National
A high-profile United States Senator is facing legal trouble for the second time in several years.
Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) has been indicted on federal corruption and bribery charges, alleging that he provided sensitive information to the Egyptian government.
Menendez escaped charges from a 2015 indictment that alleged he accepted gifts from a Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen, who would later serve two to three years of a seventeen-year sentence for perpetrating one of the largest Medicare scams in medical history. Gifts received by Menendez were alleged as bribes for his intervention in the Medicare investigation against Melgen. Melgen’s sentence was commuted in 2021 by President Trump.
Menendez evaded the charges in 2017 due to a hung jury unable to reach a verdict; the charges were dropped.
This time, Menendez and his wife, Nadine, have been indicted in a federal court in New York are facing three charges of conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud and conspiracy to commit extortion. Allegedly, Menendez – leveraging his political position – and his wife accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for aiding the Egyptian government by providing sensitive U.S. information.
Menendez asserted his innocence at a press conference at the Hudson County Community College in Union City, where he got his political start serving as mayor from 1986 to 1992.
“The allegations are just that, allegations,” said Menendez. “When all the facts are presented, I’ll be exonerated and still the senior senator of New Jersey.”
Menendez also reinforced his allegiance and service to New Jersey and the United States. He also highlighted his status as a Cuban refugee.
Menendez, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says that he withheld military aid and directly pressured officials over Egypt’s human rights abuses. The indictment, however, accuses him of ghost-writing a letter to Egyptian officials, leveraging lifts on arms trade restrictions in exchange for bribes.
Federal prosecutors subsequently recovered hundreds of thousands of dollars from his Bergen County home, which contained envelopes of cash totalling $480,000, gold bars, a luxury car, and other forms of alleged payment.
Congressional procedure usually entails a legally embattled sitting chair of a committee step down from said role – which Menendez has done – but usually does not entail full resignation from Congress. Additionally, regarding U.S. Senators specifically, it’s rare a state’s other Senator to remark on the legal troubles of their colleague.
New Jersey’s junior Senator, Cory Booker (D), has called for Menendez’s resignation, signaling that these corruption charges might not be as avoidable as his separate charges were in 2017.
“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,” Booker said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Stepping down is not an admission of guilt but an acknowledgement that holding public office demands tremendous sacrifices at great personal cost.”
Other Senate Democrats have called for Menendez’s resignation, including Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Bob Casey, Jr. (D-PA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), and Jon Tester (D-MT). These Democrats are all on the ballot for the 2024 Senate races, including Menendez himself. So far, no Republicans have called for his resignation.
“While he is entitled to the presumption of innocence, serving in public office is a privilege that demands a higher standard of conduct,” said Senator Casey.
Bob Menendez, 69, has a lengthy career in New Jersey politics. He served as the mayor of Union City – located just north of Hoboken – from 1986 to 1992. He simultaneously served in the mayoral position and in the New Jersey General Assembly from 1988 until he was elected to the New Jersey Senate in 1991. He then served in the U.S. House from 1993 to 2006 until he was appointed to the vacant U.S. Senate seat. He was elected in his own right in 2006 by a nine-point margin. He was strongly re-elected in 2012 but won by a relatively-narrow eleven-point margin in 2018, just after his bribery charges were dropped as a result of a hung jury. Had 2018 been a red wave year instead of a blue wave year, Menendez likely would have faced a thin margin.
For reference, Republicans have not won a U.S. Senate seat in New Jersey since 1972.
Menendez has previously stated plans to run for a fourth term, although his ability to do so might be obscured by his legal battles, which appear more significant than his last election. Prominent New Jersey Democrats, including Governor Phil Murphy, have called for his resignation.
Menendez already has a primary opponent: popular Congressman Andy Kim (D) of the Third District. Kim flipped this South Jersey seat in 2018 and narrowly survived re-election in 2020. His district was redrawn to include more Democratic suburban areas and he was strongly re-elected in 2022.
At this point, Menendez dropping out of the race might be his best option to avoid an expensive primary that he most likely would lose to Congressman Kim. The rare open-seat contest in New Jersey could give Republicans an outside chance of contesting it, but it falls in line with the presidential election, where any Democrat is likely to carry New Jersey in that contest. Any Democrat, even Kim, might underperform the Democratic presidential nominee, but it will most likely not result in New Jersey being the most competitive Senate race on the ballot next year.
State
The ongoing migrant crisis taking New York City by storm has reached a new level of the saga: Governor Kathy Hochul (D) has called in the National Guard to assist with the efforts. With an additional 150 members, a total of 2,200 are currently working to solve the problem. 250 members will work on “case management,” while others will determine the statuses of asylum claims and try to expedite work permits.
Governor Hochul has blamed Republicans for the issue, saying: “Republicans in Washington have failed time and time again to just roll up their sleeves, work with Democrats, work with the president and have real meaningful immigration reform.”
Hochul also contends that some of the migrants “did not come all these thousands of miles just to live in a shelter with hundreds of thousands of others,” while saying that some “may be looking for a bus ticket to another state and not know where to go.”
Earlier this month, New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) says that the crisis will cost an estimated $12 billion and “destroy” the city.
Local
Congressman Nick LaLota (R), a member of the House Committee of Homeland Security, has introduced the No Bailout for Sanctuary Cities Act, a bill that provides that “sanctuary jurisdictions that provide benefits to aliens who are present in the United States without lawful status under the immigration laws are ineligible for Federal funds intended to benefit such aliens.”
The bill simply prevents federal funds from being used to bailout self-avowed san
“However illogical, New York Democrats are free to keep their failed sanctuary city policies which are helping to cause New York City’s migrant crisis and the $12 billion Mayor Adams says it will cost,” said LaLota. “But these officials, who can repeal those costly policies any day, cannot expect other states’ taxpayers to fund their indiscretion while their policies remain in place.”
Congressmen Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) of the Second District and Anthony D’Esposito (R-Island Park) of the Fourth District have both signed on as original cosponsors.
“You don’t treat the symptoms of a problem instead of the root cause,” said Garbarino. “Progressive policies like those implemented by New York City and New York State have brought the border crisis to our doorstep and, until Governor Hochul and Mayor Adams show a willingness to change those policies, our state will continue to be inundated with an influx of migrants we can’t afford to support. The No Bailout for Sanctuary Cities Act would hold sanctuary cities accountable and encourage New York to reverse its failed policies, which have only exacerbated this crisis.”
