Recently, the former New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez was sentenced to eleven years in prison for accepting bribes in cash and gold worth more than half a million dollars. He is the first person sentenced to prison for crimes committed in the Senate in more than forty years. Menendez did favors for the government of Egypt while he was the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, and intervened in criminal cases against the businessmen who were bribing him. In New York, he broke down in tears before a federal judge, pleading for leniency. Upon emerging from the courtroom, he made a thinly veiled plea to the man he had once voted to impeach. “President Trump is right,” Menendez declared to news cameras. “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.” WNYC’s New Jersey reporter Nancy Solomon explores how the son of working-class immigrants from Cuba scaled the heights of American politics, and then fell dramatically. But will he serve the time? Solomon speaks with the constitutional-law professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, who says, “It’s hard to know who Trump will pardon next. One of the more recent pardons was for the former governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich. He was a Democrat. . . . [Trump] seems much more interested in undermining anti-corruption laws left, right, and center.”
What led to Bob Menendez's sentencing?
Menendez has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. His lawyers aren't counting on a pardon and have said they'll appeal the conviction. And the current U.S. Supreme Court?
It might actually help. The Roberts Supreme Court has been steadily deregulating corruption. They've done this both in white-collar crime cases and in campaign finance cases.
So the outlook for Bob Menendez is not quite as bleak as it might seem, despite facing 11 years in prison. But whether or not he receives a pardon or wins his appeal, it remains an epic collapse of what was a historic political career. He was the first in everything he did, first in his family to go to college, first Latino in New Jersey elected mayor, state legislator, and member of Congress.
That's what makes this case and the cartoonish details of gold bars and stacks of cash squirreled away in his home so mystifying to those who knew and respected him. Like Brad Lawrence, his consultant who worked on nearly every one of his campaigns.
I don't want to be a Bob Menendez apologist, particularly in light of how it ended. But I also have, you know, a long history and a respect and affection for at least the first three quarters of his life, political life. I don't have the answer to it. I wish I did, and I feel like I'm an idiot that I don't have the answer for it.
But, you know, it is to me an inexplicable and tragic way for him to go.
Robert Menendez was sentenced to 11 years in prison. He remains free so he can attend Nadine Menendez's trial. She also pleaded not guilty. There's more reporting on politics and crime from Nancy Solomon at deadendpodcast.org. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks for listening. See you next time.
The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of TuneArts, with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul.
This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Sommer, with guidance from Emily Botin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Guan, and Alejandra Deckett.
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