WASHINGTON — Shortly after a federal jury found Sen. Bob Menendez guilty on a raft of corruption charges, the man who could orchestrate Menendez’s expulsion from the U.S. Senate urged New Jersey’s senior senator to resign.
“In light of this guilty verdict, Senator Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our county, and resign,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat of New York who had held off on criticizing Menendez, said Tuesday afternoon.
New Jersey’s other senator, Cory Booker, and Gov. Phil Murphy also pressed Menendez to resign after the verdict. Murphy said that once Menendez leaves office he would appoint someone to fill the vacancy until the next Senate begins in 2025.
“Senator Menendez received a fair trial and due process of law as he was entitled to under our constitution,” Murphy said in a statement. “If he refuses to vacate his office, I call on the U.S. Senate to vote to expel him,” Murphy said. “In the event of a vacancy, I will exercise my duty to make a temporary appointment to ensure the people of New Jersey have the representation they deserve.”
A spokesman for Menendez, Joshua Natoli, did not respond to a voicemail and emailed questions about whether the senator would resign.
Credit: (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)How the verdict could affect Senate business
The guilty verdict could complicate Democratic plans in both the Senate now and in the November election.
Senate Democrats, who hold a 51-49 majority, can rarely afford defections from their party members, in particular on votes to confirm federal judges, an area of focus for the party given that little substantial legislation is working its way through Congress.
One such judicial nominee, Adeel Mangi, whose nomination has faced blowback from Republicans as well as some Senate Democrats in tight reelection races and a murky conservative legal advocacy group, would likely need the vote of Menendez or his replacement to be confirmed.
Menendez has filed to run to hold his Senate seat as an independent, a move Democrats worry could siphon votes from Rep. Andy Kim (D-3rd), who is running to replace him, and throw the race to Republican Curtis Bashaw. New Jersey has not elected a Republican to the Senate since 1972.
Could senators expel Menendez?
Expelling members of Congress, in particular in the Senate, is exceedingly rare.
Six House members in history have been expelled, the most recent being former Rep. George Santos, the first member since 2002 to be booted from the chamber.
Since 1789, 2,003 people have been U.S. senators, according to a tally the Senate Historical Office maintains.
The Senate has voted to kick out just 15 senators, 14 of whom were expelled during the Civil War due to their allegiance to the Confederacy.
Senators facing criticism typically resign before an expulsion process formally begins, as former Minnesota Democrat Al Franken did in 2017 over allegations of sexual misconduct. An expulsion vote requires a two-thirds majority, or 67 members, to vote in favor of expulsion.
Nadine Menendez, who married the senator in 2020 and disclosed a breast cancer diagnosis during the trial, is being tried separately.
Senators can continue serving after they have been convicted of a crime, a point Menendez’s circumstances underscored.
Of the 13 senators who have been indicted while in office, seven, including Menendez, were convicted of their crimes.
One of them, former Sen. Harrison Williams Jr., who represented New Jersey, served 21 months in prison in the 1980s as part of the broader FBI sting operation known as “ABSCAM.”
The most recent senator to be convicted was Ted Stevens, a Republican from Alaska, who was found guilty in federal court in 2008 of failing to properly report financial gifts. His conviction was later overturned after a special investigation found the original prosecutors hid evidence in the case.
Calls to resign echo
After Tuesday’s verdict, Reps. Frank Pallone (D-6th), Mikie Sherrill (D-11th) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12th) also said Menendez should resign.
Rep. Rob Menendez (D-8th), the senator’s son and a first-term congressman, has largely avoided talking with reporters on Capitol Hill about his father’s political future. His spokeswoman, Rachel Mondragon, did not respond to emailed questions about the verdict.
The jury found Menendez guilty on all 16 counts he faced in connection with a financial scheme prosecutors said ran from 2018 to 2023 to enrich himself and his wife, Nadine, by using powers of his Senate post.
Credit: (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)On Tuesday afternoon, outside the Manhattan courthouse where the case was tried, Menendez and his lead defense attorney, Adam Fee, said they would appeal the verdict. “I’ve never been anything but a patriot of my country and for my country,” Menendez said.
Menendez and his wife accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of bribes in the forms of cash, the jury found, in exchange for the senator performing political favors for the governments of Egypt and Qatar.
Some of these favors included steering U.S. aid to Egypt and signing off weapons packages, including for batches of tank rounds, for the Egyptian military.
Gold bars and more
After one weapons sale worth $99 million, Nadine Menendez received information about the deal from the senator before forwarding a text to an associate who then sent it to an Egyptian official, who responded with a thumbs-up emoji. Menendez had sway over such deals because he was a high-ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — the panel has jurisdiction over weapons deals, treaties and foreign aid — and at times chairman of the committee while he was at the center of the scheme.
Nadine Menendez, who married the senator in 2020 and disclosed a breast cancer diagnosis during the trial, is being tried separately.
Sen. Menendez also accepted payment in the form of gold bars, mortgage payments, plus a “no-show” job and a black Mercedes-Benz convertible for his wife, prosecutors said.
Credit: (U.S. Attorney's Office via AP)The senator’s sister, Caridad Gonzalez, testified that the practice of holding on to cash at home was rooted in the family’s Cuban roots.
“It’s a Cuban thing,” Gonzalez said. Her family, which left Cuba in 1951, three years before Menendez was born in the U.S., held on to money out of a distrust of banks, she said. “Daddy always said, ‘Don’t trust the banks. If you trust the banks, you never know what can happen.’”
Menendez is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 29. He faces decades in prison.
The jury deliberated for two and a half days before rendering its verdict.
After the jury announced its verdict, Sidney Stein, the judge, said jurors had done a great job.
“You’ve been here every day the court has been open since May 13,” Stein said. “As I’ve said on more than one occasion, you were here on time, you listened to testimony, some of you took notes.”
