Menendez’s ex-colleagues aren’t dancing on his grave

By the end of his Senate tenure, disgraced former Senator Bob Menendez had largely become a persona non grata in Washington, with huge numbers of his fellow senators calling for his resignation. But now that he’s been sentenced to 11 years in prison for accepting bribes and trading influence in Washington, his ex-colleagues in the Senate aren’t inclined to kick him while he’s down.

Asked how she felt about Menendez’s sentencing, Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire) – now the top Democrat in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which Menendez once chaired – said only that she acknowledged the way the legal process had played out.

“I think the process has worked the way it was supposed to,” Shaheen said.

Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho), now the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, declined to comment at all. So too did Senators Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), two longtime members of Congress who served in both the House and the Senate with Menendez for many years, and Senator Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), who is also a member of the Foreign Relations Committee; several of them said that they hadn’t yet had time to read about Menendez’s sentencing.

Even Senator John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania), who practically made a sport out of tormenting Menendez as his corruption trial played out last year, was inclined to be sympathetic.

“I hope he doesn’t have to die in prison, but I do hope he realizes what he’s done, and perhaps he’s going to be on a path of redemption,” Fetterman said of the 71-year-old senator.

Fetterman said that the people he felt the worst for are Menendez’s two children, Rep. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City) and MSNBC host Alicia Menendez.

“Honestly, I just feel terrible for his kids. I know his son is in Congress and his daughter is on MSNBC, so it must be a really terrible day for them,” he said. “There’s no winners today.”

And New Jersey’s own Senator Andy Kim, who holds the seat Menendez once represented after running a campaign sharply critical of everything Menendez stood for, focused more on looking to the future than he did relitigating Menendez’s past.

“Today’s sentencing is a reminder that nobody – no matter your title or the power you hold – should be above the law and that the role of a public servant is to pursue common good instead of one’s own benefit,” Kim said in a statement. “I hope today is the last time we see an elected public servant from New Jersey sentenced for abusing the trust of the people.”

Menendez was a member of the Senate for more than 18 years, and was a seven-term House member before that – but it came crashing down in the fall of 2023, when prosecutors unveiled a bombshell indictment against the senator alleging that he had assisted allies and even foreign governments in Washington in exchange for cash, gifts, and gold bars. After a two-month trial, Menendez was convicted on all 16 charges.

During an earlier corruption case in 2017, Menendez retained the support of many of his Senate colleagues, and two of them, Senators Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) and Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), spoke in his defense at his trial. But this time there was no similar rallying around the embattled senator, and he faced widespread calls for his resignation from his colleagues until he finally left office in August of last year.

Menendez has pledged to appeal his conviction, and said at his trial today that he has “lost everything,” per NBC News. “For a man who spent his entire life in public service, every day I am awake is a punishment,” he said.