By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) -U.S. Senator Bob Menendez was convicted on Tuesday on all 16 criminal counts he faced including bribery at his corruption trial in Manhattan federal court, completing the once-powerful New Jersey Democrat’s dramatic downfall.
Senior Democrats including U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and fellow New Jersey Senator Cory Booker quickly called on Menendez, who has served in the Senate since 2006 and avoided conviction in a prior 2017 corruption trial due to a deadlocked jury, to resign from the chamber.
Jurors began their deliberations on Friday and met for more than 12 hours over three days before reaching their verdict in a trial that had taken nine weeks. Menendez, 70, had pleaded not guilty to the charges, which also included illegally acting as an agent of the Egyptian government, obstruction of justice, wire fraud and extortion.
Menendez remained defiant after the verdict, telling reporters outside the courthouse that he would appeal, though he did not answer questions about resignation. Menendez previously resisted calls from fellow Democrats to quit after he was charged in September.
“I have never violated my public oath. I have never been anything but a patriot of my country and for my country,” Menendez, who stepped down as chair of the influential U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee upon being charged, told reporters. “I have never, ever been a foreign agent.”
The trial centered on what federal prosecutors called several overlapping bribery schemes in which the senator and his wife Nadine Menendez accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, gold bars and car and mortgage payments from three businessmen who wanted his help.
In exchange for bribes, Menendez helped steer billions of dollars in American aid to Egypt, where one of the businessman, Wael Hana, had ties to government officials, according to prosecutors. Menendez also was accused of seeking to influence criminal probes involving two other businessmen, Fred Daibes and Jose Uribe.
“This was politics for profit,” Damian Williams, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, told reporters. “His years of selling his office to the highest bidder have finally come to an end.”
After the jury’s foreperson read the verdict, Menendez rested his elbows on the table, clasped his hands together and stared straight ahead. Hana and Daibes, co-defendants in the trial, were also convicted on all counts they faced. Uribe pleaded guilty and testified as a prosecution witness.
U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein set Menendez’s sentencing for Oct. 29, a week before the Nov. 5 election in which he is running as an independent in a bid for another six-year term in the Senate, but is considered a long shot to win.
Pressure mounted on Menendez to resign from office.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat, said that if Menendez declines to resign, the Senate should vote to expel him. Murphy would name a replacement for Menendez if the senator resigns.
“This is a dark, painful day for the people of New Jersey,” Booker said. “Representing people in Congress demands the public’s trust. When any elected official violates that trust, it is a betrayal of the oath we take to serve the people who’ve elected us.”
A FIXTURE IN WASHINGTON
Menendez has been a fixture in Washington for more than three decades. He has represented New Jersey in the Senate since 2006 after previously serving 13 years in the U.S. House of Representatives. Prior to that, he served in the New Jersey legislature and as a mayor.
Before being charged, Menendez was not only a powerful Senate committee chair but an important ally in President Joe Biden’s efforts to reassert U.S. influence abroad, rally support and money to help Ukraine, and stall advances by China.
Tuesday’s conviction handed a victory to the U.S. Justice Department as well as to Williams, who has made weeding out public corruption a priority.
During the trial, jurors were handed some of the gold bars that federal agents seized from the New Jersey home the senator shared with his wife. Agents also found more than $480,000 of cash, including some stuffed in envelopes inside a jacket bearing the senator’s name.
Prosecutors said that after Hana gave Nadine Menendez a “sham job” paying $10,000 a month, the senator pressured a U.S. Agriculture Department official to stop scrutinizing a monopoly that Egypt had awarded Hana’s company to certify halal meat for export.
Menendez was also accused of trying to pressure law enforcement to lay off Daibes, a real estate developer, and Uribe, an insurance broker who testified that he bought Nadine Menendez a $60,000 Mercedes-Benz in exchange for her husband’s help.
Nadine Menendez is set to be tried separately. She did not attend her husband’s trial after being diagnosed with breast cancer.
The senator’s 2017 mistrial in New Jersey was on a narrower set of allegations.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
