Menendez verdict should serve as warning to New Jersey politicians

Our state has seen some laughably corrupt behavior in recent years by pols who may think they, unlike Sen. Bob Menendez, wouldn’t get caught taking gold bars as bribes. (Photo by Adam Gray/Getty Images)

When Sen. Bob Menendez skated on corruption charges eight years ago, he had the audacity to threaten his political foes while standing outside a federal courthouse in Newark.

The jury in that case did not acquit Menendez of the charges he faced. They deadlocked on whether he was guilty or not, causing a mistrial. Still, Menendez acted like he had been cleared, and in a now-infamous line, he issued a warning to the politicians who thought they might try to succeed him in the U.S. Senate if he had been convicted and jailed.

“To those who were digging my political grave so that they could jump into my seat, I know who you are and I won’t forget you,” he said .

He was a little less Tony Soprano when speaking to reporters on Tuesday, after a jury found him guilty on all counts of taking bribes, obstructing justice, and — a new one even for a state known for public corruption — acting as a foreign agent.

“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,” he said.

I’m not sure whether the U.S. Supreme Court will uphold Menendez’s conviction if his expected appeal makes it that far, since our high court has recently found it has a great tolerance for public corruption. But for now at least, New Jersey politicians are on notice that they can’t take gold bars from men seeking favors, they can’t try to interfere in the criminal prosecutions of their friends, they can’t threaten public officials for looking into shady business deals, and they can’t leverage their connections to get their friends million-dollar investments from foreign leaders. And if they do all this anyway, they may not get away with saying, “My wife did it.”

But will New Jersey pols heed those warnings? Michael Thorning, director of structural democracy at the Washington, D.C.-based Bipartisan Policy Center, told Dana DiFilippo he thinks the verdict could act as a deterrent.

“It should suggest to people that, given a number of high-profile public corruption cases have been overturned in recent years, this one suggests to anyone who might be inclined to engage in this kind of activity that it is not a free ride, and that certainly you can still be convicted and end up out of office and serving jail time,” Thorning said.

Hopefully so, but I’m not optimistic. Our state has seen some laughably corrupt behavior in recent years, like the mayoral candidate who took cash in a Baskin-Robbins bag from a lawyer seeking a job, then argued it wasn’t a bribe because he hadn’t been elected yet. But it also sees less obviously crooked but still dishonorable behavior on a regular basis that barely raises eyebrows.

More likely, I fear, the lesson Menendez’s verdict will teach New Jersey pols is that as long as their corruption isn’t as cartoonish as accepting literal gold from men seeking favors, then they’re in the clear.

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