US pro-Armenian senator convicted on all counts in historic corruption trial

Politico has published an article on the conviction of US pro-Armenian Senator Bob Menendez following a trial.

Sen. Bob Menendez on July 16 was found guilty in his corruption trial, a historic verdict marking a dramatic downfall for New Jersey’s senior senator who was one of the most influential people in Washington D.C., Caliber.Az reports citing Politico.

The 12-member jury found Menendez guilty on all 16 counts after a two-month trial on charges that all but ended his political career. Federal prosecutors accused Menendez of bribery, acting as a foreign agent for Egypt, obstruction of justice, extortion and conspiring to commit those crimes.

Menendez is seeking reelection to the Senate as an independent, although the guilty verdicts quickly raise the prospect of an expulsion vote unless he opts to resign from office. He’s already faced calls to resign from his former Democratic allies in New Jersey and on Capitol Hill.

It is now up to US District Judge Sidney Stein to determine the 70-year-old Menendez’s sentence, scheduled for Oct. 29. He faces decades in prison.

Federal prosecutors in New York announced the bombshell indictment against Menendez last fall, describing a yearslong bribery scheme involving Menendez, his wife Nadine Menendez and three New Jersey businesspeople. The alleged bribes began flowing shortly after the senator’s 2017 corruption trial ended in a hung jury. Two of the businesspeople — Wael “Will” Hana and Fred Daibes — were also found guilty, while the third, Jose Uribe, made a plea deal and testified against Menendez.

 Prosecutors described Menendez as a “senator on the take” who used his power and influence to benefit his associates and the governments of Egypt and Qatar in exchange for cash, gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz for Nadine, who was also charged but did not stand trial because of a cancer diagnosis.

Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said that “this case has always been about shocking levels of corruption.” He added: “This wasn’t politics as usual. It was politics for profit.”

Immediately after the verdict, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called on Menendez to step down.

“In light of 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 brief statement.

Should Menendez’s Senate seat be vacated before his term expires early next year, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy will appoint a replacement to serve the remainder of his term. He reiterated his call for Menendez to step down and, if not, urged the Senate to vote to expel him so he could appoint a successor.

Rep. Andy Kim is the Democratic nominee for the full Senate term and is favored to win in November. He called it “a sad and somber day for New Jersey and our country.”

“I called on Senator Menendez to step down when these charges were first made public, and now that he has been found guilty, I believe the only course of action for him is to resign his seat immediately,” Kim said in a statement. “The people of New Jersey deserve better.”

Swift downfall after 50 years in politics

The guilty verdict is likely the coda to a half-century in politics.

In an effort to avoid being indicted a second time, he relied on the defense attorney who helped him beat the earlier corruption charges, Abbe Lowell. But an allegedly misleading presentation Lowell gave to federal prosecutors last fall before the indictment became the basis for obstruction of justice charges against the senator. Lowell has not been accused of wrongdoing.

After that, Menendez found another group of aggressive attorneys who spent a good portion of the trial trying to distance their client from the men accused of bribing him as well as the senator’s own wife. That strategy may have backfired.

As one prosecutor noted, Nadine hardly seemed like a “diabolical genius” who could keep the senator — one of the nation’s most experienced lawmakers — in the dark as his house was literally being filled with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gold tied to Daibes, his friend of 30 years.

The incoherent defense strategy among the three defendants may have played a factor in jurors’ decision to find all three guilty.

Of all the guilty verdicts, the one finding that he served as an agent of the Egyptian government is the one most likely to taint Menendez’s legacy.

“He was their man,” federal prosecutor Daniel Richenthal told jurors in the final minutes of his closing arguments. “It is a horrible thing to say. This is a senior US senator, and he was their man.”

Prosecutors said he dropped his long-held concerns about human rights to help quickly deliver American weapons and military aid to the Egyptian government. At one point, Menendez even helped ghostwrite a letter intended to persuade his fellow senators to back off their concerns about the country’s human rights record.

Cash and gold bars painted a picture of corruption

Menendez declined to take the witness stand, a common decision for defendants. He did not testify in his 2017 trial either.

Instead, prosecutors were able to let reams of text messages, emails and testimony from some of Menendez’s closest associates.

The picture was not pretty.

The FBI in 2022 raided Menendez’s North Jersey home, where they seized hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and over a dozen gold bars which prosecutors said were linked to bribes. Some of the valuables seized were physically shown to jurors at the start of trial. Envelopes of cash found in the Menendez home had Daibes’ fingerprints on them and gold bars in the possession of the Menendezes also had serial numbers tied to Daibes and Hana.

Before the trial, Menendez said that he withdrew funds from his bank account to store in his home. Authorities found around $480,000 throughout the house. A forensic accountant who analyzed Menendez’s bank records said the senator withdrew $400 in cash from his bank account regularly, although not in $10,000 increments. Much of the cash found in Menendez’s home was bundled together in $10,000 stacks.

Throughout the trial, Menendez shifted blame to his wife.

Prosecutors, however, have described Nadine as a go-between for Menendez and those offering bribes. In one instance, Menendez called a senior official at the USDA and told him to stop questioning a lucrative halal meat certification granted to Hana by the government of Egypt.

Prosecutors also said that Menendez meddled in pending criminal matters. When Daibes faced a federal bank fraud investigation, prosecutors said that Menendez tried to install a US attorney favorable to Daibes. And when Uribe faced a state investigation into his trucking company, prosecutors said Menendez met with then-New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal to quash it. Grewal recalled to jurors that an aide called the encounter “gross.”

Menendez also faced charges that he acted on behalf of the governments of Egypt and Qatar during his time as chair of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Text messages prosecutors presented to jurors showed that Menendez sent staffing information on the American embassy in Cairo to Nadine. She then sent it to Hana, who relayed it to Egyptian government officials.