By Dareh Gregorian, Adam Reiss and Jonathan Dienst – NBC News
A judge sentenced an emotional former Sen. Bob Menendez to 11 years in prison Wednesday for a yearslong bribery and corruption scheme that rewarded him with gold bars and stacks of cash.
Menendez, D-N.J., had pleaded with U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein of the Southern District of New York for mercy, twice breaking down in tears.
“I have lost everything,” he said after he recounted actions he said he had taken to help others while he was in the Senate, a job he resigned from after he was convicted.
“For a man who spent his entire life in public service, every day I am awake is a punishment,” said Menendez, who was chair of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee at the time he took the payoffs.
The judge appeared unmoved and noted that while Menendez had done some positive work, the evidence was “overwhelming” and he had failed the voters of New Jersey.
“Somewhere along the way you became, I’m sorry to say, a corrupt politician,” Stein told him before he handed down the sentence. He also entered a forfeiture order for all of Menendez’ ill-gotten gains, which totaled $992,188.10, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
Stein said Menendez would not have to begin his sentence until June 6 so he can attend the trial of his wife — and co-defendant — Nadine Menendez. “I want him to be able to be present for his wife,” Stein said.
Prosecutors had recommended a sentence of 15 years for Menendez, 71, which his attorneys called “vindictive and cruel” and “a life and death sentence.”
Menendez was found guilty in July of extortion, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and acting as a foreign agent after a sensational trial in which prosecutors charged that he accepted bribes — including cash and gold bars — to benefit the governments of Egypt and Qatar.
Two co-defendants were found guilty, as well, and were each sentenced Wednesday to several years in prison.
Menendez pleaded not guilty and has vowed to appeal the conviction. He has also been seeking a pardon from President Donald Trump after he was unable to get one from President Joe Biden, NBC News has reported.
Menendez was unrepentant leaving court and claimed he was the victim of a “political witch hunt.”
“President Trump was right. This process is political, and it’s corrupt to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system,” said Menendez, a lifelong Democrat who voted to convict Trump during both of his impeachment trials.
In court filings, Menendez’s attorneys had pleaded with Stein to spare him jail time, noting that he resigned from the Senate in August and contending he has been punished enough.
“Senator Menendez has suffered extreme public shame and upheaval, and his finances and reputation are destroyed, likely for the rest of his life. He is the butt of late-night talk show jokes, and his name will live in infamy as the first politician in history to be convicted of being a foreign agent,” they argued in a court filing.
“He will live the rest of his days a social and political pariah, whether inside or outside of jail,” they added.
Menendez’s lawyers also contended that Stein should show mercy because of his “lifetime of good deeds,” including the work he did in the Senate, and that there was no evidence that “any of the acts alleged by the government harmed anyone.”
After Stein sentenced Menendez’s co-defendants to lengthy prison terms Wednesday, attorney Adam Fee amended his request and asked the judge to sentence Menendez to eight years in prison so he would be able to do his time in a minimum-security facility. A sentence of over 10 years would take that option away, Fee noted.
“A sentence of above eight years would be disproportionate to the offense and inappropriate,” he argued.
Prosecutors argued that a lengthy prison sentence was a necessity given Menendez’s position of power and the brazenness of the scheme.
“Menendez’s conduct may be the most serious for which a U.S. Senator has been convicted in the history of the Republic. Very few Senators have even been convicted of any criminal offense, and of those, most of the Senators engaging in bribery accepted amounts that are a fraction of what Menendez reaped,” their sentencing memo said.
“Serving in the Senate should have been its own reward. If Menendez was not corrupt, it would have been. It is not something Menendez needs to be rewarded for at all,” they added.
Menendez, his wife and three New Jersey businessmen were indicted in 2023 after a lengthy investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in New York.
Prosecutors said the businessmen paid bribes to Menendez and his wife in exchange for the senator’s taking actions to benefit them and the governments of Qatar and Egypt. According to prosecutors, the bribes included gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz given to Nadine Menendez and more than $480,000 in cash, which the FBI found stuffed into closets, jackets bearing Menendez’s name and other clothing when it searched his New Jersey home in 2022.
Two of the businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, were tried alongside Menendez and convicted on all counts. They were sentenced Wednesday, as well.
Daibes was the first to go before the judge, and Stein sentenced him to 84 months — about two years less than what the government was seeking. He was also fined $1.75 million for what Stein called his “very serious crimes.”
Stein gave Hana a sentence of 97 months — also about two years less than prosecutors sought — and fined him $1.25 million for what the judge said was “substantial” evidence that Hana, who he noted had assets worth more than $30 million, “committed bribery.”
The third businessman, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecution during the nine-week trial. He will be sentenced later this year.
Nadine Menendez’s trial was pushed back to March to allow her time to undergo cancer treatments.
The senator did not testify in his own defense. His team argued that he was acting on behalf of his constituents and that the government had not proven that the cash or gold bars were given as bribes.
His attorneys argued in a court filing Tuesday that Stein should stay the execution of the sentence to give Menendez time to appeal the conviction. The motion said that among the grounds for an appeal are questions over whether some of his actions were protected by the speech and debate clause of the U.S. Constitution, which provides immunity protections to members of Congress for acts relating to their legislative work.
The filing said keeping Menendez out of jail pending his appeal would also allow him to support “his wife during her pre-operative and post-operative care, during which she will need considerable help and have no other family member available.”
It added that “there is no risk that Senator Menendez will commit further crimes, and he intends to vindicate himself and restore his reputation on appeal.”
The case was the second corruption trial Menendez had faced in his 18-year career in the Senate. The previous one ended in a hung jury in 2017, and the Justice Department subsequently dropped the charges.
Menendez had also denied wrongdoing in that case. The Senate Ethics Committee investigated the allegations and issued a rare public admonishment in 2018 in a report that found he had broken Senate rules and federal law by accepting gifts from a Florida eye doctor and failing to disclose those gifts.
Prosecutors said the gold bar scheme started soon after the publication of the Ethics Committee’s report and asked the judge to keep that in mind at his sentencing.
“Menendez’s willingness to engage in the charged scheme immediately after receiving a formal admonition for such similar conduct speaks volumes about his character,” they said.
According to prosecutors, only 12 other senators have been charged with crimes while serving in the Senate, and only four of those prosecutions resulted in convictions.