U.S. Senator Bob Menendez was convicted on Tuesday of all the counts he faced at his corruption trial, which included accepting bribes in the form of gold and cash from three New Jersey businessmen and acting as a foreign agent for the Egyptian government.

The jury’s verdict followed a nine-week trial in which prosecutors alleged that the Democrat from New Jersey abused the power of his office to protect allies from criminal investigations and enrich associates, including his wife. These acts included meetings with Egyptian intelligence officials and facilitating access to millions of dollars in U.S. military aid for Egypt.

During the reading of the verdict, Menendez, 70, occasionally looked toward the jury while appearing to mark a document in front of him. Following the announcement, he sat with his chin resting against his closed hands, elbows on the table.

Although Menendez did not testify during the trial, he publicly insisted that he was merely performing his duties as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He claimed that the gold bars found in his New Jersey home by the FBI belonged to his wife, Nadine Menendez. Her trial was postponed to allow her to recover from breast cancer surgery. She has pleaded not guilty.

The verdict, delivered at a federal courthouse in Manhattan, comes just four months before Election Day, effectively ending Menendez’s hopes of campaigning for reelection as an independent candidate.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer immediately called for Menendez to resign, stating, “In light of this guilty verdict, Senator Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our country, and resign.”

Menendez now faces the possibility of a lengthy prison term when he is sentenced on October 29. Of the 16 counts on which he was convicted, the most serious carry a potential prison sentence of 20 years.

Rep. Andy Kim, the Democratic nominee for Menendez’s seat, also called for his resignation, posting on social media that “the people of New Jersey deserve better.”

Menendez’s trial began in mid-May alongside two New Jersey businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, who were accused of paying bribes. Both Hana and Daibes were convicted of the charges they faced and declined to comment after the trial. A third businessman, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty prior to the trial and testified against Menendez and the others.

This trial marks the second time Menendez has faced corruption allegations. A previous prosecution in 2017 on unrelated charges ended with a deadlocked jury.

The investigation leading to this trial included a June 2022 FBI raid on the Menendez home in Englewood Cliffs, where agents found gold bars worth nearly $150,000 and cash totaling over $480,000, mostly in stacks of $100 bills. A Mercedes-Benz convertible was also found in the garage.

Prosecutors argued that these items were bribes, while the defense contended that the gold belonged to Nadine Menendez and that the cash was due to the senator’s habit of hoarding cash at home, a practice he adopted after hearing about his parents’ escape from Cuba in 1951.

More startling than the cash and gold, however, were the allegations that Menendez earned some of it by using his influential position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to benefit Egypt, a crucial U.S. ally often criticized for alleged human rights abuses.

Prosecutors claimed Nadine Menendez presented herself as a conduit to her husband, exchanging texts with an Egyptian general and helping arrange a Washington visit by Egypt’s intelligence chief. To one general, she texted, “Anytime you need anything you have my number and we will make everything happen.”

Sen. Menendez reportedly took actions to ingratiate himself with Egyptian officials, including providing information about the U.S. Embassy staff in Cairo and ghostwriting a letter to fellow senators urging them to lift a hold on $300 million in military aid to Egypt. He also informed his wife’s Egyptian contacts that he intended to approve $99 million in tank ammunition.

Charges against Menendez, initially announced last September, expanded to include bribery, extortion, fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and acting as a foreign agent of Egypt. Prosecutors linked the gold bars and cash to Hana and Daibes through serial numbers and fingerprints.

In return for the bribes, Menendez reportedly protected Egypt’s decision to award Hana a lucrative monopoly to certify that meat sent to Egypt met Islamic dietary requirements. He also allegedly interfered in a federal criminal prosecution of Daibes, a politically influential real estate developer, and took actions favorable to Qatar to help Daibes secure a multimillion-dollar deal with a Qatari investment fund.

Menendez’s political career began in 1974 when he was elected to the education board in Union City, New Jersey, shortly after high school. He later served in the state legislature, was elected to the U.S. House in 1992, and became a U.S. senator in 2006.

This conviction marks Menendez as the only U.S. senator to be indicted twice. In 2015, he faced charges for allowing a wealthy Florida eye doctor to buy his influence through luxury vacations and campaign contributions. After a jury couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict in 2017, the case was dropped.

Despite his previous indictment, voters returned Menendez to the Senate, accepting the mistrial as an exoneration. Following his second indictment last summer, Menendez claimed persecution, saying some people “cannot accept that a first-generation Latino American from humble beginnings could rise to be a U.S. Senator.”

During the ongoing trial, he announced his intention to run for reelection as an independent.

Credit: AP