Menendez to resign from Senate next month

New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) will resign from the Senate next month after being convicted in a bribery scandal last week.

The Senate on Tuesday received Menendez’s resignation letter and entered it into the record. He will step down effective Aug. 20.

“The chair lay before the Senate a communication regarding the resignation of Sen. Menendez,” Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said while presiding over the chamber. “Without objection the letter will be printed in the record and spread upon the journal.”

The New Jersey Globe first reported Menendez’s decision.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told reporters that he does not expect Menendez to show up for the final two weeks of session before the August recess.

He also discouraged Menendez from showing up to receive any classified briefings he may be able to attend.

“I don’t expect to see him,” Durbin told reporters.  “I think he knows the sensitivity of the situation. I don’t think he should be treated as a sitting senator when it comes to anything confidential.”

Menendez’s departure also coincides with pay-day for senators and Senate staff as both are paid on the 5th and 20th of every month.

Menendez faces potential decades in prison after being convicted on federal charges of bribery, acting as a foreign agent and the rest of the 16 counts he faced for allegedly accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from business associates, including the owner of a company that prosecutors said benefited handsomely from Menendez’s influence over U.S. foreign policy.

The 70-year-old, who has held his seat since 2006, vowed to appeal the conviction. He had been planning to run for reelection as an independent in November.

“I have never violated my public oath,” Menendez said outside the courthouse after the trial. “I have never been anything but a patriot of my country and for my country. I have never, ever been a foreign agent.”

Menendez had resisted calls to step down since the indictment was first handed down, at the time accusing the Department of Justice of trying to force him from Congress because of his “humble beginnings” as a first-generation Latino American, though he relinquished his post as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in accordance with Senate Democratic rules.

Once the verdict was announced, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who had previously stopped short of calling for Menendez’s resignation, said he should step down, as discussions of potentially expelling the New Jersey Democrat gained momentum.

More than half of the Senate Democratic Conference had called for Menendez to leave Congress prior to the conviction, as had New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D).

Over several weeks of trial, the government presented testimony that more than $486,000 in cash and $100,000 in gold bars were found in Menendez’s home by the FBI, and showed evidence that his wife — Nadine Menendez, who also faces charges but has yet to go to trial — frequently served as a go-between for her husband and the businessmen.

Prosecutors said the senator wielded his influence over U.S. foreign policy toward Egypt to help an associate, Wael Hana, obtain lucrative exclusive rights to certify American meat exports to Egypt as halal and also used his office to pressure the U.S. Department of Agriculture not to interfere with Hana’s monopoly.

They also accused Menendez of trying to intervene in the criminal prosecution of an associate of one of his co-defendants, and in return received a Mercedes-Benz worth $60,000.

Several superseding indictments accused him of conspiring to act as a federal agent of Egypt, accepting gifts from the Qatari government and conspiring to cover up the bribery scheme as prosecutors worked the case.

Menendez’s attorneys sought to pin the blame on the senator’s wife at times, contending she hid her dealings with the businessmen from him.

In his initial response to the indictment, Menendez said prosecutors had “misrepresented the normal work of a Congressional office. On top of that, not content with making false claims against me, they have attacked my wife for the longstanding friendships she had before she and I even met.”

“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,” he continued.

Menendez had clashed with prosecutors previously, triumphing over an indictment brought nine years ago alleging he participated in a bribery scheme with a wealthy doctor, Salomon Melgen, who was later sentenced to 17 years in prison for a Medicare fraud scheme.

The Senate Ethics Committee later admonished Menendez in 2018 for having “knowingly and repeatedly accepted gifts or significant value from Dr. Melgen without obtaining required Committee approval.”

Prosecutors failed to secure a conviction of Menendez after his trial on bribery charges ended with a hung jury in 2017.

“Menendez has made the right decision for New Jersey by agreeing to step down next month,” said Rep. Andy Kim, who is the Democratic nominee running to take over Menendez’s seat, in a statement to The Hill.

“It’s time for New Jersey to move forward,” Kim added. “We have big challenges ahead of us, and we can only tackle them if we show the people of our state that this is the beginning of a new era of politics built on integrity, service, and delivering for all families.”

Kim has not explicitly said that he wants the governor to appoint him as the interim senator for the state, but according to a spokesperson for Kim, he would “accept the nomination, but acknowledges that it is up to the Governor.”

Updated at 4:24 p.m. ET

Ella Lee contributed.

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