The senior United States Senator from New Jersey, Robert Menendez, will go on trial today in federal court on charges that he conspired to trade influence in Washington for gifts and cash.
The Justice Department unsealed an indictment on September 22 accusing Menendez and his wife, Nadine, of bribery and conspiracy.
In two superseding indictments, prosecutors added charges of illegally acting as an agent of a foreign government; he’s accused of using his position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – a post he lost upon his indictment – to deliver federal aid and weapons to Egypt, receiving gifts from the government of Qatar, and on charges of extortion and obstruction of justice charges.
Menendez has insisted that he’s innocent and steadfastly refused to resign. The 70-year-old senator faces decades in prison.
Prosecutors say Menendez took bribes from Wael Hana, whom Menendez allegedly helped win a hugely lucrative Halal meat company, real estate developer Fred Daibes, and businessman Jose Uribe. Uribe accepted a plea deal and admitted that he gave Nadine Menendez a $60,000 Mercedes in exchange for the senator’s help to influence a state insurance fraud investigation.
While executing a search in 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation found thirteen gold bars and nearly $500,000 in cash in Menendez’s Englewood Cliffs home. Evidence appears to exist that the serial numbers on the gold bars match those previously registered to Daibes, and prosecutors said they recovered fingerprints or DNA from one of the alleged bribers on cash-filled envelopes found in Menendez’s closet.
Court papers show that Menendez might seek to blame his wife for getting him involved in a criminal conspiracy and hide the details of the alleged bribe from him.
Menendez will be tried in a Manhattan courtroom, prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. A veteran U.S. District Court Judge, Sidney Stein, will preside.
This will be Menendez’s second corruption trial; he was indicted in 2015 on a different allegation. But after a nine-week trial in 2017, a jury could not reach a verdict on any of the 19 counts against him; the charges were dismissed, and he was re-elected to a third term in the Senate by a wide margin.
Outside the courtroom, Menendez slammed the Justice Department and others who were positioning themselves to run.
“To those who were digging my political grave so that they could jump into my seat, I know who you are, and I won’t forget you,” Menendez famously said.
Politically, Menendez faced a different reaction to his latest indictment than he did the first time when key national and state Democratic leaders stood by him. Immediately after he was indicted last September, the state’s Democratic establishment quickly called for his resignation. Even his friend, U.S. Senator Cory Booker, who testified on his behalf in 2017, asked him to resign. One of his colleagues, John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania), has called him a “sleazeball.”
Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) was the first major Democrat to call for Menendez to step down and announced his intention to challenge him in the primary one day after the Justice Department unsealed the indictment. Kim is now the heavy favorite to win the Democratic nomination for Menendez’s seat.
Four days before the March 25 filing deadline, Menendez announced he would not enter the Democratic primary but would consider running as an independent Democrat if a jury acquits him. The filing deadline is June 4 at 4 PM; he’d need 800 signatures to get on the ballot.
This is the federal bribery third trial of a U.S. Senator from New Jersey. In 1980, U.S. Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee Chairman Harrison A. Williams, Jr. was charged with taking bribes from an FBI agent posing as an Arab sheik in the ABSCAM scandal; he was convicted in 1981. He didn’t resign from the Senate for ten months following the verdict, just as the Senate was moving to expel him.
Rep. Robert J. Menendez (D-Jersey City), who is not involved in any of the allegations against his father, faces a tough primary challenge from Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla. Bhalla entered the race after Senator Menendez’s indictment.
Nadine Menendez’s trial has been pushed to the summer because she is dealing with a serious but unspecified medical issue.
Menendez began his political career in 1974, at age 20, winning a seat on the Union City Board of Education. He eventually split with William Vincent Musto, a longtime mayor and state senator who went to prison on federal racketeering charges; Menendez testified against Musto at his 1982 trial.
He became mayor in 1986, an assemblyman in 1987, a state senator in 1991, and a congressman in 1992; he was the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus when Gov. Jon Corzine appointed him to the United States Senate in 2006.