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, welcomed the verdict, saying that “the years of Menendez selling his office to the highest bidder have finally come to an end.”
Menendez had his hands folded and his chin resting on his hands as part of the verdict was read and showed no emotion. He then shook his head in disagreement as jurors were asked about the verdict. Some of his family members started crying. He will be sentenced on October 29.
Menéndez told reporters outside the courtroom that he was “deeply disappointed with the jury’s decision” and predicted, “we will be successful on appeal.”
“I have never violated my public oath,” he said. He did not respond to 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 has pleaded not guilty in the case, as has his wife, Nadine Menendez, whose trial was postponed indefinitely following surgery following a breast cancer diagnosis.
The jury deliberated for about 12 and a half hours over three days before returning their verdicts.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called on Menendez to resign following 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,” Schumer said.
Schumer had already said that he was disappointed in his colleague and that Menéndez did not meet the high standards expected of a senator, but stopped short of calling for his resignation.
Prosecutors said three businessmen paid bribes to Menéndez and his wife in exchange for the senator taking steps to benefit them and the governments of Qatar and Egypt. According to prosecutors, these bribes included gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz given to Nadine Menendez and more than $480,000 in cash, which the FBI found stuffed in closets, jackets with Menendez’s name on them and other clothing when the agency searched his New Jersey home in 2022. .
Two of these businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, were tried alongside Menéndez. and were convicted on all counts as well. The third accused businessman, José Uribe pleaded guilty and testified during the trial, which lasted nine weeks before going to the jury on Friday.
Menéndez 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 money or gold bars were given as bribes.
The senator’s sister, Caridad Gonzalez, testified in his defense that her parents were Cuban immigrants and that her father discouraged them from trusting banks, so she was not surprised when, in the mid-1980s, her brother asked her to take $500 from a shoebox in a bedroom closet. “It was normal. It’s a Cuban thing,” she said.
Prosecutors noted that some of the envelopes of money in the Menendezes’ home had Daibes’ fingerprints on them, while others had Hana’s associates on them. 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 home. “The thousands and thousands of dollars stop here,” he said.
The verdict comes just months before Menendez’s Senate seat goes to New Jersey voters this fall. Menendez decided months ago, as his popularity fell, that he would not seek the Democratic nomination. But he ran as an independent, a move that threatened complicate the dynamics of a race that would normally be a trap for Democrats in the liberal state. The Democratic candidate for the seat is Representative Andy Kim and the Republican candidate is Curtis Bashaw.
Menéndez must now decide whether to continue in this race. In March, he had indicated in a video statement that his candidacy could depend on being exonerated of the charges. “I am hopeful that my dismissal will occur this summer and will allow me to pursue my candidacy as an independent Democrat in the general election,” Menéndez said at the time.
Kim said after the verdict that it was “a sad, dark day for New Jersey and our country.”
“I called on Senator Menéndez to resign when these allegations were first made public, and now that he has been found guilty, I believe the only course of action for him is to immediately resign from his position. Kim said.
It was the second corruption trial of Menendez’s 18-year Senate career — the previous one resulted in a mistrial due to a hung jury in 2018, and the Justice Department later dropped charges against him; Menéndez also denied any wrongdoing in this case.
Menéndez previously served 13 years in the House and was elected to the Senate in 2006, eventually becoming chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His political career dates back nearly four decades, until the mid-1980s, when he became mayor of Union City.
The result may affect compliance with the mandate. Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, led the charge to oust Menendez for months, belittling 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 House Democratic delegation, also called for Menendez to resign even before the trial.
Although Menendez stepped down as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee after the charges were brought, he remained a voting member of the committee and the Senate.
There is no provision that prevents a senator convicted of a crime from serving his term. If he does not resign, the Senate could propose his expulsion, a process that would begin with an investigation by the Ethics Committee. If the panel were to recommend his expulsion, it would require a two-thirds vote of the entire Senate – 67 votes – to do so.
Thirty-one Democratic senators had already called for his resignation before the conviction.
Since 1789, the Senate has expelled only 15 members, with 14 of them removed for their role in the Confederacy. The last time a senator was expelled was in 1862. Since then, six senators have been convicted of crimes; three ended up resigning, two served their terms, and one died before the Senate could act.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
