U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez was convicted on Tuesday on all counts at his corruption trial, including accepting bribes of gold and cash from three New Jersey businessmen and acting as a foreign agent for the Egyptian government.
Prosecutors said the Democrat abused the power of his office to protect allies from criminal investigations and enrich associates, including his wife, through acts that included meeting with Egyptian intelligence officials and helping that country access millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.
Menendez, 70, looked toward the jury at times and appeared to mark a document in front of him as the verdict was read. Afterward, he sat resting his chin against his closed hands, elbows on the table. He and his lawyers vowed to appeal as they left the courthouse.
"I have never violated my public oath. I have never been anything but a patriot of my country and for my country. I have never, ever been a foreign agent," Menendez said.
Menendez did not testify at the nine-week trial, but insisted publicly he was only doing his job as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He said the gold bars found in his New Jersey home by the FBI belonged to his wife, Nadine Menendez. She too was charged but her trial was postponed so she could recover from breast cancer surgery. She has pleaded not guilty.
The verdict comes four months before Election Day and potentially dooms Menendez's chances of winning re-election as an independent.
It prompted a chorus of Democrats to call on Menendez to resign, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, New Jersey's junior senator, Corey Booker, and the party's nominee to replace Menendez, Rep. Andy Kim.
"In light of this guilty verdict, Senator Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our country, and resign," Schumer's statement said.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, who would appoint Menendez's replacement, urged the Senate to expel him if he doesn't resign. It's not clear whether Schumer would be willing to hold those votes. Expulsion requires a two-thirds majority. A senator has not been removed from office in over a century.
Curtis Bashaw, the Republican candidate for the seat, also called on Menendez to quit, saying New Jersey deserves better than "corruption and made-for-tv political scandals, courtesy of Bob Menendez and the Democratic machine."
The Senate Ethics Committee, meanwhile, will soon complete its own investigation of Menendez and consider a "full range of disciplinary actions," according to a statement from Democrat Chris Coons and Republican James Lankford, the committee's chairman and vice-chairman.
Menendez faces the possibility of a lengthy prison term when he is sentenced on Oct. 29. He was found guilty of 16 counts, the most serious of which carry a potential prison sentence of 20 years.
This was the second corruption trial for Menendez. An earlier prosecution on unrelated charges in 2017 ended with a deadlocked jury.
"This case has always been about shocking levels of corruption, hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in the form of cash, gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz. This wasn't politics as usual, this was politics for profit. And now that a jury has convicted Bob Menendez, his years of selling his office to the highest bidder have finally come to an end," U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said.
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., leaves federal court in New York, July 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Two co-defendants also were convicted. The New Jersey businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, were accused of paying bribes. A third businessman, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty prior to trial and testified against the others.
Hana's lawyer, Lawrence Lustberg, said outside the court that they would file motions to set aside the verdict. The American system of justice "has let him down," Lustberg said. Daibes' lawyer also promised an appeal.
The jury's decision culminates a lengthy case that included a June 2022 FBI raid on the couple's home in Englewood Cliffs, a wealthy community just across the Hudson River from New York City. FBI agents seized gold bars worth nearly US$150,000 and cash, mostly in stacks of US$100 bills, totalling over US$480,000. In the garage was a Mercedes-Benz convertible. A supervising agent testified that stacks of cash were stuffed in boots, shoeboxes and jackets belonging to the senator.
Prosecutors argued that the gold bars, cash and car were bribes. Defence lawyers disputed that, arguing that the gold belonged to his wife and she had kept him in the dark about financial troubles so grim that she nearly lost the home to foreclosure. They said the senator habitually hoarded money because his parents escaped Cuba in 1951 with only the cash they had hidden in a grandfather clock.
More shocking, though, were allegations that Menendez had earned some of it by using his powerful perch on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to benefit Egypt, an important U.S. ally but one that is also often subject to American criticism over alleged human rights abuses.
Prosecutors said Nadine Menendez held herself out as a conduit to her powerful husband, exchanging texts with an Egyptian general and helping to arrange a Washington visit by the chief of Egypt's intelligence service. To one general she texted, "Anytime you need anything you have my number and we will make everything happen."
Sen. Menendez, prosecutors said, took actions to ingratiate himself with Egyptian officials, including providing them with information about the staff at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and ghostwriting a letter to fellow senators encouraging them to lift a hold on US$300 million in military aid. The senator also told his wife to let her Egyptian contacts know that he planned to sign off on US$99 million in tank ammunition.
Charges, originally announced last September, were expanded over time, eventually including bribery, extortion, fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and, for Menendez, acting as a foreign agent of Egypt.
Prosecutors said serial numbers on the gold bars and fingerprints on tape that bound together the stacks of cash were traced to Hana and Daibes. Some fingerprints on tape, they said, belonged to Menendez. And in return, prosecutors said, Menendez took numerous actions to benefit the businessmen.
Those included protecting Egypt's decision to award Hana a lucrative monopoly to certify that meat sent to Egypt met Islamic dietary requirements. Menendez asked a U.S. agriculture official to drop his opposition to the monopoly deal despite concerns that it would drive up prices.
Uribe testified at the trial that he paid for Nadine Menendez to get a Mercedes-Benz convertible in exchange for the senator's help assuring that his insurance business would not be affected by New Jersey criminal probes of a trucking company belonging to his friend.
Prosecutors also said Sen. Menendez attempted to interfere in a federal criminal prosecution of Daibes, a politically influential real estate developer accused of bank fraud. The U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Philip Sellinger, testified at the trial that Menendez questioned him about the Daibes prosecution and said he believed he was "being treated unfairly."
Prosecutors also presented evidence that Menendez took actions favourable to Qatar's government to help Daibes secure a multimillion-dollar deal with a Qatari investment fund.
Menendez's political career began in 1974 when, only two years out of high school, he was elected to the education board in Union City, New Jersey. He later served in the state legislature, then was elected to the U.S. House in 1992. He became a U.S. senator in 2006.
Menendez had the dubious distinction of being the only U.S. senator indicted twice.
In 2015, he was charged with letting a wealthy Florida eye doctor buy his influence through luxury vacations and campaign contributions. After a jury couldn't reach a unanimous verdict in 2017, New Jersey federal prosecutors dropped the case rather than put him on trial again.
Voters accepted the mistrial as an exoneration and returned Menendez to the Senate.
After his second indictment last summer, Menendez claimed he was being persecuted, saying some people "cannot accept that a first-generation Latino American from humble beginnings could rise to be a U.S. Senator."
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