Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), found guilty of 16 counts in a bribery and public corruption scheme, was nowhere to be found during the Senate’s final summer working days before vacating his seat.
His absence the past two weeks ahead of his Aug. 20 resignation was to the relief of his fellow Democrats, who reiterated calls for the third-term senator to resign immediately following his July 16 felony conviction.
“I think he’s going to be laying low,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), who has not spoken with Menendez since the conviction, told the Washington Examiner this week. “I doubt if we’ll see him again.”
The Senate embarked Thursday afternoon on its annual August recess that will last until Sept. 9. Given that the chamber was only in session roughly two weeks between Menendez’s conviction and his effective resignation, Democrats felt it unnecessary to drudge through expulsion proceedings.
The last time Menendez cast a Senate vote was May 9 due to his Manhattan court proceedings. His office did not respond to a request for comment on whether he made any recent appearances in his Senate office.
Menendez used campaign funds to rack up nearly $2,600 to stay at the luxury Millennium Downtown New York hotel during his trial, according to FEC records reviewed by the Washington Examiner. Menendez lives just 16 miles from the hotel in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
Menendez’s postponed Aug. 20 resignation will allow him to collect an extra month’s pay of his $174,000 annual salary. His last full paycheck will be disbursed on Aug. 20, followed by a partial paycheck for his final few days on Sept. 5, according to the Senate’s payroll calendar .
In his resignation letter to Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ), Menendez stated his delayed departure was to "give time for my staff to transition to other possibilities, transfer constituent files that are pending, allow for an orderly process to choose an interim replacement, and for me to close out my Senate affairs."
Murphy has yet to name Menendez's interim replacement until the November election, in which Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ) is expected to win.
Had Menendez declined to resign, Democratic leaders were prepared to force him out of office.
“If he wasn’t going to resign, he should have been expelled,” Durbin told reporters in the days following the conviction. “I think he knows the sensitivity of the situation. I don't think he should be treated as a sitting senator when it comes to anything confidential.”
The jury found Menendez guilty across the board on charges including extortion, wire fraud, obstruction of justice, acting as a foreign agent for Egypt, bribery, and conspiracy. They deliberated for more than 12 hours over the course of three days.
Sentencing is on Oct. 29. Menendez, 70, faces a maximum of 222 years in prison, but any sentences would likely run concurrently. The most serious charges of extortion and wire fraud carry a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years.
In what are believed to be his most recent public remarks, a defiant Menendez maintained his innocence to reporters gathered outside the courthouse after the verdict.
“I have never been anything but a patriot of my country and for my country,” he said. “I have never, ever been a foreign agent. And the decision arrived to by the jury today would put at risk every member of the United States Senate in terms of what they think a foreign agent would be.”
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The bribes Menendez accepted included hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, a luxury convertible, and 13 gold bars in exchange for steering aid to the Egyptian government, establishing a lucrative halal meat monopoly, and interfering in criminal investigations to benefit friends and family.
Menendez is the seventh sitting senator to be convicted of a federal crime but was the first to be charged with acting as a foreign agent. A previous public corruption case against him in 2017 ended with a mistrial due to a hung jury.
Barnini Chakraborty and Ross O'Keefe contributed to this report.
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