2024-07-17 04:30:02
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., was found guilty on all counts Monday after being tried on charges of accepting bribes, including cash and gold bars, to benefit the governments of Egypt and Qatar.
Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York whose office prosecuted the case, hailed the verdict, saying Menendez’s “years of selling his office to the higher bidder have finally come to an end.”
Menendez had his hands crossed and his chin resting on his hands as some of the verdict was read and didn’t display any emotion. He then shook his head in disagreement as the jurors were polled about the verdict. Some of his family members broke down in tears. He’ll be sentenced Oct. 29.
Menendez told reporters outside the courthouse he was “deeply, deeply disappointed by the jury’s decision” and predicted, “we will be successful upon appeal.”
“I have never violated my public oath,” he said. He did not answer questions about whether he would resign.
Menendez was charged with 16 counts, including bribery, extortion, acting as a foreign agent, obstruction of justice and several counts of conspiracy. He had pleaded not guilty in the case, as did his wife, Nadine Menendez, whose trial was delayed indefinitely following her surgery after a breast cancer diagnosis.
The jury deliberated for about 12 1/2 hours over three days before returning the verdicts.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called on Menendez to resign after the jury’s decision. “In light of this guilty verdict, Senator Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our country, and resign,” said Schumer.
Schumer had previously said he was disappointed in his colleague and that Menendez hadn’t lived up to the high standards expected of a senator, but had stopped short of calling for his resignation.
Prosecutors said three businessmen paid bribes to Menendez and his wife in exchange for the senator taking actions to benefit them and the governments of Qatar and Egypt. According to prosecutors, those bribes included gold bars, a Mercedes–Benz given to Nadine Menendez and more than $480,000 in cash, which the FBI found stuffed into closets, jackets bearing Menendez’s name and other clothing when the bureau searched his New Jersey home in 2022.
Two of those businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, faced trial alongside Menendez and were convicted on all counts as well. The third businessman who was charged, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty and testified during the trial, which lasted nine weeks before going to the jury Friday.
Menendez did not testify in his own defense; his team argued that he was acting on behalf of his constituents, as any senator should, and that the government had not proven that the cash or gold bars were given as bribes.
The senator’s sister, Caridad Gonzalez, testified for his defense that their parents were Cuban immigrants and their father discouraged them from trusting banks, so she was not surprised when in the mid-1980s her brother asked her to grab $500 from a shoe box in a bedroom closet. “It was normal. It’s a Cuban thing,” she said.
Prosecutors noted that some of the envelopes of cash in the Menendezes’ home had Daibes’ fingerprints, while others had associates of Hana’s. Prosecutor Paul Monteleone told jurors in his closing statement that Menendez was “desperately trying to pass the buck” for the hundreds of thousands of dollars found in the house. “The thousands and thousands of bucks stop here,” he said.
The verdict lands just months before Menendez’s Senate seat comes before New Jersey voters this fall. Menendez decided months ago, as his popularity took a hit, that he wouldn’t seek the Democratic nomination. But he filed to run as an independent, a move that threatened to complicate the dynamics in a race that would ordinarily be a layup for Democrats in the liberal state. The Democratic nominee for the seat is Rep. Andy Kim and the Republican nominee is Curtis Bashaw.
Menendez must now decide whether to continue pursuing that run. In March, he had indicated in a video statement that his candidacy could hinge on whether he’s exonerated of the charges. “I am hopeful that my exoneration will take place this summer and allow me to pursue my candidacy as an independent Democrat in the general election,” Menendez said at the time.
Kim said after the verdict that it was “a sad and somber day for New Jersey and our country.”
“I called on Senator Menendez to step down when these charges were first made public, and now that he has been found guilty, I believe the only course of action for him is to resign his seat immediately. The people of New Jersey deserve better,” Kim said.
It was the second corruption trial of Menendez’s 18-year career in the Senate — the previous one resulted in a mistrial due to a hung jury in 2018, and the Justice Department subsequently dropped the charges against him; Menendez had also denied wrongdoing in that case.
Menendez previously served for 13 years in the House and was elected to the Senate in 2006, eventually rising to become the chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His political career dates back nearly four decades to the mid-1980s, when he became mayor of Union City.
The outcome could affect whether he serves out his term. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., has led the charge to push Menendez out for months, disparaging and mocking him as too corrupt to serve. A majority of Senate Democrats, including Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., as well as most of the state’s Democratic House delegation, had also called for Menendez to resign even before the trial.
Though Menendez stepped aside as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee after the charges were brought, he has stayed on as a voting member of the committee and the Senate.
There is no provision barring a senator who’s been convicted of a felony from serving out his term. If he does not resign, the Senate could move to expel, a process that would start with an Ethics Committee investigation. The committee said Tusday it will complete that investigation “promptly” and consider the “full range of disciplinary actions” available. If the panel recommended his expulsion, it would take a two-thirds vote of the entire Senate — 67 votes — to do so.
Thirty-one Democratic senators had already called for him to resign before the conviction.
Since 1789, the Senate has expelled only 15 members, with 14 of them ousted for their role in the confederacy. The last time a senator was expelled was in 1862. Six senators have been convicted of crimes since that time; three wound up resigning, two served out their terms and one died before the Senate could act.
