Bob Menendez Won’t Stop Bragging About The Last Time He Faced Federal Corruption Charges
Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) is counting on your ignorance of his past misdeeds.
Since the Department of Justice unveiled a stunning foreign bribery indictment against Menendez and his wife last Friday, Menendez has repeatedly invoked the last time he faced federal corruption charges in his defense.
In his first reaction to the charges leveled against him, Menendez fumed that “for years, forces behind the scenes have repeatedly attempted to silence my voice and dig my political grave” before asserting that he had been falsely accused before” because he “refused to back down to the powers that be.”
“The people of New Jersey were able to see through the smoke and mirrors and recognize I was innocent,” he continued.
Then, at a press conference on Monday morning, Menendez argued that “prosecutors get it wrong, sometimes.”
“Sadly, I know that,” he added.
But despite Menendez’s implications otherwise, his last federal corruption trial did not end with his vindication.
In 2015, the Department of Justice indicted Menendez for having allegedly accepted gifts from Dr. Salomon Melgen, a friend and donor, in exchange for Menendez’s work on securing visas for the benefactor’s girlfriends and attempts to “influence the outcome of ongoing contractual and Medicare billing disputes worth tens of millions of dollars.”
Those gifts included “flights on Melgen’s private jet, a first-class commercial flight and a flight on a chartered jet; numerous vacations at Melgen’s Caribbean villa in the Dominican Republic and at a hotel room in Paris; and $40,000 in contributions to his legal defense fund and over $750,000 in campaign contributions,” none of which were reported by Menendez on the proper financial disclosure forms.
The jury in the criminal trial against Menendez could not come to unanimous agreement on a verdict, resulting in the declaration of a mistrial. At court, the senator’s lawyers admitted that Menendez did take actions to benefit his codefendant in the bribery case, but characterized them as acts of friendship rather than as part of a quid pro quo.
“He understands the meaning of friendship. Friends help friends,” explained one member of his legal team.
The Senate Ethics Committee saw it differently.
“The Committee has found that over a six-year period you knowingly and repeatedly accepted gifts of significant value from Dr. Melgen without obtaining required Committee approval, and that you failed to publicly disclose certain gifts as required by Senate Rule and federal law. Additionally, while accepting these gifts, you used your position as a Member of the Senate to advance Dr. Melgen’s personal and business interests. The Committee has determined that this conduct violated Senate Rules, federal law, and applicable standards of conduct,” wrote the body of 3 Republicans and 3 Democrats in a public letter of admonition.
“The Committee considered the fact that your criminal trial did not result in a conviction,” they continued. “The criminal system, however, neither enforces nor supplants the Senate’s rules or standards of conduct, and the Committee’s action stands independent from that result.”
After his escape from criminal culpability for his manifest wrongdoing in the Melgen case, Menendez allegedly stepped up his game, according to the indictment unsealed by the DOJ on Friday.
Instead of using his power as a United States Senator to help a friend with his lady troubles in exchange for luxury vacations, Menendez stands accused of wielding his power as Senate Foreign Relations Chairman to do the bidding of the Egyptian government in exchange for literal bars of gold.
Menendez’s last run-in with the law proves only that he’s graduated from typical New Jersey officeholder to wannabe Bond villain, not that he’s the victim of an incompetent conspiracy.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
