J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J.

U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez this month wrote a $58,500 check to a company owned by a South Florida eye doctor and political fundraiser to reimburse him for two personal flights to the Dominican Republic that the New Jersey Democrat did not report on his Senate financial disclosure form, his office confirmed to NBC News Wednesday night. 

The disclosure came as law enforcement sources confirmed that FBI agents searched the West Palm Beach, Florida, offices of the doctor, Salomon Melgen, Tuesday night as part of an investigation that includes agents from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Melgen is a major Democratic political donor and fundraiser who together with family has contributed more than $200,000 to Democratic candidates, including $33,000 to Menendez. 

Menendez’s office confirmed that the senator — who this week became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – wrote the check to Melgen from his personal account after aides reviewed his flight schedule in response to a complaint that a New Jersey Republican official filed with the Senate Ethics Committee last November. The complaint alleged that Menendez violated Senate Ethics rules by “repeatedly flying on a free jet to the Dominican Republic and other locations” and that the jet was provided by Melgen. 

“This was sloppy,” Dan O’Brien, Menendez’s chief of staff, told NBC News about Menendez’s failure to pay for the two 2010 flights at the time. “I’m chalking it up to an oversight.” Asked whether the senator has been contacted by the Senate Ethics Committee about the matter, O’Brien responded: “We can assume the Senate Ethics Committee is looking at the allegation. ”

O’Brien provided new details about Menendez’s relationship with the Florida doctor amid a swirl of media reports about the FBI probe. He said Menendez and the doctor have been longtime personal friends and that the senator has visited Melgen at his home in the Dominican Republican “about twice a year,” including attending Melgen’s daughter’s wedding. He said Menendez has generally flown commercial for those flights and paid for them out of his own pocket.

He confirmed that Melgen has also been an active fundraiser for Menendez, holding events for him at his home in South Florida as well as at a home he owns in Caso de Campo, a Dominican resort.

All told, the senator took three flights aboard Melgen’s jet in 2010 — one of which that May involved a trip to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republican for political fundraisers, O’Brien said. One of those fundraisers was at Melgen’s home in the Dominican Republic, O’Brien said. The May 2010 flight for fundraisers on the two islands was paid for at the time by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which Menendez then chaired. 

But after the ethics complaint was filed Nov. 3, his aides conducted what they described as an “exhaustive review of Menendez’s schedule” and found that the senator had taken two additional flights aboard Melgen’s corporate jet. One, from Aug. 6 to Aug. 9, 2010, was from south Florida to the Dominican Republic and back to south Florida. Another was from Sept. 3 to Sept. 6, 2010, was from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey to the Dominican Republican and back to New Jersey. In at least one of those flights, Menendez brought along guests, O’Brien said.

O’Brien said that after the review — spurred by the ethics complaint — Menendez wrote the $58,500 to Melgen’s company from his personal account. Under Senate ethics rules, senators are allowed to accept gifts from personal friends, but any valued at more than $250 must be publicly reported and approved by the Senate Ethics Committee.

In a statement earlier Wednesday, Menendez’s office said that: “Dr. Melgen has been a friend and political supporter of Senator Menendez for many years. Senator Menendez has traveled on Dr. Melgen’s plane on three occasions, all of which have been paid for and reported appropriately.”

That statement made no reference to Menendez paying for the trips in January, two months after the ethics committee complaint was filed. Asked about the omission, a spokeswoman for the senator said: “There was never any intention to be misleading.”

The spokeswoman said the senator was not aware of any time requirement for reimbursing for personal trips. She also said Menendez, by reimbursing for the flights, was not claiming the trips aboard Dr. Melgen’s plane was a personal gift. Although personal gifts above $250 need ethics committee approval, Menendez was not claiming the flights as a gift  and therefore does not need to seek approval of them from the committee, the spokeswoman said.

Nueces County Sheriff

Mansour Arbabsiar is seen in a 2001 booking photo after he was charged for check fraud.

Updated at 2:30 p.m. ET: A Texas man pleaded guilty Wednesday to plotting to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, acknowledging he agreed to hire what he thought was a drug dealer in Mexico last year for $1.5 million to carry out the attack with explosives at a Washington, D.C., restaurant.

Manssor Arbabsiar, 58, entered the plea to two conspiracy charges and a murder-for-hire count in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Judge John F. Keenan repeatedly asked Arbabsiar whether he intended to kill the ambassador. Arbabsiar, a U.S. citizen who holds an Iranian passport, said he did.

"I take responsibility for my actions," Arbabsiar said.

Arbabsiar also admitted he agreed to help transfer more than $100,000 through a New York bank to help further the plot. 

When Arbabsiar's arrest was announced last year, President Barack Obama's administration accused the Iranian government of being behind the planned assassination of Ambassador Adel al Jubeir in Washington.

The press attache at Iran's mission to the United Nations then called the accusation "baseless."

"Mr. Arbabsiar’s plea today confirms what our investigation had already uncovered: that he plotted to murder the Saudi Ambassador with members of Iran’s elite Qods Force," said FBI Acting Assistant Director Mary Galligan. "The FBI remains ever vigilant toward acts of terror both here and abroad."

Authorities say Arbabsiar earlier admitted his role in a $1.5 million plot to kill the ambassador at a restaurant by setting off explosives. 

See the original story at NBCNewYork.com | More from NBCNewYork.com

Sentencing is scheduled Jan. 23. Arbabsiar faces up to 25 years in prison. A trial had been scheduled for January.

Arbabsiar, who lived in Corpus Christi, Texas, for more than a decade, said he went to Mexico last year to meet a man named Junior, "who turned out to be an FBI agent." He said that he and others had agreed to arrange the kidnapping of ambassador Al-Jubeir, but Junior said it would be easier to kill the ambassador.

Arbabsiar has been held without bail since he was arrested Sept. 29, 2011 at John F. Kennedy International Airport. He was brought into court Wednesday in handcuffs. He spoke English and did not use a translator, despite saying he understood only about half of what he read in English. Bearded and bespectacled, he smiled several times during the proceeding, including in the direction of courtroom artists who were seated in the jury box when he entered court.

Defense lawyers say Arbabsiar suffers from bipolar disorder.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Kim said that if the government had proceeded to trial, it would have presented a jury with secretly recorded conversations between Arbabsiar and a confidential source, along with Arbabsiar's extensive post-arrest statement to authorities and emails and financial records.

Authorities have said they secretly recorded conversations between Arbabsiar and an informant with the Drug Enforcement Administration after Arbabsiar approached the informant in Mexico and asked his knowledge of explosives for a plot to blow up the Saudi embassy in Washington. They said Arbabsiar later offered $1.5 million for the death of the ambassador.

A second person, Gholam Shakuri, was charged in the plot but remains at large in Iran.

The Justice Department said Shakuri is an Iran-based member of Iran’s Qods Force, which is a special operations unit of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that is said to sponsor and promote terrorist activities abroad.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara stated: “As was originally charged, and as Arbabsiar has now admitted, he was the extended murderous hand of his co-conspirators, officials of the Iranian military based in Iran, who plotted to kill the Saudi Ambassador in the United States and were willing to kill as many bystanders as necessary to do so. Arbabsiar traveled to and from the United States, Mexico and Iran and was in telephone contact with his Iranian confederates while he brokered an audacious plot. The audacity of the plot should not cause doubt, but rather vigilance regarding others like Arbabsiar, who are enlisted as the violent emissaries of plotting foreign officials. This office will continue to pursue the co-conspirators in this plot and others in Iran or elsewhere who try to export murder. Thanks to the great work of the FBI, DEA and the prosecutors in this office, Mr. Arbabsiar must now answer for his conduct.”

Pete Williams is NBC News' justice correspondent. Jonathan Dienst is WNBC's chief investigative correspondent. Shimon Prokupecz is a WNBC investigative producer.    

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Hai Do / AFP - Getty Images file

Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind spiritual leader of Egypt's largest Islamic extremist fundamentalist group, Jamaa Islamiyya, in an April 6, 1993, file photo. Abdul Rahman was convicted of conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison for helping to plan the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

The blind sheik who supported the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other terror plots that targeted New York landmarks will stay in a U.S. prison, Obama administration officials said Tuesday.  

"There is absolutely no plan to release or transfer the blind  sheik,” said National Security Staff spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan. "Reports saying otherwise are completely and unequivocally false."

The strong denial came after some Republicans raised concerns that Egyptian leaders may be pressing the Obama administration to free Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman.  

More stories from NBCNewYork.com

Former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey raised concerns in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. Mukasey claimed there is circumstantial evidence a secret deal is under way as a goodwill gesture to the new Egyptian government. 

Mukasey added it may be time for Congress to make clear that any such release would be a "gross betrayal of public trust that would justify removal from high office."

Abdul Rahman is currently serving a life sentence in a federal prison hospital in North Carolina. He was convicted in 1995 for his role in supporting a plot to bomb the United Nations, the Holland and Lincoln tunnels and assassinate then-Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, R-N.Y., and current Assemblyman Dov Hikind, D-N.Y. 

A Justice Department spokesman said Tuesday, "The blind sheik will serve the rest of his life in a federal prison serving time for terrorism … and those who suggest otherwise are badly misinformed."

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., sent a letter earlier this month to the State and Justice departments saying such a release would be "a sign of weakness and a lack of resolve by the United States and its president."
  
On the day he was set to take office in June, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi told a cheering crowd in Cairo that he would press the Obama administration to free the blind sheik.
  
"“I see signs for Omar Abdel Rahman and detainees pictures," Morsi said. "It is my duty and I will make all efforts to have them free, including Omar Abdel Rahman." 
 
New York Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, both Democrats, condemned Morsi comments at the time. 

"Sheik Rahman is a terrorist who planned to kill innocent Americans. Rest assured he will stay right where he belongs -- in jail for the rest of his life," Schumer said in June.

Gillibrand reiterated on Tuesday that any move to release the sheik would trigger a firestorm of opposition.

“If there is any attempt in the future to free this convicted terrorist it will be met with swift condemnation and action to stop it,” she said.

Reports of Egyptian calls to free Sheik Rahman come three years after Scottish authorities set free a Libyan terrorist convicted for killing 270 people in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. The release of Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, who died in May, sparked outrage among the victims’ families.  

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Officials have linked forensic evidence from the 2004 murder scene of a Juilliard student to the scene of a recent Occupy Wall Street subway vandalism, NBC 4 New York has learned.

Investigators have connected DNA evidence from the scene of Sarah Fox's murder in Inwood Hill Park eight years ago to DNA collected at the scene of an Occupy Wall Street subway station vandalism in March.

Fox, 21, was found nude and strangled in the park in May 2004, days after she disappeared during a daytime jog. Investigators recovered her pink CD player in the woods just yards from her body.

Sources said Tuesday the DNA found on the CD player is linked to DNA found on a chain left by Occupy Wall Street protesters at the Beverly Road subway station in East Flatbush on March 28, 2012. 

Read the original story at NBC New York

That Wednesday morning, protesters chained open emergency gates and taped up turnstiles in eight subway stations and posted fliers encouraging riders to enter for free.

A "communique" posted online later that day by the "Rank and File Initiative" described the act as a protest against service cuts, fare hikes and transit employees' working conditions.

It was attributed to "teams of activists, many from Occupy Wall Street ... with rank and file workers from the Transport Workers Union Local 100 and the Amalgamated Transit Union."

Sources said they have not connected a person to the common DNA found on the CD player and the chain. There's no immediate evidence that the DNA belongs to the Occupy Wall Street protesters who chained open the gates.

No one was arrested in the March incidents. Police are continuing to investigate, and are now working to identify the source of the DNA found in common with the chain and the CD player.

Dr. Lawrence Koblinsky, a forensics expert at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the DNA link was a major clue in the investigation, one that could potentially break the case. 

“You’ve got the same DNA left at two distinct sites," said Koblinsky. "Until they find the individual who left that DNA, we won’t know. But the likelihood is high the person who left that DNA on the CD player is the killer of Sarah Fox.”  

Dimitry Sheinman, 47, has long been considered a suspect in the Fox murder. He has since moved to South Africa and started a family. He was never charged in the case.

Sheinman recently returned to New York City, proclaiming to be a clairvoyant with knowledge of the killer's identity. The information he gave police was unclear.

Sources said he remains a leading person of interest.

Sheinman did not respond to a request for comment.

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