NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. Senator Bob Menendez was found guilty on all counts Tuesday in a sweeping corruption trial accusing him of accepting gold and cash bribes from three New Jersey businessmen and acting as an agent for the Egyptian government.
A jury in Manhattan deliberated for three days before finding the Democrat guilty of 16 felony counts, including bribery, extortion, forthright services fraud, obstruction of justice and conspiracy.
The prosecutor said he abused the power of his office to shield allies from criminal investigations and enrich associates, including his wife. Those actions included meetings with Egyptian intelligence officials and softening his position toward the country while giving it access to millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.
Menendez, 70, at times looked toward the jury and appeared to mark a document in front of him as the verdict was read. Afterward, he sat with his chin resting on his closed hands and his elbows on the table. As he left the courthouse, he said he would appeal.
“I have never violated my public oath. I have never been anything but a patriot of my country and for my country. I have never, ever been a foreign agent,” Menendez said in front of a bank of microphones before briskly walking to a waiting car.
Menendez did not testify during the nine-week trial, but stressed publicly that he was only doing his job as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He said the gold bars the FBI found in his New Jersey home belonged to his wife, Nadine Menendez. She was also charged, but her trial was postponed so she could recover from breast cancer surgery. She has pleaded not guilty.
The ruling could destroy Menendez’s chances of re-election as an independent.
The outcome of the trial prompted a chorus of Democrats to call for Menendez to resign, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, New Jersey’s junior Senator Corey Booker and the party’s candidate to replace Menendez, Representative Andy Kim.
“In light of this guilty verdict, Senator Menendez must now do the right thing for his constituents, the Senate and our country and resign,” Schumer’s statement said.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, who would appoint Menendez’s successor, has called on the Senate to expel him if he does not resign. It is not clear whether Schumer would be willing to hold those votes. Expulsion requires a two-thirds majority. No senator has been removed from office in more than a century.
Curtis Bashaw, the Republican candidate for the seat, also called on Menendez to resign, saying New Jersey deserves better than “corruption and made-for-television political scandals courtesy of Bob Menendez and the Democratic machine.”
The Senate Ethics Committee, meanwhile, will “immediately” conclude its own investigation into Menendez and consider a “full range of disciplinary measures,” according to a statement from Democrat Chris Coons and Republican James Lankford, the chairman and deputy chairman.
Menendez faces decades in prison. Judge Sidney H. Stein has scheduled sentencing for October 29, one week before Election Day.
This was Menendez’s second corruption trial. An earlier trial on other charges in 2017 ended in a jury stalemate.
“This case has always been about shocking corruption, about bribes totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz. This was not politics as usual, this was politics for profit. And now that a jury has convicted Bob Menendez, his years of selling his office to the highest bidder are finally over,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams outside the courthouse.
Two co-defendants were also convicted. New Jersey businessmen Wael Hana and Fred Daibes were accused of bribery. A third businessman, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty before trial and testified against the others.
Hana’s lawyer Lawrence Lustberg announced that he would file a motion to overturn the verdict. The American justice system had “in his opinion let him down,” said Lustberg. Daibes’ lawyer César de Castro also announced an appeal and said: “We believe the verdict is wrong.”
The trial took place in a federal courthouse just over a block from the state courthouse where former President Donald Trump was convicted in May of falsifying business records, and the two powerful men were on trial simultaneously for weeks.
The jury’s decision followed a lengthy investigation that included a June 2022 FBI raid on Menendez’s home in Englewood Cliffs, an affluent community across the Hudson River from New York City. FBI agents seized nearly $150,000 worth of gold bars and $480,000 in cash, mostly in the form of stacks of $100 bills stashed in boots, shoe boxes and jackets. A Mercedes-Benz convertible was parked in the garage.
Prosecutors argued that the gold, cash and car were bribes. Menendez’s lawyers disputed that, arguing that the gold belonged to his wife and that she had kept him in the obscure about financial difficulties so bad that she nearly lost her house to foreclosure. They said the senator regularly hoarded money because his parents fled Cuba in 1951 and had only the cash they had hidden in a grandfather clock.
More shocking, however, were allegations that Menendez earned some of the treasure by abusing his influential position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to favor Egypt, a key U.S. ally that is frequently criticized by Americans for alleged human rights abuses.
Prosecutors said Nadine Menendez posed as a go-between to her powerful husband, exchanged text messages with an Egyptian general and helped arrange a visit to Washington by the head of Egypt’s intelligence service. She wrote to one general: “If you need anything, you have my number and we will arrange everything.”
Senator Menendez, prosecutors said, took steps to curry favor with Egyptian officials, including giving them information about the personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and ghostwriting a letter to his fellow senators urging them to withhold $300 million in military aid. The senator also told his wife to let her Egyptian contacts know that he wanted to approve $99 million worth of tank ammunition.
Prosecutors said serial numbers on the gold bars and fingerprints on the tape holding the stacks of cash together could be traced back to Hana and Daibes.
Prosecutors said Menendez took numerous actions to benefit the businessmen, including protecting Egypt’s decision to grant Hana a lucrative monopoly certifying that meat shipped to Egypt complied with Islamic dietary laws. Menendez urged a U.S. agriculture official to drop his opposition to the monopoly deal despite concerns it would drive up prices.
Uribe testified at the trial that he paid Nadine Menendez for a Mercedes-Benz convertible in exchange for the senator helping her ensure that his insurance business would not be affected by the criminal investigation in New Jersey into his friend’s trucking company.
Prosecutors also said Senator Menendez was trying to interfere in a federal criminal case against Daibes, a politically influential real estate developer accused of bank fraud. U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Philip Sellinger testified at the trial that Menendez questioned him about the charges against Daibes and said he believed he was being “treated unfairly.”
Prosecutors also presented evidence that Menendez acted on behalf of the Qatari government to aid Daibes close a multimillion-dollar deal with a Qatari investment fund.
Menendez’s political career began in 1974 when he was elected to the Union City, New Jersey, Board of Education just two years out of high school. He later served as a state legislator and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992. He became a U.S. Senator in 2006.
Menendez had the dubious honor of being the only U.S. Senator to be impeached twice.
In 2015, he was indicted for allowing a wealthy Florida eye doctor to buy his influence through luxury vacations and campaign contributions. After a jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict in 2017, federal prosecutors in New Jersey dropped the case rather than retry him.
Voters viewed the mistrial as an exoneration and re-elected Menendez as senator.
After his second indictment last summer, Menendez claimed he was being persecuted and said some people “cannot accept that a first-generation Latino American could rise from humble beginnings to become a U.S. senator.”
