Former US senator Bob Menendez was sentenced to 11 years in prison on Wednesday for accepting bribes of cash and gold bars and serving as an agent of Egypt as he sold influence to businessmen eager to exploit his political power.
District judge Sidney H Stein in Manhattan announced the sentence after Menendez tearfully addressed the judge, saying he had lost everything he cared about, except for his wife.
“You were successful, powerful, you stood at the apex of our political system,” the judge said. “Somewhere along the way, and I don’t know when it was, you lost your way and working for the public good became working for your good.”
Prosecutors had requested a 15-year prison term for the Democrat who was convicted of multiple charges including acting as an agent for Egypt for selling his once-considerable clout in Washington for bribes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Given a chance to speak before he was sentenced, Menendez broke down several times as he described his accomplishments.
“You really don’t know the man you are about to sentence,” Menendez told Judge Stein.
“Your honour, I am far from a perfect man. I have made more than my share of mistakes and bad decisions.
“I’ve done far more good than bad. I ask you, your honour, to judge me in that context.”
Lawyer Adam Fee told Judge Stein to give Menendez credit for a “lifetime of extraordinary public service and personal sacrifices”.
“Despite his decades of service, he is now known more widely as gold bar Bob,” Mr Fee said.
Menendez’s lawyers had said prior to the sentencing that their client deserves under two years in prison, citing his decades of public service and a life largely well-lived after the son of Cuban immigrants rose from poverty to become “the epitome of the American Dream”.
Former US senator Bob Menendez arriving at court on Wednesday (Stefan Jeremiah/AP)
But Mr Fee said the defence team decided to ask that Menendez get no more than eight years after hearing Judge Stein earlier in the day give substantial prison terms to two New Jersey businessmen convicted of paying bribes to the senator.
Fred Daibes, a property developer, got seven years and a 1.75 million-dollar (£1.4 million) fine. Wael Hana, an entrepreneur, got eight years, a 1.25 million-dollar (£1 million) fine and was ordered to forfeit 125,000 dollars (£100,587).
Prior to the announcement of his sentence, Daibes, 67, tearfully told Judge Stein the jury verdict had left him “borderline suicidal”, and requested leniency so that he could care for his 30-year-old autistic son.
Hana told the judge: “I am an innocent man.”
“I never bribed Senator Menendez or asked his office for influence.”
The judge, though, said the jury’s verdict was “very, very substantial”.
A third businessman pleaded guilty and gave evidence against Menendez at a trial last year.
Menendez resigned from the Senate after his conviction last year, though he lost much of his power in 2023 when the charges against him were revealed and he was forced to surrender his powerful post as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The trial traced Menendez’s dealings with Egyptian officials and his quest to aid three men who showered him with lucrative gifts found during a 2022 raid on the New Jersey home he shared with his wife, Nadine.
FBI agents who searched the house found 480,000 dollars (£386,256), some of it stuffed inside boots and the pockets of clothing hung in the couple’s wardrobes. They also seized gold bars worth an estimated 150,000 dollars (£120,705).
Prosecutors said Menendez had “put his high office up for sale in exchange for this hoard of bribes”, including by serving Egypt’s interests as he worked to protect a meat certification monopoly Hana had established with the Egyptian government.Wael Hana leaves court after his sentencing on Wednesday (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP)
Among other things, Menendez provided Egyptian officials with information about the staff at the US Embassy in Cairo and ghostwrote a letter to fellow senators encouraging them to lift a hold on 300 million dollars (£241 million) in military aid to Egypt.
Prosecutors said that for other bribes, Menendez attempted to persuade a federal prosecutor in New Jersey to go easy on Daibes, a politically influential property developer accused of bank fraud.
And at the trial, another businessman, Jose Uribe, gave evidence that he helped Nadine Menendez get a Mercedes-Benz convertible after the senator sought to pressure state prosecutors to drop criminal probes of his associates.
Menendez has insisted that he is innocent of any crime, saying repeatedly that his interactions with Egyptian officials were normal for the head of the Foreign Relations Committee, and that he always put American interests first.
He denied taking any bribes and said the gold bars belonged to his wife.
Nadine Menendez faces trial in March on many of the same charges as her husband after spending the last year being treated for breast cancer.
Menendez’s lawyers, in a presentence submission, said he had already suffered greatly.
“Unsurprisingly, Senator Menendez’s conviction has rendered him a national punchline and stripped him of every conceivable personal, professional and financial benefit,” his lawyers wrote.
“Bob is now 71, with his long-built reputation in tatters. He has suffered financial and professional ruin.”
Fred Daibes arriving at court in New York (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP)
In court papers, the lawyers described how Menendez devoted much of his life to his country and his community after he was scarred by the early loss of his father, who killed himself when Menendez was 23 after he was unable to pay off gambling debts.
They described a 50-year history of public service in heroic terms, tracing a career in which Menendez was mayor of Union City, New Jersey, a state politician, a member of the US House and then a senator from 2006 to 2024.
Yet he also had the distinction of being the only US senator indicted twice.
In 2015, he was charged with selling his influence to a wealthy Florida eye doctor and entrepreneur who prosecutors said lavished him with luxury vacations and campaign contributions.
But the jury in that case could not reach a unanimous verdict. Federal prosecutors dropped the case rather than put him on trial again.