Former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for his proven corruption, after being found guilty of 16 federal charges in July 2024.
Menendez, who prosecutors said accepted bribes of hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, gold bars, mortgage payments, and more, unsuccessfully pleaded not guilty to charges including bribery, fraud, acting as a foreign agent, and obstruction last year, ABC News reported.
The ex-senator was sentenced along with two co-conspirators, New Jersey businessmen Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, who received more than seven years and eight years respectively, on Wednesday, federal attorneys in New York announced.
In exchange for the money and luxury items, prosecutors said the Democrat lawmaker “agreed and promised to use his power and influence as a Senator to seek to protect” his co-conspirators, including taking actions to benefit the governments of Egypt and Qatar on their behalf.
He also attempted to disrupt the subsequent criminal investigations into his associates, and “conspired and endeavored to obstruct justice in connection with the federal investigation” into his entire scheme.
A third businessman associated with Menendez, Jose Uribe, flipped on the New Jersey politician and took a plea deal in May 2024. As part of the deal, Uribe admitted to making payments on a luxury Mercedes-Benz convertible car for the senator’s wife, Nadine Menendez, after she totaled her own Mercedes in a 2018 crash that killed a pedestrian, according to NorthJersey.com
Uribe’s sentencing is scheduled for April 24, and charges remain pending for Nadine, who is scheduled to go to trial on March 18, prosecutors said.
Menendez, who resigned last July upon his criminal conviction, became the first sitting member of Congress to be charged with conspiracy by a public official to act as a foreign agent.
“The sentences imposed today result from an egregious abuse of power at the highest levels of the Legislative Branch of the federal government. Robert Menendez was trusted to represent the United States and the State of New Jersey, but instead he used his position to help his co-conspirators and a foreign government, in exchange for bribes like cash, gold, and a luxury car,” U.S. Attorney Danielle R. Sassoon said in a statement. “The sentences imposed today send a clear message that attempts at any level of government to corrupt the nation’s foreign policy and the rule of law will be met with just punishment.”
Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle began covering Menendez’s scandals and corruption in 2012 at the Daily Caller, breaking the story of two women from the Dominican Republican accusing the senator, who was not yet married to his wife Nadine, of paying them for sex while on a visit to the island country.
Shortly after Boyle broke the initial story, a “high-level” Dominican government official from the Dominican Republic told the Daily Caller that Menendez, along with wealthy campaign donor Dr. Salomon Melgen, had been having sex parties in the Caribbean nation for years.
In 2013, Menendez finally admitted to traveling to the Dominican Republic on Melgen’s private plane multiple times, but claimed that any allegations of “engaging with prostitutes are manufactured by a politically-motivated right-wing blog and are false.”
His partial admission came on the heels of an FBI raid at Melgen’s Florida offices.
In an apparent effort to cover for Menendez, the Washington Post released a story to discredit the allegations uncovered by Boyle, citing who they claimed were the same women who originally accused the senator of soliciting them for sex – and underpaying them.
The Post‘s Carol Leonnig claimed to have interviewed the women, who reportedly that they were paid to make up the first story, but failed to verify or prove that they were actually the original accusers – and multiple discrepancies pointed at the sources being fake.
In 2015, federal charges including bribery, fraud, and making false statements were brought against Menendez, with prosecutors alleging that the senator asked State Department officials to pressure the Dominican government to enforce a port-security contract that would benefit Melgen’s company.
Prosecutors also said that Menendez acted as Melgen’s “personal senator” and helped to get visas for several of the doctor’s girlfriends, NJ.com reported.
The senator allegedly accepted nearly $1 million in gifts and campaign contributions from Melgen over that period.
In April of that year, Menendez pleaded not guilty to the charges,
and said he would be “vindicated.”
In a shocking turnaround in 2018, the Department of Justice (DOJ) dropped all charges against the senator after the case ended in a mistrial in November 2017, Breitbart News reported.
Menendez was reelected that year and continued to hold his Senate seat until he was found guilty of the latest corruption charges in July 2024.
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