Indicted Sen. Bob Menendez Might Run for Reelection as Independent to Help with Legal Bills

Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) is considering an independent reelection campaign to help him pay for his legal defense in a foreign bribery case being brought against him, according to NBC News congressional correspondent Julie Tsirkin.

Menendez and his wife Nadine Menendez are each facing 18 federal counts for allegedly accepting bribes in exchange for influencing U.S. policy to benefit the Egyptian and Qatari governments. He served as the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2018 until a Department of Justice indictment forced him to step down from that post last September.

While it was reported last week that Mendendez would not seek a fourth term in the Senate as he attempts to stay out of jail, Tsirkin told MSNBC’s José Díaz-Balart on Thursday that Menendez is now weighing an independent bid.

“The embattled senator, who has faced many charges in his multiple court battles, is now apparently eyeing an independent run for Senate,” began Tsirkin. “This is for several reasons, the first being that he would have only until March 25, and he would need a thousand signatures to get on the ballot as a Democrat in New Jersey, a field that is already pretty crowded with Congressman Andy Kim running, also the First Lady of New Jersey, Tammy Murphy. Instead, running as independent would give him a longer runway until June 4. I’m told you only need 800 signatures.”

She continued:

And sources tell us that he has started making calls about his record to allies, about statistics, about his long career here in the Senate, and he is starting to collect petitions as well to start that signature gathering process. One thing that’s interesting here, just to point out here, one of the reasons potentially that Menendez could be doing this. Why would he be trying to stay on the ballot in a race that Democrats have called him to leave? That Democrats here in Congress have effectively told him to resign and retire from? Well, it’s because those legal bills, they are costly. And certainly one of the ways that he can fundraise more is if he stays as a candidate on the ballot. He has name recognition that way, he can still fundraise some funds from allies. We’ve seen this happen in the case of former President Trump, who has spent near or more than $27 million of campaign funds on legal bills. So certainly this is something notable.

Watch above via MSNBC.