Democratic leaders call for New Jersey Sen. Menendez to resign after conviction

New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez has been found guilty on all counts in a federal corruption trial. The prominent Democrat was accused of abuse of power and enriching himself and associates. Just minutes after the verdict was delivered, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer again called for his fellow Democrat to step down immediately. William Brangham discussed more with Ry Rivard of Politico.

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Amna Nawaz: And let’s turn our focus now to some news impacting the Democratic Party today.

New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez has been found guilty on all counts in a federal corruption trial. The prominent Democrat was accused of abuse of power and enriching himself and associates.

Geoff Bennett: And just minutes after the verdict was delivered, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer again called for his fellow Democrat to step down immediately.

William Brangham has the latest back in Washington.

William Brangham: Menendez was convicted on 16 counts, including bribery, fraud, obstruction, and acting as a foreign agent. Prosecutors detailed how Menendez trade political favors to the Egyptian government and an American businessman in exchange for lavish amounts of money and luxury goods.

After the verdict, U.S. attorney Damian Williams spoke outside the courthouse in New York.

Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney, Southern District of New York: This case has always been about shocking levels of corruption, hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in the form of cash, gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz.

This wasn’t politics as usual. This was politics for profit. And now that the jury has convicted Bob Menendez, his years of selling his office to the highest bidder have finally come to an end.

William Brangham: For his part, Senator Menendez decried the verdict and vowed to appeal.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ): I’m deeply, deeply disappointed by the jury’s decision. I have every faith that the law and the facts did not sustain that decision and that we will be successful upon appeal.

I have never violated my public oath. I have never been anything but a patriot of my country and for my country. I have never, ever been a foreign agent.

William Brangham: The senator’s wife, Nadine Menendez, has also been charged, but her trial has been postponed indefinitely as she undergoes cancer treatment.

To break this all down, I am joined by Ry Rivard of Politico, who has been covering this.

Ry, thank you so much for being here.

I detailed briefly the charges that Menendez was found guilty of, but can you sketch out the sort of overarching conspiracy here?

Ry Rivard, Politico: Yes, it starts with those shocking or sometimes comical levels of gold and cash that were found by the FBI in his home, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, over a dozen gold bars.

And it goes back to the people that are now found guilty of providing it to him, people who include a prominent New Jersey real estate developer who Menendez helped cement a deal with Qatar for the benefit of this real estate developer, and a halal meat mogul who wanted a meet monopoly from the Egyptian government to be allowed by the American government, that he didn’t want American officials to interfere in this arrangement, and Menendez made phone calls for — or made a phone call for this person to try and get the USDA to back off scrutiny.

And then there was a Mercedes in his — car that was tied to another defendant who pled guilty and testified in this trial, where that defendant wanted Menendez to attempt to disrupt a state investigation of his insurance company.

And so there’s all of these overlapping conspiracies involving a trio of New Jersey businesspeople who wanted different things from the senator and gave him money and cash to get them.

William Brangham: And the central conspiracy allegation is that he used his influence as a senator to squash investigations, to make aid to Egypt flow, like, he basically put his thumb on the scale in lots of different ways in a corrupt way?

Ry Rivard: That’s exactly right.

And in some cases he wasn’t always successful. The prosecutors in this case, the federal prosecutors said he didn’t succeed in disrupting the federal investigation or a federal criminal case that he was attempting to disrupt or a state investigation that he was attempting to disrupt.

But he was found guilty of taking bribes and acting to try and disrupt those investigations.

William Brangham: And what was Menendez’s argument here? What was his defense in all of this? We heard a little bit of what he had to say. But what did he argue in court?

Ry Rivard: Well, it became popular to call it the “throw the wife under the bus” defense.

But in some ways he said that his wife, Nadine, who he married in 2020 and was dating in the early part of this conspiracy and these schemes, had done things behind his back, that they lived separate lives in some ways, at least financially separate lives, and that she had made arrangements with people that he didn’t know about.

His co-defendants, two of his co-defendants in this case, had slightly different defenses, which didn’t always mesh with his own, which is that they didn’t deny that they gave the senator things. They didn’t deny that they gave him gifts. They said that these things, if they gave them, just weren’t bribes. They were goodwill gifts, which can be permitted in certain cases by the law.

William Brangham: I guess it’s — a gold bar and a Mercedes-Benz are hard to be seen as goodwill gifts in this case.

What happens now? I mean, he says he’s going to appeal, but the calls for him politically to step down keep growing louder and louder.

Ry Rivard: Right. He hasn’t heeded them so far, although they have obviously intensified in the hours since the jury found him guilty on these 16 counts.

He is mounting an independent run for the Senate, but you have Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, suggesting that he should step down. It seems like it’s possible, although nobody has said this, that, if he doesn’t, if Menendez doesn’t voluntarily step down, the Senate could choose to expel him.

In the meantime, it’s hard to imagine that New Jersey is getting effective representation from somebody who’s being shunned by their colleagues.

William Brangham: And what happens with regards to sentencing? There’s got to be a date set for that. And what kinds of time might he be facing for these crimes?

Ry Rivard: If you stack them all together, he’s facing over two centuries in prison.

I think the lengthiest sentence, the single sentence would be 20 years. He could serve those concurrently. But there’s a long way to go, I think, before sentencing. I mean, the sentencing hearing is in October, but there’s a long way to go legally. There are appeals of the jury verdict that he wants to make before the judge.

Then there are appeals of the sentence or the conviction that he could make to appeals courts. We have a Supreme Court that’s very interested in some of these corruption issues. They have overturned other corruption convictions.

And they’re interested in reexamining, as we saw in the case involving former President Trump, or examining, in some cases, for the first time novel legal issues around immunity for elected officials. And there is a form of congressional immunity that Menendez has and tried to use, and the judge didn’t allow him to use it in certain cases in this trial that he could very well appeal on.

It’s an intriguing legal issue that the Supreme Court could be interested in.

William Brangham: All right, Ry Rivard of Politico, thanks so much for sharing your reporting with us.

Ry Rivard: Thank you.