Bob Menendez Deserves 15 Years in Prison for Bribes, US Says
(Bloomberg) -- Former US Senator Bob Menendez, the once-powerful New Jersey Democrat convicted of corruption charges, should spend 15 years in prison, US prosecutors said.
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Menendez was convicted in July of bribery, extortion and acting as a foreign agent of Egypt after a jury trial that was focused on 13 gold bars, nearly $500,000 in cash and a Mercedes-Benz seized at his home.
“Menendez’s conduct is perhaps more serious than that for which any other senator has been convicted in United States history,” prosecutors wrote Thursday in a recommendation ahead of his Jan. 29 sentencing in New York federal court.
The Jury convicted Menendez on all 16 counts after a two-month trial in which prosecutors said he sold his influence to protect businessmen and promote Egypt’s interests. Menendez, who is appealing his conviction, blames his wife, Nadine, for accepting gifts without his knowledge. She faces a separate trial.
The jurors also convicted businessmen Fred Daibes and Wael Hana. Prosecutors recommended a sentence of nine years for Daibes and 10 years for Hana.
A First
Menendez, the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is the only public official convicted of serving as a foreign agent while in office, prosecutors said.
They said he corruptly helped Egypt secure US military aid and sensitive information, urged a US agriculture undersecretary to stop questioning Hana’s halal monopoly and weighed appointing a US attorney in New Jersey who would influence a 2018 fraud indictment of Daibes.
They also said he contacted the New Jersey attorney general to disrupt criminal probes of two people close to businessman Jose Uribe and helped Daibes arrange financing from a Qatari investment fund for a real estate project.
His actions “amount to an extraordinary attempt, at the highest levels of the legislative branch, to corrupt the nation’s core sovereign powers over foreign relations and law enforcement,” prosecutors wrote.
Reputation in ‘Tatters’
In an earlier filing, Menendez’s lawyers urged US District Judge Sidney Stein to extend mercy. They argued that their client’s “long-built reputation” is in “tatters” after 18 years in the Senate, a life of public service and a wife with serious health and legal problems.
“Senator Menendez’s conviction has rendered him a national punchline and stripped him of every conceivable personal, professional, and financial benefit,” his lawyers wrote. “He has suffered financial and professional ruin. And he now is helping his wife battle a life-threatening cancer diagnosis in the midst of her upcoming trial in this case.”
They urged Stein to sentence Menendez, 71, to a term “substantially below” the recommended range under federal sentencing guidelines and consider nonprison alternatives like home detention and “rigorous community service.”
The case is US v. Menendez, 23-cr-490, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
(Updates with details of filing starting in third paragraph.)
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