US Senator Bob Menendez convicted of all charges, including accepting bribes paid in cash, gold and a car

U.S. Senator Bob Menendez was convicted on all charges in a corruption trial, including accepting gold and cash bribes from three New Jersey businessmen and acting as a foreign agent for the Egyptian government. The jury's decision on Tuesday (early Wednesday AEST) came after a nine-week trial. Prosecutors argued that the Democrat abused his power by meeting with Egyptian intelligence officials and helping the country secure millions of dollars in U.S. military aid, protecting allies from criminal investigations, and enriching his associates, including his wife.

As the verdict was read in court, the 70-year-old sometimes looked towards the jury, appearing to mark a document in front of him. Afterward, he sat with his hands clasped, his chin resting on the back of his hands, with his elbows on the table. Menendez did not testify at the trial, but he publicly insisted that he was simply performing his duties as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He said that the gold bars found by the FBI at 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 verdict, delivered in a federal court in Manhattan, comes four months before election day, potentially derailing Menendez’s chances of running for re-election as an independent candidate. Following the verdict, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer immediately called for Menendez’s resignation. “Given this guilty verdict, Senator Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our country and resign,” Schumer said in a statement. This trial marks the second time the New Jersey Democrat has faced corruption charges. In 2017, an earlier prosecution on unrelated charges ended in a hung jury.

His co-defendants, two New Jersey businessmen, were also found guilty on the charges they faced. All three had pleaded not guilty. Another businessman pleaded guilty before the trial and testified against Menendez and the other defendants. The jury's decision was the result of a long investigation that included an FBI raid in June 2022 on the couple's Englewood Cliffs home, an affluent community across the Hudson River from New York City. Inside, FBI agents found nearly $150,000 in gold bars and cash, much of it in stacks of $100 bills, totaling more than $480,000. A Mercedes-Benz convertible was in the garage.

A supervising agent testified that he ordered the valuables seized because he suspected they were the proceeds of a crime. He said the stacks of cash were stuffed in the senator's boots, shoeboxes, and jackets. At the trial, prosecutors argued that the gold bars, cash, and car were bribes. Defense lawyers disputed this, arguing that the gold bars belonged to his wife, who kept his financial troubles from him to the point that she nearly lost their house to foreclosure. They said the cash stemmed from the senator's habit of hoarding cash at home, as he had heard his parents did when they fled Cuba in 1951 with only cash hidden in a grandfather clock.

However, more shocking than the cash or gold were the allegations that Menendez used his powerful position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to take actions that benefited Egypt, a key U.S. ally but one that is frequently criticized by the U.S. for alleged human rights abuses. Prosecutors said that Mrs. Menendez, who described herself as a conduit to her powerful husband, exchanged text messages with an Egyptian general and helped arrange a visit to Washington for the head of Egyptian intelligence. She texted one general, "Anytime you need anything you have my number, and we will make everything happen."

Prosecutors said that Menendez took actions to curry favor with Egyptian officials, including providing them with information about the staff at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and drafting a letter for other senators to encourage them to lift a hold on $300 million in military aid to Egypt. The senator also told his wife to tell her Egyptian contacts that he planned to approve a $99 million sale of tank ammunition. The charges, initially announced last September, expanded over time to include bribery, extortion, fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and Menendez acting as a foreign agent for Egypt.

Menendez went to trial in mid-May alongside two New Jersey businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, who were accused of bribing him. A third businessman, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty before the trial and testified against the others. Lawyers for Daibes and Hana said they were innocent. Prosecutors said that serial numbers on the gold bars and fingerprints on the tape used to bind the cash traced back to Hana and Daibes. They said some of the fingerprints on the tape belonged to Menendez. Prosecutors said that in return for the bribes, Menendez took numerous actions to benefit the businessmen.

These actions included protecting a lucrative monopoly that Egypt decided to grant Hana to certify that meat shipments to Egypt met Islamic dietary requirements. Menendez asked a U.S. agriculture official to drop his objections to the monopoly deal, which he had questioned over concerns that it would drive up prices. Uribe testified at the trial that he paid for a Mercedes-Benz convertible for Mrs. Menendez in exchange for the senator’s help in ensuring that his insurance business was not impacted by a New Jersey criminal investigation into a trucking company owned by his friend.

Prosecutors also said that Menendez attempted to interfere with a federal criminal prosecution of Daibes, a politically influential real estate developer who was charged with bank fraud. U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Philip Sellinger testified at the trial that Menendez asked him about the Daibes prosecution and said that he believed he was “being treated unfairly.” Prosecutors also presented evidence that Menendez took actions that benefited the government of Qatar to help Daibes secure a multi-million-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 after graduating high school. He later served in the state legislature before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992. He became a U.S. Senator in 2006. Menendez has the dubious distinction of being the only U.S. senator to be indicted twice. In 2015, he was accused of allowing a wealthy Florida eye doctor to buy his influence with lavish vacations and campaign donations. New Jersey federal prosecutors dropped the case rather than try him again after a jury failed to reach a verdict in 2017.

Voters accepted the mistrial as an exoneration and sent Menendez back to the Senate. After being indicted a second time last summer, Menendez claimed he was being persecuted, saying some people "cannot accept that a first-generation Latino American of humble beginnings could rise to be a U.S. senator.” While the trial was underway, he announced he would run for re-election as an independent.