Sen. Bob Menendez plans to resign from Congress next month after his conviction on federal corruption charges, succumbing to mounting pressure from Democrats while ending a three-decade congressional career in disgrace.
The resignation announcement marks a dramatic downfall for the 70-year-old Menendez, a perennial force in New Jersey politics and former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee who avoided a conviction on different corruption charges in 2017.
New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy said he received a letter from Menendez that said the senator plans to resign on Aug. 20. The governor plans to make a temporary appointment. Menendez’s term ends in January.
Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., who was presiding over the chamber, indicated Tuesday that the Senate has received a Menendez resignation letter.
Menendez wrote in a letter to Murphy that the August resignation date would allow for “an orderly process to choose an interim replacement,” according to a copy published by The New York Times. “While I fully intend to appeal the jury’s verdict, all the way and including to the Supreme Court, I do not want the Senate to be involved in a lengthy process that will detract from its important work.”
A federal jury on July 16 found Menendez guilty on 16 counts, including bribery, extortion and acting as a foreign agent, in a case where the Justice Department accused him and his wife of taking bribes from New Jersey businessmen.
Prosecutors said that in exchange for bribes, Menendez promised to pressure the New Jersey attorney general to disrupt a criminal investigation, to approve military aid to Egypt and to recommend someone for a U.S. attorney post who he thought he could influence to affect a federal case against a real estate developer, among other actions.
Menendez stood trial with two co-defendants in New York City, but he wasn’t tried alongside his wife, Nadine, who also faces charges in the case.
At trial, the jury heard from an FBI agent who discussed how federal authorities found gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash during a search of a New Jersey residence that Menendez shared with his wife. An insurance broker who pleaded guilty in the case also testified at trial that he bribed the senator in a bid to influence state-level investigations to benefit people close to him.
After the verdict, an attorney for Menendez said they will pursue all appellate avenues “aggressively.”
Menendez had resisted calls from fellow Democrats to resign after his 2023 indictment, and after the verdict he argued he would be vindicated on appeal. He argued that the jury’s finding would “put at risk every member of the United States Senate in terms of what they think a foreign agent would be.”
Unlike last year, the voices calling for his resignation now included Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., and some colleagues went further and said Menendez should be expelled if he didn’t step aside. They included New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who said he would lead an effort.
“For New Jersey, this is a painful day of real heartbreak and, frankly, just deep disappointment. A jury that was sworn to objectivity, a jury of his peers, found by the highest criminal standard — beyond a reasonable doubt — that he was guilty on all 16 charges,” Booker said in an interview with MSNBC on the day of the verdict.
The resignation announcement helps Senate Democrats avoid an expulsion push against Menendez, an effort that could have taken up valuable time and attention when the chamber is scheduled to be on recess for most of the month of August.
Menendez wouldn’t be the first New Jersey senator to resign while facing expulsion because of a corruption conviction. Harrison A. Williams resigned in 1982 after being convicted in the FBI’s Abscam bribery sting operation. Menendez was the No. 3 member of the House Democratic leadership when he was appointed to the seat Williams once held after Sen. Jon Corzine was elected governor in 2005.
The son of Cuban immigrants, Menendez was born in New York City and raised in Union City, N.J., where many refugees from Fidel Castro’s revolution settled. He rose to be mayor, after testifying against a mentor in that job who was convicted on federal corruption charges, and state senator before he won a U.S. House seat in 1992 after redistricting created the state’s first Hispanic-majority district. Menendez’s son, Rep. Rob Menendez, now holds that seat.
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