Senator Bob Menendez was found guilty on all counts in his federal corruption trial on Tuesday.
Federal prosecutors in New York alleged that the New Jersey Democrat accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in the form of cash, gold bars, mortgage payments and more in exchange for the senator’s political influence. The governments of Egypt and Qatar, as well as three New Jersey businessmen, were also allegedly recipients of the bribes. Two of those co-defendants, Wael Hana and Fred Debs, were also convicted of all the charges they faced.
The jury deliberated for about 13 hours over three days.
“I have never been a foreign agent,” Menendez says.
Menendez pleaded not guilty to 16 federal charges, including bribery, fraud, acting as a foreign agent and obstruction. He said he plans to appeal his conviction and is “very disappointed” with the jury’s verdict.
“I have never violated my oath,” he said outside court Tuesday. “I have never been a patriot to my country or to my nation. I have never been a foreign agent.”
He said the jury’s decision “puts every member of the U.S. Senate at risk of changing what they think of a foreign agent.”
Menendez did not answer questions about whether he would resign.
He will be sentenced on October 29 and could face decades in prison.
demand for resignation
Menendez is not required to resign despite the conviction, though he could be expelled.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the majority leader, called for her resignation immediately after the verdict.
“In the wake of this guilty verdict, Senator Menendez must now do the right thing for his voters, the Senate, and our country and resign,” he said.
Menendez’s New Jersey counterpart Senator Cory Booker and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy have also called for his immediate resignation. Murphy said that if the senator refuses to step down, he will seek his expulsion from the US Senate.
The Senate Ethics Committee said it would “shortly” complete an investigation into Menendez’s conduct, which it began when the allegations against him first surfaced.
The committee said it would consider “the full range of disciplinary actions available under the rules of procedure,” including expulsion and censure.
Despite a conviction, they are not required to resign, though they can be expelled.
‘Shocking levels of corruption’
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, whose office prosecuted the case, said after the verdict that it “has always been about shocking levels of corruption.”
“Hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, including gold, cash and a Mercedes-Benz. This wasn’t politics as usual; this was politics for profit,” Williams said in a statement. “Because Senator Menendez has now been convicted, his years of selling his office to the highest bidder have come to an end. Corruption is not without costs: it erodes public trust, and it undermines the rule of law. That’s why we are so committed to fighting it, regardless of political party.”
Prosecutors claimed Menendez, 70, “put his power up for sale” in exchange for gold, envelopes filled with money, checks made out to his wife for not getting a job and a Mercedes-Benz convertible. The FBI found gold bars and more than $400,000 in cash in several places in his home, including on a jacket and shoes, prosecutors said.
“It wasn’t enough for him to be one of the most powerful people in Washington,” federal prosecutor Paul Monteleone said during his closing argument on July 8. “Robert Menendez wanted all the power and he also wanted to use it to amass wealth for himself and his wife.”
Defense calls Justice Department’s case ‘selective nonsense’
Meanwhile, the defense said all of the actions in the indictment fell within the scope of Menendez’s position and that prosecutors failed to prove he took any bribes.
During his closing argument, defense attorney Adam Fee derided the government’s case as “selective nonsense” and accused prosecutors of manipulating the facts.
“The only honest verdict I want to give here is that he be acquitted on every count,” Fee told the jury on July 9. “His actions were lawful, normal and good for the country.”
Menendez refused to testify in his own defense. “From my perspective, the government has failed to prove every aspect of its case,” he told reporters as he left the courthouse after the defense finished its case on July 3.
He said he hoped his lawyers would present a “solid and forceful finding” and that a jury would find him not guilty.
New Jersey businessman and Menendez’s wife charged
Prosecutors told the jury that Menendez promised to use his power to help Egypt. According to the indictment, the arrangement was facilitated by Hana, a New Jersey businesswoman and friend of Menendez’s wife Nadine, who prosecutors said had the senator’s help in maintaining a halal meat monopoly.
Menendez was also accused of receiving a $60,000 Mercedes-Benz convertible car in exchange for obstructing a case being prosecuted by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office.
Prosecutors said that in the spring of 2019, Jose Uribe, another New Jersey businessman who pleaded guilty in the case, gave Nadine $15,000 in cash, which she used as a down payment for a car. According to prosecutors, she texted Menendez, “Congratulations. We are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes.” Uribe continued to make monthly payments, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors claimed the senator had promised a third businessman, Debs, that he would intervene in a federal prosecution of Debs and help the Qatar government by supporting a Senate resolution praising Qatar.
According to prosecutors, DeBase’s fingerprints were found on envelopes of cash found at Menendez’s home and serial numbers on gold bars showed they belonged to DeBase and Hanna.
During two months of testimony, jurors heard his sister explain why Menendez was caught stuffing wads of cash into his embroidered congressional jacket: “It’s a Cuban thing,” Caridad Gonzalez said.
The defense also told jurors that Menendez and his wife, who is also charged in the case, led separate lives and that his wife had financial concerns that she hid from her husband.
Debs and Hana denied their accusations. Uribe pleaded guilty and testified against all three defendants during the trial.
Menendez’s wife has pleaded not guilty to the charges and will be tried separately in August because of a medical condition. The senator revealed at the start of the trial in mid-May that she is battling grade 3 breast cancer.
Second corruption case against Menendez
Menendez, who has served as a New Jersey senator since 2006, is the first member of Congress to be charged with conspiracy to commit a public official acting as a foreign agent.
In June, he filed to run for the U.S. Senate as an independent candidate in New Jersey.
He refused to resign, although he resigned as chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee after his initial indictment in September 2023.
This was the second time the senator was accused of corruption. The indictment in 2015 ended in a mistrial in 2018 after the jury failed to reach a verdict on all counts.
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