Bob Menendez, the disgraced Democrat from New Jersey, entered federal custody on Tuesday to begin serving an 11-year sentence following his conviction on a wide array of corruption-related charges.
According to the Associated Press, Menendez is now being held at the Federal Correctional Institution in Schuylkill, Pennsylvania. He is expected to be placed in the prison’s minimum-security facility.
Menendez was convicted in July 2024 on 16 counts that included bribery, fraud, obstruction of justice, and acting as an unregistered foreign agent. Prosecutors said he took in hundreds of thousands of dollars through illicit means—bribes in the form of cash, gold bars, and mortgage payments—according to ABC News.
He stepped down from office shortly after his conviction and was sentenced this past January alongside two New Jersey businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes. Hana received over seven years, while Daibes was sentenced to more than eight.
Prosecutors alleged that Menendez leveraged his senatorial influence to shield Hana and Daibes from legal trouble and to advance the interests of the Egyptian and Qatari governments, benefiting both businessmen in the process.
In addition to accepting bribes, Menendez was found to have worked to derail federal probes into his co-defendants, conspiring to obstruct the investigation into the broader corruption scheme.
Another associate, Jose Uribe, took a plea deal in May 2024 and testified against Menendez. Uribe admitted that he had paid for a Mercedes-Benz convertible for Menendez’s wife, Nadine, to replace a vehicle she wrecked in a 2018 accident that killed a pedestrian, as reported by NorthJersey.com.
After receiving his sentence in January, Menendez made headlines by invoking the name of President Donald Trump, claiming the legal proceedings against him were politically motivated. “President Trump was right,” he told reporters after his sentencing. “This process is political and is corrupted to its core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system.”
This isn’t Menendez’s first time facing federal charges. In 2015, he was indicted on allegations of bribery and making false statements in a separate scandal. Prosecutors had accused him of pressuring the State Department to support a port security deal in the Dominican Republic that would benefit a donor who reportedly hosted him at lavish parties, a story originally uncovered by Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle at The Daily Caller in 2012.
That earlier case collapsed in 2017 with a mistrial, and the Department of Justice ultimately dropped the charges in 2018, Breitbart News reported.
Just before heading to prison, Menendez reignited criticism of the Obama administration, accusing it of politically targeting him over his opposition to the Iran nuclear agreement while he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “People talk about the Trump DOJ, but it was the Democrats who started weaponizing the Justice Dept. When, as the Chairman of the SFRC, I didn’t go along with Obama’s Iran deal, I was indicted, and the next day after being stripped of my position, Obama announced the Iran deal,” the former senator wrote in a May 30 thread on X.
He continued, “Obama told me that he could not have the Democratic Chairman of the SFRC be against him. By having me removed as the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama removed my major opposition to his Iran deal. It was a bad deal for the U.S. and for our ally, Israel.”
“This was the ultimate weaponization of the Justice Dept. for a political purpose… So when Democrats talk about weaponizing the Justice Dept, they should look into their own past actions. Obama was willing to use the Justice Department to pursue and preserve the legacy issue he felt would earn him the Nobel Prize he had received.”
Menendez, now 71 years old, continues to insist he did nothing wrong in either of the corruption cases brought against him.
His wife, Nadine Menendez, was convicted in April on related charges. Her sentencing is scheduled for September 11.
{Matzav.com}