably resolved um and in exchange for that um he bribed the senator uh a businessman Jose urbe bribed the senator with a Mercedes so my question and I I'll allow Austin to answer this is do you think this was the only meeting that they were all having so these are the only two meetings that were mentioned in federal prosecutors indictment of Senator mandez and the only two that uh they're indicated to have had but the there was one phone call that in January and one in-person meeting that in September at uh menendez's New York office because this does seem like an example a Menendez trying to test the waters with grey wall trying to see kind of how far he can go well I can't just speculate to his motivations here um but it is interesting that in both meetings uh we reported that there was no explicit ask that's right no do this for me uh which indicates uh something of a sensitivity to what may have been or may be considered uh in terms of the motivations here it's clear that um Beyond um the meeting between um Menendez and uh Grewal and the earlier phone call the state prosecutors had to take actions um with regard to the indictment that um Menendez wanted favorably resolved and with regard to a related investigation that Menendez wanted favorably resolved and so there are people in the office that had to have taken action and presumably the investigators in the Attorney General's office want to talk to those people to find out just what happened Boston David excellent reporting thank you for joining me thank you [Music]