CNN
—
A jury on Tuesday discovered Sen. Bob Menendez responsible on all counts in his federal corruption trial, and Senate Majority Chief Chuck Schumer swiftly known as on his Democratic colleague to resign.
Menendez, of New Jersey, was convicted of 16 counts — together with bribery, extortion, wire fraud, obstruction of justice and performing as a international agent — for his position in a yearslong bribery scheme.
The decision is a staggering blow for the Democratic institution in New Jersey, the place longtime state powerbroker George Norcross faces a separate racketeering indictment, and a stain on the get together’s nationwide model. Menendez, one of the vital feared and influential figures in state politics, now faces a long time in jail — and additional questions on how he wielded his energy as the previous chairman of the International Relations Committee.
“Clearly, I’m deeply, deeply disenchanted by the jury’s determination,” Menendez instructed reporters outdoors the courtroom. “I’ve each religion that the regulation and the information didn’t maintain that call and that we’ll achieve success upon enchantment.”
Menendez, who faces sentencing on October 29, maintained he by no means violated his public oath and has by no means been something “however a patriot of my nation and for my nation.”
“I’ve by no means, ever been a international agent, and the choice rendered by the jury at the moment would put in danger each member of the US Senate when it comes to what they assume a international agent could be,” he stated.
Damian Williams, the US lawyer for the Southern District of New York, stated after the decision: “This wasn’t politics as regular; this was politics for revenue.”
Menendez appeared to shake his head when the primary responsible verdict in opposition to him was learn. When the jury was completed, he leaned his elbows on the protection desk along with his fingers clasped in entrance of his face. When the courtroom officer introduced there was a verdict and events piled in, each Menendez’s daughter, Alicia Menendez, and his sister sat in silence, wanting straight forward and never talking. They appeared to embrace as soon as one other.
Because the senator left the courtroom, he walked over to his sister and daughter, spoke to them for a second and left. All of them had critical expressions on their faces. Menendez’s look was stern.
Even earlier than his conviction, Menendez’s case sparked a revolt amongst rank-and-file Democrats in opposition to the state get together machine, which has for many years run roughshod over outsider candidates. The race to switch him, which started shortly after Menendez was indicted, initially featured first girl Tammy Murphy. The surge of assist for her from county get together bosses, over the extra in style Rep. Andy Kim, now the nominee, led to a grassroots backlash.
“It is a unhappy and somber day for New Jersey and our nation,” Kim stated in an announcement Tuesday, “Our public servants ought to work for the folks, and at the moment we noticed the folks decide Senator Menendez as responsible and unfit to serve. I known as on Senator Menendez to step down when these costs have been first made public, and now that he has been discovered responsible, I consider the one plan of action for him is to resign his seat instantly. The folks of New Jersey deserve higher.”
Ought to Menendez stay within the race as an unbiased candidate, that might break up the Democratic vote, opening a path for Republican nominee Curtis Bashaw – a situation Democrats are determined to keep away from given the many challenges they face in defending their slender majority.
Schumer, who had beforehand refused to weigh in on whether or not Menendez ought to step down, instantly launched an announcement after the decision was introduced, saying that Menendez “should now do what is correct for his constituents, the Senate, and our nation, and resign.” From Menendez’s dwelling state, Gov. Phil Murphy and Sen. Cory Booker, each Democrats, reiterated their earlier requires Menendez to step down, and plenty of Democrats on Capitol Hill adopted Schumer’s lead, together with Judiciary Chairman and Majority Whip Dick Durbin.
If Menendez doesn’t resign, it will take a two-thirds vote within the Senate to take away him.
Prosecutors efficiently argued that the senator tried to make use of his energy to advance Egyptian navy pursuits, intrude in felony prosecutions and safe funding from Qatari officers, amongst different issues. Menendez and his spouse allegedly acquired gold bars, a whole lot of hundreds of {dollars} in money, a Mercedes-Benz convertible and different bribes in trade for his affect.
The senator’s spouse, Nadine Menendez, was additionally charged within the case, however her trial was postponed indefinitely by the decide after her breast most cancers analysis. She has pleaded not responsible.
Essentially the most critical costs of extortion and wire fraud carry a statutory most of 20 years in jail on every depend. In all, Menendez faces a most of 222 years in jail for the 16 costs if served consecutively. Nonetheless, any sentences would run concurrently until the courtroom orders in any other case.
Sentencing is scheduled for October 29, only a week earlier than Election Day.
Menendez’s co-defendants, New Jersey businessmen Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, have been additionally discovered responsible on all of the counts they confronted for his or her roles within the scheme. They declined to remark to reporters as they exited the courtroom on Tuesday.
Gold bars, vehicles and money
Prosecutors spent nearly seven weeks untangling the multiple corruption schemes that they allege Bob and Nadine Menendez and the co-defendants have been concerned in.
Federal prosecutors structured their case by chapters, calling witnesses to testify about separate schemes allegedly brokered by the senator in tandem along with his spouse. In accordance with proof offered by prosecutors in courtroom, the schemes have been brokered concerned Hana, Daibes and one other co-conspirator, Jose Uribe, the New Jersey businessman who allegedly bribed the senator in trade for authorized favors. Uribe struck a plea deal forward of the trial.
Uribe, one of many authorities’s star witnesses, testified that he bribed Menendez in trade for his affect to try to sway high prosecutors in New Jersey from pursuing felony instances in opposition to his associates. Uribe testified concerning the conspiracy and the way he paid for Nadine Menendez’s Mercedes.
“I (agreed) with Nadine Menendez and different folks to offer a automobile for Nadine with the intention to get the ability and affect of Mr. Menendez,” Uribe testified, so as “to assist me get a greater decision for one in all my associates who was being charged in a felony matter and to cease and kill investigations that might result in my daughter and members of the family.”
Uribe testified that in a 2020 dinner, the senator instructed him in Spanish, “I saved your a** twice. Not as soon as, however twice.”
Menendez’s lawyer stated Uribe, is a “good liar,” and “embellished” his testimony to “invent corroboration” with different proof of textual content messages, cellphone calls, and restaurant conferences that have been offered at trial including that Uribe didn’t talk about something felony with the senator.
Prosecutors pointed to a gathering Menendez had with Gurbir Grewal, a former New Jersey lawyer basic, the place Menendez allegedly introduced up the instances of Uribe’s associates to sway high prosecutors, however his protection attorneys claimed the senator was involved the instances have been selective prosecutions in opposition to his Latino constituents.
Grewal testified that Menendez he by no means talked about any defendants by title and the senator by no means requested him to intrude in any particular case however a colleague of the lawyer basic who was on the assembly known as the interplay “gross.”
Prosecutors alleged Hana paid Nadine Menendez three checks of $10,000 arrange a “sham job,” at IS EG Halal, Hana’s halal certification enterprise, as a canopy up for bribes and in addition made mortgage funds for her.
Federal prosecutors alleged that Menendez helped Hana defend a halal certification monopoly with the Egyptian authorities in trade for giving Nadine Menendez gold bars, money and paying her mortgage. Prosecutors additionally allege the senator pushed the nation of Egypt’s agenda for years and signed off on navy funding in trade for the bribes.
Ted McKinney, a former high official on the US Division of Agriculture, testified that the senator told him in a call to stop interfering along with his constituents after McKinney flagged issues over the monopoly.
Sarah Arkin, a former senior Senate International Relations workers member underneath Menendez, described the planning main as much as an October 2021 congressional delegation journey to Egypt and Qatar as “bizarre.”
Prosecutors allege Menendez ghost-wrote a letter for the Egyptian authorities to make use of to foyer different members of Congress over their issues concerning the nation’s human rights report.
“Menendez wasn’t performing weirdly, he was performing corruptly,” Monteleoni stated. “He was performing like a bribed man, as a result of that’s what he was.” The prosecutor instructed the jury these actions have been a part of a “broader sample of corruption.”
Prosecutors alleged Menendez met with Egyptian intelligence officers on a number of events, together with a Morton’s steakhouse dinner that was surveilled by FBI groups, and conspired with Hana to safe favorable navy arms offers for Egypt.
Prosecutors say Menendez pushed Egypt’s agenda for years within the Senate – the place he beforehand served as the highest Democrat on the International Relations Committee – and signed off on hundreds of thousands in navy funding in trade for bribes from Hana.
Prosecutors allege that Daibes used the senator’s connections to safe a multimillion-dollar business actual property take care of a Qatari funding agency tied to members of the Qatari royal household. The jury noticed messages between the senator and Qatari contacts, facilitating an introduction with Daibes. The senator additionally penned complimentary press releases concerning the Qatari authorities, which he instructed Daibes to flag to the Qatari buyers to curry favor, data proven at trial revealed.
Fingerprints belonging to the senator and Daibes have been discovered on cash-filled envelopes that have been among the many gadgets seized from Nadine Menendez’s dwelling, the place the senator additionally lived, throughout an FBI raid. Serial numbers on gold bars additionally seized on the dwelling throughout that raid revealed that Daibes had as soon as possessed the gold, in response to trial proof.
In the meantime, different textual content messages proven by prosecutors on the trial illustrated a timeline of how the senator pushed the nomination of Philip Sellinger, the present US lawyer for the District of New Jersey.
Sellinger testified that Menendez had hoped the US lawyer contender would take a look at a felony case in opposition to Daibes “rigorously” if he secured the place. However Sellinger additionally stated he by no means felt pressured to tip the scales for Daibes.
Through the trial, the senator’s attorneys known as 5 witnesses, together with his sister, sister-in-law and the lawyer for a good friend of Uribe. A Menendez lawyer stated the senator typically saved money as a result of familial trauma brought on by the Cuban communist regime. (Menendez was born in New York Metropolis, and Fidel Castro had not but come to energy on the time his household left Cuba.) In his closing argument, Menendez’s protection lawyer stated the dearth of proof within the case in opposition to the senator made it “shaky and rotten to its core.”
The senator’s sister, Caridad Gonzalez, testified that her household’s cash-storing practices have been “regular.”
“It’s a Cuban factor,” Gonzalez, 80, stated on the stand. “Each Cuban who got here to the States within the early 50s, 60s, 70s” saved money of their dwelling and in packing containers as a result of “they have been afraid of dropping what they labored so exhausting for, as a result of in Cuba, they took every little thing away from you.”
The FBI seized a complete of $486,461, 11 one-ounce gold bars and two one-kilogram gold bars from the Menendez dwelling on June 16, 2022.
Menendez’s attorneys constantly advised in cross-examinations that the senator was not conscious of the offers his spouse struck with the co-defendants, which included providing the senator’s affect for a worth.
Prosecutors alleged that Nadine Menendez was an middleman for communications between the co-conspirators and her prepared husband.
This story has been up to date with extra developments and response.
CNN’s Jeff Winter contributed to this report.