Former Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) was sentenced today to eleven years in prison following his conviction in July 2024 for bribery, extortion, honest services fraud, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy. Prosecutors had asked for fifteen.
Since it is unlikely that Menendez will serve the full term, it appears he got off lightly. (I can already hear the reports that he’s a model prisoner.) But the real injustice is that he has been walking around as a free man since 2018 when his first bribery trial resulted in a mistrial. He should have been retried then, and if convicted, sent to prison.
I believe that the Justice Department chose not to retry Menendez due to the influence exerted by President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, a longtime Menendez supporter.
In April 2015, Menendez was indicted on multiple counts of corruption, along with Dr. Salomon Melgen, his largest campaign contributor.
Several criminal counts related to a port security deal in the Dominican Republic that was exposed by NLPC through a front-page New York Times story on February 1, 2013. Menendez used his official position to push a contract that would have resulted in a “highly lucrative windfall” for Melgen. NLPC provided information to the Times on an exclusive basis, apparently prompting prosecutors to act.
In addition to the decision not to retry Menendez, there’s the mystery of why the Justice Department never flipped Melgen to testify against Menendez. The doctor seemed to be a prime candidate to become a prosecution witness, already facing significant prison time for Medicare fraud.
Melgen was most likely told that if he served a couple years in prison, saving Menendez, that political efforts could be exerted later to free him. President Trump’s subsequent commutation of the balance of Melgen’s 17-year sentence during his last days of his first term confirmed to me that this is exactly what happened. Melgen may have been the least deserving candidate for presidential clemency in history, and that is saying a lot when the competition is the likes of Marc Rich, pardoned by President Clinton in 2001.
Menendez seems to be making a play for a Trump pardon. Following his sentencing, Menendez proclaimed:
President Trump is right. This process is political, and it’s corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system.
That’s a far cry from a report issued by Menendez in 2020 that read, in part:
While the U.S. will need to move forward and set a strong example, it cannot ignore the damage done by the Trump administration to democratic institutions and values. Our country must engage in some accounting of the damage done and take steps to protect our democracy from future abuses.
Let’s hope Trump doesn’t take the Menendez bait. Trump has the unfortunate habit of coming to the rescue of the worst crooks in the Democratic Party. Remember former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who he sprung from the can by commuting his sentence in 2020? Blagojevich tried to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat after Obama was elected president.
Today, U.S. District Court Judge Sidney H. Stein told Menendez:
Somewhere along the way — I don’t know where it was — you lost your way. Working for the public good became working for your good.
The judge is wrong. Anyone familiar with Menendez’ career, going back to his Union City days, knows that Menendez has always been a transactional politician, and was corrupt from the start.
(AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)