Bob Menendez transferred to low-security prison

Former U.S. Senator Bob Menendez has been transferred to a minimum security federal prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania.

He arrived at LSCI Allenwood on July 1, a spokesperson for the prison told the New Jersey Globe.

Menendez began serving his 11-year prison sentence on June 17.

The 71-year-old former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, now known as federal prisoner number 67277-050, had initially been assigned to FCI Schuylkill, a medium security federal prison with an adjacent minimum security satellite camp in Minersville, Pennsylvania, about two-and-a-half hours from his home in Englewood Cliffs and about 50 miles west of Allentown.

His new prison is about 75 miles north of Harrisburg and a little under three hours from his New Jersey home in Englewood Cliffs.   Schuylkill was about thirty minutes closer.

Menendez is appealing his conviction for taking gold bars, a luxury Mercedes, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in exchange for acting as a foreign agent of the government of Egypt while serving in the Senate.  The U.S. Court of Appeals denied his bid to remain free pending appeal in June.

Harrison A. Williams, Jr., a four-term U.S. Senator from New Jersey who was also convicted of bribery, served a federal prison sentence at Allenwood in the 1980s.  Before Menendez, Williams was the last U.S. Senator to go to prison.

Other New Jersey politicians have served their prison sentence at Allenwood, including former Republican State Chairman and U.S. Senate candidate Nelson Gross, former New Jersey Highway Authority Executive Director and gubernatorial candidate Louis Tonti, former Jersey City Mayor Gerald McCann, former Essex County Executive James Treffinger, Wayne Mayor Louis Messercola, former Superior Court Judge Michael Imbriani, and former Union City Mayor Robert Botti.

Nadine Menendez, the senator’s wife and co-defendant, is scheduled to be sentenced on September 11.