Cory Booker, Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell join calls for Bob Menendez’s resignation

A grow­ing num­ber of Sen­a­tor Bob Menen­dez’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic col­leagues are call­ing on him to resign from office after being indict­ed for con­spir­a­cy to com­mit bribery, con­spir­a­cy to com­mit hon­est ser­vices fraud, and con­spir­a­cy to com­mit extor­tion under col­or of offi­cial right, includ­ing his seat­mate, New Jer­sey’s Cory Booker.

Menen­dez was indict­ed on those three charges last week in the South­ern Dis­trict of New York (SDNY) by the Depart­ment of Jus­tice, rep­re­sent­ed by Unit­ed States Attor­ney Dami­an Williams, oblig­at­ing Menen­dez to sur­ren­der the chair­man­ship of the Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee, as Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus rules require. His wife and oth­er co-con­spir­a­tors are also fac­ing charges.

The indict­ment alleges:

ROBERT MENENDEZ, the defen­dant, is the senior U.S. Sen­a­tor from the State of New Jer­sey. From at least 2018 up to and includ­ing in or about 2022, MENENDEZ and his wife, NADINE MENENDEZ, a/k/a Nadine Arslan­ian the defen­dant, engaged in a cor­rupt rela­tion­ship with three New Jer­sey asso­ciates and busi­ness­men — WAEL HANA, a/k/a Will Hana JOSE URIBE, and FRED DAIBES, the defen­dants — in which MENENDEZ and NADINE MENENDEZ agreed to and did accept hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars of bribes in exchange for using MENEN­DEZ’s pow­er and influ­ence as a Sen­a­tor to seek to pro­tect and enrich HANA, URIBE, and DAIBES and to ben­e­fit the Arab Repub­lic of Egypt. Those bribes includ­ed cash, gold, pay­ments toward a home mort­gage, com­pen­sa­tion for a low-or-no-show job, a lux­u­ry vehi­cle, and oth­er things of value.

The thir­ty-nine page indict­ment describes the DOJ’s evi­dence and the inves­ti­ga­tion into Menen­dez in sig­nif­i­cant detail; it is worth read­ing.

Menen­dez has respond­ed defi­ant­ly, assert­ing that he did noth­ing wrong, but not actu­al­ly refut­ing any of the charges. Ini­tial­ly, he declared that unnamed per­sons and enti­ties were tar­get­ing him; with­in the past forty-eight hours, he has tried to explain why fed­er­al author­i­ties found over $480,000 in cash in his home, incred­u­lous­ly argu­ing that he with­drew large sums out of his savings.

“For years, forces behind the scenes have repeat­ed­ly attempt­ed to silence my voice and dig my polit­i­cal grave,” Menen­dez said in a state­ment about the indict­ment, which inter­est­ing­ly has not been post­ed to his Sen­ate web­site, nor shared on social plat­forms. “Since this inves­ti­ga­tion was leaked near­ly a year ago, there has been an active smear cam­paign of anony­mous sources and innu­en­dos to cre­ate an air of impro­pri­ety where none exists.”

He went on to say: “I have been false­ly accused before because I refused to back down to the pow­ers that be and the peo­ple of New Jer­sey were able to see through the smoke and mir­rors and rec­og­nize I was innocent.”

It’s odd that Menen­dez is com­plain­ing about “innu­en­dos” and an “air of impro­pri­ety” giv­en that he is no longer fac­ing rumors, but an actu­al indict­ment. The charges are seri­ous, and while he does enjoy the pre­sump­tion of inno­cence, the nature of the charges makes it impos­si­ble for him to faith­ful­ly and effec­tive­ly serve the peo­ple of New Jer­sey as a Unit­ed States Senator.

It’s impor­tant to note that a few years ago, the Unit­ed States Supreme Court made it much more dif­fi­cult to con­vict a pub­lic offi­cial of bribery. The Depart­ment of Jus­tice has gone after Menen­dez before, and was­n’t able to land a con­vic­tion. It’s unlike­ly pros­e­cu­tors would be try­ing again unless they felt their evi­dence was very com­pelling and very strong. As Matt Ford wrote for The New Repub­lic:

“Cor­rup­tion, in the jus­tices’ eyes, is when a rail­road tycoon hands a politi­cian a burlap sack with a big dol­lar sign on it. But that extra­or­di­nar­i­ly high hur­dle alleged­ly didn’t stop New Jer­sey Sen­a­tor Bob Menen­dez from leap­ing over it.”

“Pros­e­cu­tors went to great lengths this time not only to show how spe­cif­ic gifts and goods were tied to spe­cif­ic favors — Nadine Menendez’s per­sis­tence in tex­ting her asso­ciates for pay­ment helped tremen­dous­ly here—but also to show how Menen­dez used the for­mal and semi­for­mal pow­ers of his elect­ed posi­tion to car­ry out the scheme,” Ford added lat­er in his col­umn, cit­ing the indictment.

Menen­dez might feel that since he sur­vived the last round, he can do so again. But oth­er Democ­rats aren’t bet­ting on him (nor should they). The calls for his res­ig­na­tion are grow­ing, and they are com­ing from a lot of key fig­ures: Gov­er­nor Phil Mur­phy of New Jer­sey, New Jer­sey Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty Chair LeRoy Jones, and Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Andy Kim of New Jer­sey, who brave­ly decid­ed to be the change and run against Menen­dez in the 2024 Demo­c­ra­t­ic primary.

Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor John Fet­ter­man of Penn­syl­va­nia, who often speaks suc­cinct­ly and with great moral clar­i­ty, quick­ly became the first Sen­a­tor to call for Menen­dez to step down. He has now been joined by most of the Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus, includ­ing Sen­a­tors Book­er, Mur­ray, and Cantwell.

Book­er said:

For near­ly a decade, I’ve worked in the Sen­ate along­side Sen­a­tor Menen­dez. As New Jersey’s junior Sen­a­tor, I imag­ine that I’ve had more pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ences with him than most oth­ers, and I’ve wit­nessed his extra­or­di­nary work and bound­less work ethic.

I’ve con­sis­tent­ly found Sen­a­tor Menen­dez to be intel­lec­tu­al­ly gift­ed, tough, pas­sion­ate, and deeply empath­ic. We have devel­oped a work­ing rela­tion­ship and a friend­ship that I val­ue and believe has fur­thered our effec­tive­ness in serv­ing New Jersey.

Sen­a­tor Menen­dez is again fac­ing a fed­er­al indict­ment, one that con­tains shock­ing alle­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion and spe­cif­ic, dis­turb­ing details of wrong­do­ing. I’ve found the alle­ga­tions hard to rec­on­cile with the per­son I know.

It is not sur­pris­ing to me that Sen­a­tor Menen­dez is again deter­mined to mount a vig­or­ous defense. And I still believe he, like any­one involved with our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, deserves our pre­sump­tion of inno­cence until proven guilty. A jury of his peers will make the ulti­mate deci­sion as to whether he is crim­i­nal­ly guilty.

There is, how­ev­er, anoth­er high­er stan­dard for pub­lic offi­cials, one not of crim­i­nal law but of com­mon ideals. As Sen­a­tors, we oper­ate in the pub­lic trust. That trust is essen­tial to our abil­i­ty to do our work and per­form our duties for our constituents.

The details of the alle­ga­tions against Sen­a­tor Menen­dez are of such a nature that the faith and trust of New Jer­seyans as well as those he must work with in order to be effec­tive have been shak­en to the core.

As Sen­a­tor Menen­dez pre­pares to mount his legal defense, he has stat­ed that he will not resign. Sen­a­tor Menen­dez fierce­ly asserts his inno­cence and it is there­fore under­stand­able that he believes step­ping down is patent­ly unfair. But I believe this is a mistake.

Step­ping down is not an admis­sion of guilt but an acknowl­edg­ment that hold­ing pub­lic office often demands tremen­dous sac­ri­fices at great per­son­al cost. Sen­a­tor Menen­dez has made these sac­ri­fices in the past to serve. And in this case he must do so again. I believe step­ping down is best for those Sen­a­tor Menen­dez has spent his life serving.

Mur­ray said:

The charges against Sen­a­tor Menen­dez are extreme­ly seri­ous and the details released are deeply dis­turb­ing — while Sen­a­tor Menen­dez is enti­tled to his day in court, I believe he should step down and focus on his legal defense. If Sen­a­tor Menen­dez refus­es to resign, I encour­age the Sen­ate Ethics Com­mit­tee to open an inves­ti­ga­tion into this, sep­a­rate from the ongo­ing crim­i­nal case.

Cantwell said:

I found the alle­ga­tions made in the indict­ment shock­ing and dis­turb­ing. While every­one deserves their day in court, con­stituents and the Sen­ate deserve the full atten­tion of their elect­ed Sen­a­tor. I don’t believe any­one under such a damn­ing indict­ment can effec­tive­ly serve, and I urge Sen­a­tor Menen­dez to step aside.

We at the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute strong­ly agree that Bob Menen­dez should resign from the Unit­ed States Sen­ate with­out any fur­ther delay.

Menen­dez only rein­forced our grave con­cerns about his con­duct and lack of abil­i­ty to serve with his response, espe­cial­ly this line: “It is not lost on me how quick­ly some are rush­ing to judge a Lati­no and push him out of his seat.”

His seat, Menden­dez said, refer­ring to him­self in the third person.

Sen­a­tor Menen­dez, no one is enti­tled to a Sen­ate seat — they are posi­tions of pub­lic respon­si­bil­i­ty decid­ed on by vot­ers, not per­son­al pos­ses­sions or fam­i­ly heir­looms. As an elect­ed offi­cial entrust­ed with a lot of pow­er, you have an oblig­a­tion to behave eth­i­cal­ly and appro­pri­ate­ly at all times.

True lead­ers are role mod­els. They don’t use their posi­tions to enrich themselves.

You’ve for­feit­ed the trust of your con­stituents and your col­leagues through your alleged actions. Regard­less of whether these seri­ous charges are proven in court or not, their exis­tence makes it impos­si­ble for you to effec­tive­ly rep­re­sent the peo­ple of the Gar­den State. Please do the right thing for your­self, New Jer­sey, and the coun­try, and resign from office immediately.