Latest news with #BobMenendez
CNN
17-06-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Rich in gold bars but poor in Trump pardons
For months, former New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez has praised President Donald Trump. The Democrat has explicitly echoed Trump's criticism of the president's own criminal prosecutions, which Trump likes to describe, without evidence, as the political weaponization of the justice system. Now Menendez is reporting to federal prison, beginning his 11-year sentence after these months of attempts to sweet-talk Trump failed to win him the pardon or commutation for which he appeared to be angling. That's even as other allies of the president and those who had cozied up to him saw their prosecutions and sentences dropped. The 71-year-old Menendez, who spent more than 30 years in the House and later the Senate and rose to become the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, resigned in disgrace last year after being convicted of accepting bribes — including gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz and cash — in exchange for helping three businessmen and the Egyptian government. He arrived on Tuesday to the Federal Correctional Institution Schuylkill in Minersville, Pennsylvania. Nine days after Trump's inauguration — the day Menendez was sentenced — the former senator tagged the president in a social media post in which he claimed that 'this whole process has been nothing but a political witch hunt.' 'President Trump is right. This process is political and has been corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores integrity to the system,' Menendez said. Last week, he again took to X and lambasted prosecutors in a series of posts he titled 'How weaponization works.' He noted that the US attorney for the Southern District of New York — the office that prosecuted Menendez — also oversaw 'investigations of the Trump organization, the Trump inauguration committee and others associated with DJT and the Republican Party.' Meanwhile, the Trump administration has gutted the federal government's ability to fight public corruption, shrinking its public integrity section — created in the wake of the Watergate scandal — and stripping it of much of its power. The start of Menendez's prison sentence comes after a federal appeals court last week denied his bid to remain out of prison on bail as he appeals his conviction. A judge did allow Menendez to attend his stepdaughter's wedding in Massachusetts over the weekend and to escort his wife, Nadine Menendez, who was also convicted on corruption charges and is undergoing treatment for breast cancer. (Her own sentencing will take place in September.) The president has issued a flurry of pardons and halted prosecutions for his political allies. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who was elected as a Democrat and is seeking reelection this year as an independent, saw his corruption charges dropped by Trump's Justice Department, as Adams helped the Trump administration enact its immigration agenda. Trump in February pardoned former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat who was removed from office and later convicted of charges that included a scheme to sell an appointment to fill the vacant Senate seat left by then-President Barack Obama. Blagojevich long sought to align himself with Trump and called himself a 'Trumpocrat' — a Democrat who supports Trump. Trump has also pardoned a long list of political allies — including nearly all of the January 6, 2021, defendants. Trump pardoned reality television stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, who were serving prison sentences following their 2022 conviction on fraud and tax charges, after their daughter, Savannah Chrisley, cozied up to the Trump family and appeared at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. 'No MAGA left behind,' Ed Martin, Trump's short-lived interim US attorney for Washington, DC, said on X after Trump pardoned a former Virginia sheriff, Scott Jenkins, who was convicted of conspiracy, honest services fraud and — just like Menendez — bribery.
Time of India
17-06-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
A senator's fall from grace ends in a grim federal lockup
For decades, Bob Menendez had the ear of presidents and prime ministers. He controlled the flow of military aid as the Democratic leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee . A son of Cuban refugees, he was a go-to authority on immigration policy. But Tuesday, just after 9 a.m., Menendez became a ward of the same government that he once helped to lead when he entered a federal prison in Pennsylvania to begin an 11-year sentence for political corruption. He will be known as prisoner No. 67277-050 at Federal Correctional Institution Schuylkill in Minersville, roughly three hours away from the home he has shared in New Jersey with his wife, Nadine Menendez, who is expected to be sentenced in September for her role in the scheme. Federal agents found bribes ranging from kilo bars of gold, a Mercedes-Benz convertible and more than $480,000 in cash during a search of the couple's modest split-level home in Englewood Cliffs. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like This Wrinkle Cream Keeps Selling Out At Costco (Find Out Why) The Skincare Magazine Undo A federal spokesperson confirmed that Menendez was in the custody of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons soon after a red car with New Jersey license plates was spotted entering and exiting the facility. After a nine-week trial in New York City, Bob Menendez, a Democrat, became the only U.S. senator ever to be convicted of acting as an agent of a foreign government. Prosecutors have since called the crimes at the heart of a complex, yearslong bribery conspiracy "stunningly venal" and the most serious "in the history of the republic," as they argued for a sentence even stiffer than the one imposed. Live Events Lawyers for Menendez, who is 71, have called it a death sentence. "It is well-recognized that inmates with a degree of celebrity," they wrote in a legal filing, "are at increased risk of attention, harassment and violence from their fellow inmates." The Schuylkill facility includes a medium-security, 980-person lockup that houses notorious criminals like James Coonan, the onetime head of a New York City gang known as the Westies, and Gurmeet Singh Dhinsa, a gas station magnate serving a life sentence for murder. Menendez is expected to be assigned to an adjacent 225-person minimum-security camp in the complex, where prisoners sleep in dormitory-style rooms, often in bunk beds, according to two people familiar with his prison designation. The two sites have several things in common, according to Brad Troup, who was convicted of distributing heroin that caused a death and served his final years of incarceration at Schuylkill's medium-security prison. Prisoners eat the same meals, can purchase identical items from the commissary and participate in a shared prison industry -- electronics repair and recycling. At the camp, prisoners are taught to fix broken electronics, like computers and electrocardiogram machines. Items that are deemed beyond repair go to the medium-security prison, where they are dismantled, and the metals are separated to be sold for scrap, Troup said. Books can be sent to detainees through approved vendors, and visiting privileges can be adjusted based on behavior. The population of Schuylkill is about 60% Black, 21% Hispanic and 18% white, according to a recent federal report. And during meals and in the yard, it is highly segregated by race, according to Troup, 47. "It's like going back in time," he said. "Whites with whites. Blacks with Blacks. Gangs with gangs. There's constant tension." Menendez's training as a lawyer, and his ability to help other inmates draft appeals and legal motions, is likely to be helpful, Troup said. "The main thing is, you really have to get into the flow of things," he said. "It usually takes about six months for you to get a pattern. It's very humbling once you enter prison." Before his trial began last spring, when Menendez decided against running for reelection to the Senate as a Democrat, he released a nine-minute video chronicling what he saw as his most meaningful congressional contributions. And few people familiar with the long arc of his career in New Jersey would dispute that Menendez was once among the most influential politicians in Congress. He worked relentlessly to provide federal assistance to residents devastated by Superstorm Sandy in 2012 and helped to write the legislation to expand health care coverage that became known as Obamacare. "This is a sad and humbling day," said Michael Soliman, Menendez's longtime political adviser who ran his campaigns. "But the jury verdict does not erase Sen. Menendez's profound and long-standing positive contributions in so many areas affecting New Jersey and the country. "Those, too, will be a part of his earned legacy." Menendez had served as the mayor of Union City, New Jersey, where he was raised, and its representative in the state House before being elected to the U.S. House. He became the first Latino to represent New Jersey in the Senate after being selected for the position in 2005 by Jon S. Corzine, who vacated the seat early to take over as New Jersey governor. Almost immediately, the federal prosecutors' office in New Jersey, led at the time by Chris Christie, a Republican, began an inquiry into Menendez tied to rental income on a building he owned. That investigation was closed with no charges filed, and Menendez went on to beat Thomas Kean Jr. -- now a U.S. representative -- to win a six-year term. Menendez and his Democratic allies maintained that the inquiry had been motivated by nothing other than politics, but about nine years later, after an unrelated investigation, he would be charged for the first time with taking bribes. A trial in New Jersey ended with a hung jury in November 2017, and prosecutors later dropped the case. The bribery scheme that put him in prison Tuesday began only a few months later. Prosecutors with the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York spent weeks laying out an audacious , yearslong plot involving a halal meat certification company and the governments of Egypt and Qatar. A jury convicted Menendez of acting as an agent of Egypt, including ghostwriting a letter for Egyptian officials to influence his Senate colleagues and steering arms to the country. He was also found guilty of trying to quash state and federal criminal prosecutions on behalf of New Jersey allies. "You stood at the apex of our political system," the trial judge, Sidney H. Stein, said before sentencing Menendez to 11 years. "Somewhere along the way, I'm sorry to say, you became a corrupt politician, helping to feed the unfortunate cynicism of many people," he added. It was the longest sentence ever issued to a U.S. senator. Only five of the 13 senators to be charged with crimes since 1807 were convicted, according to court filings. Until Menendez's case, the longest sentence imposed had been three years -- a penalty issued to Sen. Harrison Williams Jr., also of New Jersey, for his role in a bribery conspiracy that became known as Abscam. Menendez's fall from grace led to sweeping changes in his state's political life. Hours after he was indicted, a young member of the House, Andy Kim, jumped into the race for Menendez's Senate seat. Kim vanquished the state's first lady, Tammy Murphy, and, after filing a lawsuit, ended a practice that gave political bosses who thrived during Menendez's era outsize power to select candidates. Kim became the first Korean American member of the Senate after being elected in November by nearly 10 percentage points. Last week, a federal appeals panel voted 2-1 to reject Menendez's request to delay the start of his sentence, pending the outcome of his appeal. That same day, Menendez took to social media to again plead his case to an audience of one: President Donald Trump, who has granted a flurry of pardons to political allies during the first five months of his second term. Menendez, in posts on social platform X, has mimicked many of the president's complaints about a "weaponized" Justice Department. In some, he has tagged Trump. In others, he refers to the president as "DJT." "President Trump is right," Menendez wrote, minutes after he was sentenced. "This process is political and has been corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores integrity to the system." Such lobbying efforts have paid off for others, including Mayor Eric Adams of New York, a Democrat, whose indictment on corruption charges was dropped by federal prosecutors. The Justice Department has made clear that some of the offenses for which Menendez was convicted are no longer even a priority. Long before Tuesday, Menendez had become a pariah in New Jersey. A former close friend declined to discuss his longtime ally's fate. His lawyers, Adam Fee and Avi Weitzman, did not respond to requests for comment, nor did Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, who in 2017 was willing to vouch for Menendez's character during his first corruption trial. For the last year, Menendez and his wife have been keeping their own counsel in New Jersey, former associates say. After Stein granted a weeklong delay to the start of his sentence, Bob Menendez attended Nadine Menendez's daughter's wedding in Massachusetts. On Tuesday, just before 9 a.m., as a heavy fog shrouded the roadway leading into the prison complex, a red car with New Jersey license plates turned into the facility. The car carried a single passenger in the back seat and accelerated as it passed a handful of news reporters waiting at the perimeter of the prison. The car left about 15 minutes later with only a driver. There was no sign of Nadine Menendez or either of the former senator's two adult children. Soon after, a federal spokesperson confirmed in an email that "Robert Menendez is in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (B.O.P.) at the Federal Correctional Institution (F.C.I.) Schuylkill in Minersville, Pennsylvania." Menendez is the last of the three men convicted last summer in the corruption scheme to enter prison. (Jose Uribe, who pleaded guilty to trying to bribe Menendez by giving his wife a Mercedes, cooperated with prosecutors and is expected to be sentenced in the fall.) Fred Daibes and Wael Hana, who were found guilty at trial of bribing the senator in exchange for political favors, began serving sentences last month at a federal prison in New Jersey. Even before Trump's blitz of pardons, their lawyers had argued that Daibes' seven-year sentence and Hana's eight-year sentence were disproportionate to other recent penalties for political corruption. "Excessive and brutal," said Lawrence S. Lustberg, who represented Hana, the founder of a halal meat certification business that was granted a lucrative monopoly by the government of Egypt and was used to funnel bribes to Menendez and his wife. "Anyone who has ever been to a prison knows that even a day, a week or a month is horrible. But seven, eight and 11 years -- that is way beyond what is required for either punishment or deterrence." This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
UPI
17-06-2025
- Politics
- UPI
N.J.'s ex-Sen. Bob Menendez to start 11-year prison term for bribery, corruption
1 of 2 | Former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (seen in January after his sentencing in New York), D-N.J., will start his 11-year prison term Tuesday in eastern Pennsylvania after his June 2024 conviction on a flurry of corruption and bribery charges, including acting as a foreign agent. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo June 17 (UPI) -- Ex-U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez will start his 11-year prison term Tuesday after his conviction last year on a slew of corruption and bribery charges, including acting as an unauthorized foreign agent. Menendez, New Jersey's 71-year-old former Democratic senior senator and past chair of the Senate's powerful Foreign Relations Committee, was found guilty in June 2024 in New York's Southern District on 16 charges. Those charges included that he and his wife, Nadine, accepted bribes in the amount of hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, gold bars and a luxury car from at least three Garden State businessmen in exchange for political clout, and acting as a foreign agent of Egypt and aided Qatar. He is expected to report to a federal correctional institution in Schuylkill County in eastern Pennsylvania a little more than two hours from his New Jersey home. The federal facility in Minersville, a duel medium-minimum security prison, houses about 1,200 inmates. He was sentenced in January by U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein but granted a prison delay to attend his stepdaughters wedding last week. "You stood at the apex of our political system," Stein told Menendez at sentencing. "Somewhere along the way, you lost your way." In addition, Menendez was ordered to forfeit more than $900,000 in restitution. Last week, a federal appeals court denied his last-minute bid to avoid jail in a close 2-1 vote as he appeals his 2024 conviction. His attorneys argued that Menendez's more than 10 years behind bars is, in essence, a "life and death sentence" for the Senate's former foreign relations chief. Menendez, who was charged before he resigned in August, ended up as the first sitting member of Congress to be convicted of acting as a foreign agent. A 2017 federal bribery trial on previous charges against Menendez ended in a mistrial after the jury failed to reach a verdict. The New Jersey Democrat, who had been in both houses of Congress since 1993, recently made overtures on social media to President Donald Trump conceivably to further a pardon. Sentencing guidelines suggest that Menendez serve 24 to 30 years in prison while the U.S. Probation Office calls for 12 years in prison. Meanwhile, the former senator revealed in May that his wife reportedly has breast cancer. Nadine Menendez, 58, was accused of accepting bribes as a "go-between" figure for her husband and New Jersey business people Wael Hana, Fred Daibes and Jose Uribe. In April, she was convicted on all 15 counts by a federal jury and is set to be sentenced on September 11.
USA Today
17-06-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Former Sen. Bob Menendez reports to prison for 11-year sentence in gold bar bribery case
Former Sen. Bob Menendez reports to prison for 11-year sentence in gold bar bribery case Former Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez from New Jersey was sentenced to 11 years in prison for his role in the bribery scheme. Show Caption Hide Caption Former Sen. Bob Menendez sentenced to 11 years in federal bribery case Former New Jersey U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez was accused of trading political influence for cash, gold bars and luxury goods. Former Sen. Bob Menendez turned himself in June 17 at a federal prison in Pennsylvania to begin serving an 11-year sentence on bribery charges. The 71-year-old was convicted in July 2024 of 16 counts, including extortion, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and acting as a foreign agent. The Bureau of Prison's inmate search shows inmate number 67277-050 for Menendez, but that he is not yet in custody, an indication he could be in processing. The former senior senator from New Jersey and the chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee was found guilty of taking part in a bribery scheme that rewarded him and his wife Nadine Menendez with hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold bars and stacks of cash. In exchange, the senator took actions, including influencing criminal investigations, that benefited New Jersey businessmen and the governments of Egypt and Qatar. His co-defendants, businessmen Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, were also found guilty on all counts. He is the first U.S. senator convicted of acting as an agent of a foreign government. Menendez represented New Jersey for more than 18 years in the U.S. Senate. He resigned after the convictions. Nadine Menendez was convicted in a separate trial. Her case was separated because of a cancer diagnosis. Her sentencing is scheduled for September.
Toronto Star
17-06-2025
- Politics
- Toronto Star
Disgraced former Sen. Bob Menendez arrives at prison to begin serving his 11-year bribery sentence
NEW YORK (AP) — Former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez arrived at a federal prison on Tuesday to begin serving an 11-year sentence for accepting bribes of gold and cash and acting as an agent of Egypt. The New Jersey Democrat has been mocked for the crimes as 'Gold Bar Bob,' according to his own lawyer. The federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed that Menendez was in custody at the Federal Correctional Institution, Schuylkill in Minersville, Pennsylvania. The facility has a medium-security prison and a minimum-security prison camp. Given the white-collar nature of his crimes, it's likely he'll end up in the camp.
