A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted voting-machine company Smartmatic's president and founder Roger Piñate on bribery and money-laundering charges in order to get election contracts in the Philippines.

Smartmatic's voting machines have been used in Venezuelan and Philippine presidential elections, and was founded in 2000, but didn't take off until the Venezuelan election in 2004, when Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez chose the company to replace the country's previous machines, according to the Miami Herald.

Sen. Bob Menendez put his “power up for sale” and in return raked in high-dollar bribes from New Jersey businessmen in the form of cash, gold and a vehicle, the prosecution argued Monday during the first day of closing arguments in the federal corruption case against the New Jersey Democrat.

Federal prosecutor Paul Monteleoni began walking jurors through the specifics of the multifaceted federal indictment Monday, saying that testimony from government witnesses, heard across seven weeks, showed “a clear pattern of corruption.”

The man and the woman arrived at the Washington steakhouse one evening in May 2019 and took a table on the patio, near where five diners already were seated and seemed to be enjoying themselves. Jackets were off, laughter was heard and wine was being poured. A cigarette dangled from one man’s hand.

But there was something else that stood out: Among the five were Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey and his future wife, Nadine Menendez.

The former New Jersey attorney general Gurbir Grewal testified at U.S. Senator Bob Menendez's corruption trial on Thursday that the lawmaker sought to intervene in a local criminal case, including a meeting that Grewal's deputy described as "gross."

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have said Menendez sought to have Grewal, the state's top prosecutor from 2018 through 2021, intervene in cases involving two associates of insurance and trucking businessman Jose Uribe.

A New Jersey businessman testified Friday that he bribed Sen. Bob Menendez, telling jurors in the Garden State Democrat’s federal corruption trial that he provided the lawmaker’s wife with a Mercedes-Benz to shut down a criminal probe.

“She agreed to the terms,” Jose Uribe told the Federal District Court in Manhattan of Nadine Menendez’s reaction to his March 2019 offer to buy her a $60,000 luxury convertible if she could get her 70-year-old senator husband to scuttle an investigation into two of his associates by the state attorney general’s office.

An attorney for Sen. Bob Menendez used opening statements Wednesday to portray the senator as using the power of his position to represent the interests of his constituents and the United States — not taking corrupt actions.

Menendez, D-N.J., is on trial in New York for 16 criminal counts that include bribery, extortion and acting as a foreign agent. Prosecutors already had told the jury that he and his wife, Nadine, used his influence and were motivated by greed.

Sen. Bob Menendez’s latest corruption trial is set to kick off Monday with jury selection as the New Jersey pol battles allegations he accepted bribes including bars of gold and a Mercedes convertible.

This will be the the Garden State Democrat’s second federal criminal trial. He went on trial for other corruption and bribery charges in 2017, but the jury ended up deadlocked, resulting in a mistrial.

Representative Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat in a crucial swing district, and his wife were charged with participating in a yearslong $600,000 bribery scheme involving Azerbaijan and a Mexican bank, according to a federal indictment unsealed in Houston on Friday.

The accusations against Mr. Cuellar, 68, and his wife Imelda, 67, center on allegations of bribery and money laundering in connection with their efforts on behalf of an oil and gas company owned by Azerbaijan’s leaders as well as an unnamed bank based in Mexico City, according to the 54-page complaint.

Conservative Democrat Rep. Henry Cuellar, who represents a competitive district on the Texas-Mexico border, was charged Friday alongside his wife on allegations that they took nearly $600,000 in foreign bribes, the latest development in a long-running FBI probe examining the congressman’s work with Azerbaijan. 

The Department of Justice indicted Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas on conspiracy and bribery charges Friday. 

Cuellar's wife Imelda has also been indicted in the investigation connected to $600,000 in bribes they allegedly accepted between 2014 and 2021 from an Azerbaijan-based energy company and a bank in Mexico City to advance the former Soviet republic's interests in the U.S. 

Cuellar and his wife have been released on bond, Fox News has confirmed.