By Tracey Tully and Benjamin Weiser
Bob Menendez, New Jersey’s disgraced former senator who was once one of the most powerful Democrats in Washington, was sentenced Wednesday to 11 years in prison for his central role in an audacious international bribery scheme.
The courtroom in lower Manhattan was packed but silent as the judge imposed one of the longest sentences ever issued for a federal official in the United States.
“You were successful, powerful,” the judge, Sidney H. Stein of U.S. District Court, said before announcing the penalty. “You stood at the apex of our political system.
“Somewhere along the way — I don’t know where it was — you lost your way,” he added. “Working for the public good became working for your good.”
Menendez, a skilled orator known for holding forth on the Senate floor, wept intermittently as he addressed the court before the sentence was announced. He has said that he planned to appeal the conviction but told Stein that he stood before him a “chastened man” who had suffered the ignominy of a guilty verdict and the resignation of his Senate seat.
“Every day I’m awake is a punishment,” Menendez, 71, said.
“I ask you to temper your sword of justice with mercy for a lifetime of duty,” he added.
Menendez’s sister and both of his children — Alicia Menendez, an anchor on news network MSNBC, and Rep. Rob Menendez, a Democrat serving his second term in Congress — sat directly behind him.
After the sentencing concluded, Bob Menendez lingered briefly in the courtroom, one knee on a chair as he grasped his children’s hands. Then he headed out to address a crowd of reporters and onlookers in front of the courthouse.
Chastened no more, he offered a scathing indictment of the justice system and what appeared to be a direct appeal to President Donald Trump, who has the power to pardon him. (The president has given no indication that he would entertain granting a pardon for Menendez.)
“Let me just say this,” Menendez began. “This whole process has been nothing but a political witch hunt.
“President Trump is right,” he added. “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.”
Danielle Sassoon, the new acting head of the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement that the sentencings of Menendez and two of his co-defendants “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.”
The former senator’s fall from grace has been steep and swift.
He resigned from the Senate in August after a jury convicted him of trading his political clout for hundreds of thousands of dollars, bricks of gold and a Mercedes-Benz convertible.
When he was indicted 16 months ago, Menendez was serving as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, one of the most powerful perches in Washington.
The role gave him outsize influence over foreign military aid and international policy. And during a nine-week trial that ended in the summer, federal prosecutors emphasized the many ways in which Menendez used that power.
The prosecutors, in a recent memo to Stein, described Menendez’s conduct as possibly “the most serious for which a U.S. senator has been convicted in the history of the republic,” and asked the judge to impose a sentence of at least 15 years in prison.
Menendez was found guilty in July on all 16 counts he faced, including bribery, extortion, honest services wire fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and acting as an agent for Egypt.
When the jury announced its verdict, Menendez, the son of immigrants from Cuba, became the first U.S. senator ever convicted of acting as an agent of a foreign power.
At the trial, jurors were told how Menendez secretly drafted a letter on behalf of Egyptian officials who were hoping for millions more in military aid from the United States. He shared sensitive details about U.S. Embassy personnel in Cairo. He also attempted to interfere with state and federal criminal prosecutions in New Jersey on behalf of allies.
In return, gold and cash made their way to the modest home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, he shares with his wife, Nadine Menendez, who prosecutors say served as an intermediary and is expected to stand trial in March.
Lawyers for Bob Menendez, citing his hardscrabble upbringing, five decades of public service and devotion to his family, originally sought a term of no more than 27 months, with “at least two years’ rigorous community service.”
On Wednesday, however, Adam Fee, one of his lawyers, adjusted that recommendation and instead urged Stein to impose a sentence of no more than eight years in prison.
“If our worst moments defined us and overshadowed whatever other light we had put out into the world, many of us, including me, would not be here today,” Fee said, noting what he called Menendez’s “lifetime of extraordinary public service.”
A sentence of 10 years or more, Fee said, would preclude Menendez from being jailed at a minimum-security facility and would “expose him to a dramatically higher risk of danger, intimidation, threats, harassment and violence” in prison.
“He deserves punishment, and he will get it,” Fee said, adding, “He does not deserve to die in jail.”
Testimony and evidence introduced at trial showed Menendez and his wife conspiring during furtive dinners and on encrypted calls. The scheme, according to the indictment, largely revolved around efforts to steer aid to Egypt and help three New Jersey businesspeople, who were also charged.
“The defendants’ crimes amount to an extraordinary attempt, at the highest levels of the legislative branch, to corrupt the nation’s core sovereign powers over foreign relations and law enforcement,” the government wrote to Stein.
This week, the former senator’s lawyers, saying the case presented difficult appellate questions, asked Stein to allow Menendez to remain free on bond pending his appeal. That motion is still pending.
But Stein did delay the start of Menendez’s sentence until early June so that he would be able to attend his wife’s trial.
Two of Menendez’s co-defendants — Wael Hana and Fred Daibes — were also sentenced Wednesday. Daibes received a seven-year prison sentence and a fine of $1.75 million. Hana was sentenced to slightly more than eight years in prison and fined $1.3 million.
A fourth defendant, Jose Uribe, a failed insurance broker, pleaded guilty last year and became a star witness against the senator at trial. He is to be sentenced in April.
