One day after he announced his resignation from the U.S. Senate effective August 20, Senator Bob Menendez will remain absent from Washington D.C. as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses Congress, the New Jersey Globe has confirmed.
Menendez also did not attend yesterday’s Senate session, at which his resignation letter was entered into the congressional record. It’s not clear yet whether he intends to return to the Senate at all between now and the end of next week, when the Senate will depart for its August recess. (By the time the recess ends in September, Menendez will have resigned.)
An ally of Menendez believes the senator may at one point return to Washington, at least briefly, in order to give a farewell address from the Senate floor.
Menendez’s absence on the day of Netanyahu’s address is particularly notable given the senator’s longtime support for Israel; when virtually every other political ally had abandoned him after his indictment on federal bribery charges last fall, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was one of the only groups to stick with the senator.
Menendez’s planned resignation from the Senate comes after he was found guilty on all charges last week, and after most Democrats in the Senate – among them Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer – called on him to resign. Senator Cory Booker, Menendez’s longtime friend, said he would lead an expulsion effort if Menendez didn’t leave voluntarily.
Speaking with reporters yesterday, Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), the #2 Democrat in the Senate, said that he didn’t think Menendez would be coming back in the next two weeks.
“I don’t expect to see him,” Durbin said, per The Hill. “I think he knows the sensitivity of the situation. I don’t think he should be treated as a sitting senator when it comes to anything confidential.”