Bob Menendez, the as soon as a robust New Jersey senator, cried as he begged a Manhattan decide for leniency Wednesday — and was sentenced to 11 years in jail for promoting out his lofty put up for gold bars, money, a Mercedes-Benz convertible and different bribes.
“Your honor, You have before you a chastened man,” Menendez, 71, mentioned earlier than choking up.
“I have dedicated my entire life to the service of others,” he mentioned, dabbing his tears with a tissue. “I am far from a perfect man, but I believe in my half century of public service I have done more good than bad.”
The show of waterworks got here earlier than Manhattan federal court docket decide Sidney Stein handed the sentence to the three-term Democrat — who resigned in shame in August after a jury discovered him responsible of taking a whole lot of 1000’s of {dollars} in payola in alternate for safeguarding and enriching businessmen and international governments.
“Somewhere along the way you became, I’m sorry to say, a corrupt politician,” Stein instructed the disgraced pol.
The previous head of the Senate Overseas Relations Committee — tasked with approving large sums of deadly navy assist — did favors for Egypt and Qatar whereas go-betweens showered him and his spouse, Nadine, with money, gold bars, the posh automobile, checks for a no-show job and payouts to a sham “consulting” agency, trial proof revealed.
“What else can the love of my life do for you?” Menendez’s spouse Nadine instructed an Egyptian official whereas her worldwide affairs honcho hubby smoked cigars and swigged crimson wine at a Might 2019 assembly at Morton’s Steakhouse, an FBI agent who secretly noticed the scene testified.
Brokers who raided the Menendezs’ cluttered Englewood Cliffs home in June 2022 discovered 13 gold bars price $150,000 tucked inside a bed room protected. Practically $500,000 in money was unfold out all around the home— together with wads of payments totaling $14,500 piled right into a pair of Timberland work boots, and cash-filled envelopes stuffed into the pockets of his official Senate jacket.
Menendez didn’t testify through the nine-week trial. However his older sister tried to downplay the money trove as an innocuous decades-long behavior stemming from his mistrust of banks as a consequence of their Cuban heritage.
“It’s a Cuban thing,” Caridad Gonzalez testified.
Prosecutors had requested the decide to condemn Menendez to at the least 15 years in jail. They identified that the case was the primary time that any US Senator — or any public official, for that matter — was discovered responsible of serving as an unlawful “foreign agent” whereas in workplace.
“Menendez, who swore an oath to represent the United States and the State of New Jersey, instead put his high office up for sale in exchange for this hoard of bribes,” the feds wrote.
Protection attorneys had urged the decide to have “mercy” on Menendez, and impose a sentence of lower than two years.
The responsible verdict has already “rendered him a national punchline and stripped him of every conceivable personal, professional, and financial benefit,” the attorneys argued in court docket papers.
Prosecutors at trial laid out a staggering slew of actions Menendez took between 2018 and 2022 on behalf of international nations and his alleged cronies, together with businessmen Wael Hana, 40, and Fred Daibes, 66, who had been additionally convicted of funneling bribes to the senator and his spouse.
Daibes was sentenced earlier Wednesday to seven years in jail and fined $1.75 million, whereas Hana was handed a eight-year sentence and fined $1.25 million.
Among the many favors Menendez doled out whereas the payoffs rolled in was ghostwriting a letter asking the US to unfreeze $300 million in navy assist to Egypt that had been held up as a consequence of human rights issues, jurors heard.
Menendez additionally leaned on the Agriculture Division to guard Egypt-born businessman Hana’s profitable monopoly on approving halal meat exports to Egypt — awarded regardless of Hana having no prior expertise with halal items, trial proof confirmed.
On prime of that, Menendez tried to meddle in a state prosecution on behalf of insurance coverage dealer Jose Uribe, 57 — who flipped on the embattled pol and testified to purchasing Nadine a brand new Mercedes-Benz C-300 in alternate for the senator’s assist, jurors heard.
“Congratulations mon amour de la vie, we are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes,” Nadine Menendez texted her husband after receiving the primary fee towards the brand new automobile, utilizing the French phrase for “love of my life.”
The then-senator later bragged throughout a dinner at upscale North Jersey Spanish restaurant Segovia that “I saved your ass, not once but twice,” Uribe testified.
Menendez additionally tried to get entangled in a federal financial institution fraud case in opposition to his shut pal Daibes, together with by griping concerning the prosecution to future US Lawyer of New Jersey Philip Sellinger, Sellinger testified.
Sellinger was within the operating for the highly effective Justice Division put up on the time — and profitable a possible blessing from Menendez, New Jersey’s senior senator, may have helped clinch his candidacy, jurors heard.
A jury of 12 New Yorkers convicted Menendez of all 16 expenses he confronted, together with bribery, extortion, appearing as an unlawful international agent and obstructing justice.
Nadine was additionally charged by the feds, however her trial is at the moment set for March, after her case was delayed as a consequence of her being recognized with breast most cancers.
Uribe, who is predicted to testify at Nadine’s trial, shall be sentenced after that case is resolved.
The Manhattan trial was Menendez’s second time dealing with federal corruption expenses.
In an earlier case, New Jersey prosecutors charged him with accepting lavish bribes — together with all-expense-paid holidays and personal flights — in alternate for favors to a Palm Seashore physician. However that case led to a mistrial in 2017.
Menendez has maintained his innocence and vowed to attraction his conviction.
At trial, Menendez’s attorneys claimed that he’d been merely “doing his job” by serving to out constituents and fascinating in “diplomacy.”
Additionally they took the brazen step of blaming his spouse for the gold bars discovered of their dwelling.
The attorneys argued that the “beautiful, tall” Nadine, who’s of Lebanese and Albanian descent, “kept him in the dark” concerning the payoffs. They claimed that receiving gold bar “gifts” was a typical Lebanese customized.
“It’s cultural,” legal professional Avi Weitzman argued. “They like to give gold and other precious metals as gifts.”
But the feds introduced proof that the senator was the one calling the photographs of their relationship.
Uribe, the insurance coverage dealer, recalled a night assembly with Menendez at which the senator rung a small bell to beckon his spouse onto their patio — after calling out to her, “mon amour!”
The feds reminded jurors of that second of their closing pitch to jurors, who discovered Menendez responsible after round 12½ hours of deliberations unfold over three days.
“He’s not a puppet having his strings pulled by someone he summons with a bell,” prosecutor Paul Monteleoni mentioned.
