New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez was found guilty on all 16 counts he faced in his federal corruption trial, including charges of bribery and conspiracy for a public official to act as a foreign agent, a jury decided Tuesday in a Manhattan courthouse.
Menendez's co-defendants, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, were also found guilty on all counts they were charged with in the trial. All three had previously pleaded not guilty. Another businessman pleaded guilty before trial and testified against Menendez and the other defendants.
The jury’s verdict followed a nine-week trial in which prosecutors said the Democrat abused the power of his office to protect allies from criminal investigations and enrich associates, including his wife, through acts that included meeting with Egyptian intelligence officials and helping that country access millions of dollars in U.S. military aid. He had also been accused of accepting bribes of gold and cash from three businessmen in New Jersey.
Menendez was found guilty on the following counts:
- COUNT ONE: Conspiracy to Commit Bribery
- COUNT TWO: Conspiracy to Commit Honest Services Wire Fraud
- COUNT THREE: Conspiracy to Commit Extortion Under Color of Official Right
- COUNT FOUR: Conspiracy to Commit Obstruction of Justice
- COUNT FIVE: Bribery – Actions to Benefit Wael Hana and Egypt
- COUNT SEVEN: Honest Services Wire Fraud - Actions to Benefit Wael Hana and Egypt
- COUNT EIGHT: Extortion Under Color of Official Right – Actions to Benefit Wael Hana and Egypt
- COUNT NINE: Honest Services Wire Fraud - Actions to Benefit Jose Uribe and Uribe’s Associates
- COUNT TEN: Extortion Under Color of Official Right – Actions to Benefit Jose Uribe and Uribe’s Associates
- COUNT ELEVEN: Bribery – Actions to Benefit Fred Daibes and Qatar
- COUNT THIRTEEN: Honest Services Wire Fraud – Actions to Benefit Fred Daibes and Qatar
- COUNT FOURTEEN: Extortion Under Color of Official Right – Actions to Benefit Fred Daibes and Qatar
- COUNT FIFTEEN: Conspiracy For a Public Official to Act as a Foreign Agent
- COUNT SIXTEEN: Public Official Acting as a Foreign Agent
- COUNT SEVENTEEN: Conspiracy to Commit Obstruction of Justice
- COUNT EIGHTEEN: Obstruction of Justice
According to the sentencing guidelines for these charges, the senator could face years, if not decades, in prison.
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The jury began deliberating last Thursday.
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Menendez, 70, did not testify. He insisted publicly he was only doing his job as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He said the gold bars found in his New Jersey home by the FBI belonged to his wife.
"Obviously I am deeply, deeply disappointed by the jury's decision," Sen. Menendez said outside the courthouse after the verdict was read. Menendez and his lawyers vowed to appeal as they left the courthouse.
"I have never violated my public oath," the senator said. "I have never been anything but a patriot of my country and for my country. I have never, ever been a foreign agent, and the decision rendered 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."
Menendez looked toward the jury at times Tuesday and appeared to mark a document in front of him as the verdict was read. Afterward, he sat resting his chin against his closed hands, elbows on the table.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams of the Southern District of New York said the case was always about "shocking levels of corruption."
"This wasn’t politics as usual; this was politics for profit. Because Senator Menendez has now been found guilty, his years of selling his office to the highest bidder have finally come to an end," Williams said.
The judge said sentencing will take place for the three defendants, including Menendez, on Oct. 29 — a week before Election Day, though the conviction potentially dooms Menendez’s chances of winning reelection as an independent.
Attorneys for Daibes and Hana also said they plan to appeal the guilty verdicts.
This was the second corruption trial for Menendez. An earlier prosecution on unrelated charges in 2017 ended with a deadlocked jury.
Sens. Schumer and Booker, NJ Gov. Murphy call on Menendez to resign from office
The trial’s outcome prompted a chorus of Democrats to call on Menendez to resign, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, New Jersey’s junior senator Corey Booker, and the party’s nominee to replace Menendez, Rep. Andy Kim.
In response to Tuesday's verdict, Sen. Schumer, the chamber's majority leader, called on Menendez to resign.
"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 post on X.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, who would be responsible for appointing Menendez’s replacement should he step down, once again called on Menendez to resign and said the senate should expel him if he refuses to leave his office.
"Today's verdict finding Senator Bob Menendez guilty on 16 counts demonstrates that the Senator broke the law, violated the trust of his constituents, and betrayed his oath of office. It also shows that in America, everyone – no matter how powerful – is accountable to our laws," Murphy said in a statement.
It’s not clear whether Schumer would be willing to hold those votes. Expulsion requires a two-thirds majority. A senator has not been removed from office in over a century.
Sen. Cory Booker said his previous calls on Menendez to resign have taken on a new urgency after the conviction.
"This is a dark, painful day for the people of New Jersey," Booker said in a statement. “Representing people in Congress demands the public's trust. When any elected official violates that trust, it is a betrayal of the oath we take to serve the people who’ve elected us. Without that trust, our ability to do our work and perform our duties for our constituents is compromised."
Rep. Andy Kim, who is running for Menendez's senate seat in this fall's general election also called on the senator to resign.
"This is a sad and somber day for New Jersey and our country," Kim said on social media. "Our public servants should work for the people, and today we saw the people judge Senator Menendez as guilty and unfit to serve. 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. The people of New Jersey deserve better."
Curtis Bashaw, the Republican candidate for Menendez's seat, also called on Menendez to quit, saying New Jersey deserves better than “corruption and made-for-tv political scandals, courtesy of Bob Menendez and the Democratic machine.”
The Senate Ethics Committee, meanwhile, will complete its own investigation of Menendez “promptly” and consider a “full range of disciplinary actions,” according to a statement from Democrat Chris Coons and Republican James Lankford, the committee’s chairman and vice-chairman. The probe adds further pressure on Menendez to voluntarily resign.
Looking back at the trial
At closings on July 10, Menendez's lawyer cited patriotism as a reason to acquit his client, telling a federal jury that it would be a “win for this country” if it rejects the government’s bribery case against the Democrat.
“This case, it dies here today,” attorney Adam Fee told the Manhattan federal court jury as it heard closing arguments for a third day.
When Fee finished his closing, Menendez shook his hand. As Menendez left the courthouse, the senator told reporters: “We have stripped away the government’s false narratives and exposed their lies.”
Fee said the government had failed to prove “that Bob’s actions were anything other than what we want our elected officials to do.”
“He was doing his job. He was doing it well,” Fee added.
The attorney warned jurors to resist the temptation to embrace the government's “salacious story about a corrupt politician, because it's not there.”
Then, as he finished his argument, he made an acquittal sound patriotic, telling the jury “the United States wins when thin cases brought by overzealous prosecutors are rejected.”
“That,” Fee added, “will be a win for this country.”
Menendez, 70, had pleaded not guilty to charges that he accepted gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from 2018 to 2022 from three New Jersey businessmen and agreed to take official actions that would benefit their interests, including financially.
A lengthy investigation included a June 2022 FBI raid on the couple’s home in Englewood Cliffs, a wealthy community just across the Hudson River from New York City. FBI agents seized gold bars worth nearly $150,000 and cash, mostly in stacks of $100 bills, totaling over $480,000. In the garage was a Mercedes-Benz convertible. A supervising agent testified that stacks of cash were stuffed in boots, shoeboxes and jackets belonging to the senator.
Prosecutors argued that the gold bars, cash and car were bribes. Defense lawyers disputed that, arguing that the gold belonged to his wife and she had kept him in the dark about financial troubles so grim that she nearly lost the home to foreclosure. They said the senator habitually hoarded money because his parents escaped Cuba in 1951 with only the cash they had hidden in a grandfather clock.
More shocking, though, were allegations that Menendez had earned some of it by using his powerful perch on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to benefit Egypt, an important U.S. ally but one often subject to American criticism over alleged human rights abuses.
Prosecutors said Nadine Menendez held herself out as a conduit to her powerful husband, exchanging texts with an Egyptian general and helping to arrange a Washington visit by the chief of Egypt’s intelligence service. To one general she texted, “Anytime you need anything you have my number and we will make everything happen.”
Sen. Menendez, prosecutors said, took actions to ingratiate himself with Egyptian officials, including providing them with information about the staff at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and ghostwriting a letter to fellow senators encouraging them to lift a hold on $300 million in military aid. The senator also told his wife to let her Egyptian contacts know he planned to sign off on $99 million in tank ammunition.
Charges, originally announced last September, were expanded over time, eventually including bribery, extortion, fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and, for Menendez, acting as a foreign agent of Egypt.
Prosecutors said serial numbers on the gold bars and fingerprints on tape that bound together the stacks of cash were traced to Hana and Daibes. Some fingerprints on tape, they said, belonged to Menendez. And in return, prosecutors said, Menendez took numerous actions to benefit the businessmen.
Prosecutors also said Sen. Menendez attempted to interfere in a federal criminal prosecution of Daibes, a politically influential real estate developer accused of bank fraud. The U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Philip Sellinger, testified at the trial that Menendez questioned him about the Daibes prosecution and said he believed he was “being treated unfairly.”
Prosecutors also presented evidence that Menendez took actions favorable to Qatar’s government to help Daibes secure a multimillion-dollar deal with a Qatari investment fund.
The New Jersey senator was on trial with Daibes and Hana, who also pleaded not guilty. Daibes is a prominent New Jersey real estate developer while Hana obtained a monopoly to certify that meat exported to Egypt complied with Islamic rules.
A third businessman, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty and testified against the others during the trial. A trial for the senator's wife, Nadine Menendez, 57, has been postponed while she recovers from breast cancer surgery. She also has pleaded not guilty in the bribery case.
Menendez’s political career began in 1974 when, only two years out of high school, he was elected to the education board in Union City, New Jersey. He later served in the state legislature, then was elected to the U.S. House in 1992. He became a U.S. senator in 2006.
Menendez had the dubious distinction of being the only U.S. senator indicted twice.
In 2015, he was charged with letting a wealthy Florida eye doctor buy his influence through luxury vacations and campaign contributions. After a jury couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict in 2017, New Jersey federal prosecutors dropped the case rather than put him on trial again.
Voters accepted the mistrial as an exoneration and returned Menendez to the Senate.
After his second indictment last summer, Menendez claimed he was being persecuted, saying some people “cannot accept that a first-generation Latino American from humble beginnings could rise to be a U.S. Senator.”
