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.

Garrett Haake / NBC

Protesters marched down the beach in New York's Hamptons to demonstrate against the power of deep-pocketed donors over the political process.

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. – In one of the most sizable shows of force from protestors seen on the campaign trail in weeks, a group of more than 60 demonstrators – backed by air support in the form of a banner plane – staged a protest of Mitt Romney's third and final fundraiser here on Sunday.

The fundraiser, at the beachside home of billionaire industrialist David Koch, was to cap a day of fundraising in New York's tony Hamptons communities that could bring in millions of dollars for the campaign's "Victory" fund. It marked Romney's return to the campaign trail after a week of vacation at his summer home in New Hampshire.

Romney and his guests received a loud – and at times profane – welcome from dozens of protesters representing organizations from Occupy Long Island to Greenpeace, which largely blocked a section of Meadow Lane to shout, "Shame on You!" (and unprintable variants thereof). The protesters waved signs at those who attended the back-to-back fundraisers hosted by Clifford Sobel, the former U.S. ambassador to Brazil, and later, by Koch.

It was Koch, whose net worth Forbes magazine pegs at $25 billion, who drew most of the protesters’ ire. Holding signs that compared the fundraiser's reported ticket price of $50,000 to their annual salaries or even life savings, the protesters decried the power of donors like Koch and his allies over American politics.

When local law enforcement officially cleared the protest, the demonstrators decamped from the street and – in one of the strangest visual moments of the campaign – marched nearly a mile down the beach to Koch's house.

Accompanied by a bass drum, horns and even a tenor saxophone, the ragtag band arrived at the stretch of beach behind Koch's house after a 20-minute walk, where roughly a dozen police, Secret Service and Romney staffers stood on the dunes that marked the line of demarcation between the public beach and Koch's private land, and told the protesters they could go no further.

And so they stayed - chanting, singing, and waving signs as a plane buzzed overhead, pulling a banner that read, "Romney has a Koch Problem. MoveOn.Org." While some protestors shouted obscenities as the security watching them from the dunes above (and from a Coast Guard vessel off the coast), this reporter saw no direct confrontations between protestors and authorities.

The climax of the protest event came when the saxophonist, David Intrator, 55, of New York City, led the protesters in a spotty rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner," which most of the group joined, though some continued to chant slogans as they sang.

Mandel Ngan / AFP - Getty Images

President Barack Obama speaks during a campaign fundraiser May 14, 2012 at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City.

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Speaking at an event for the first time since announcing his support for same-sex marriage, President Obama said his position was part of his campaign philosophy, rooted, he said, in “the basic idea that I want everybody treated fairly in this country.”

“So much of this has to do with a belief that not only are we all in this together but all of us are equal in terms of dignity, in terms of respect,” the president said to the cheers of 200 people -- including singer Ricky Martin and actress Eva Longoria -- at the Rubin Museum of Art in downtown New York City. 

Consistent with that belief, Obama continued, “the announcement I made last week about my views on marriage equality.”

“We have never gone wrong when we expanded rights and responsibilities to everybody,” he said. “That doesn't weaken families, it strengthens families.”

The event was co-hosted by Martin, the Democratic National Committee’s LGBT Leadership Council and the Futuro Fund, a Latino get-out-the-vote organization affiliated with the Obama campaign.

Obama also seemed to turn a word commonly associated with conservative social issues – “values” – on its head, saying that he too believes “values” are a key factor in this election.

“It's been said that this election is going to be about values and I absolutely agree,” he said. “It's about the economic values we have, the values that I believe are what makes America so special.”

While this appearance was more about framing his own policies than those of his opponents, the president did seek to define Mitt Romney as an empty vessel of Congressional Republicans, contrasting him with his 2008 presidential opponent John McCain whom he suggested was a more independent thinker.

“We've got a very clear contrast this time. John McCain believed in climate change and believed in immigration reform. On some issues there was a sense of independence. What we've got this time out is a candidate who said he’d basically rubber-stamp a Republican Congress who wants us to go backwards and not forwards on a whole range of issues.”

Obama urged his LGBT supporters to stay active, warning them against what he called the outsized influence of outside spending groups who have a simple but powerful message.

“Their message is simple: You're frustrated, you're angry and it's Obama’s fault,” he said.