(*15*)In documents filed slow Thursday in federal court in Manhattan, prosecutors sought a long prison sentence for Menendez, 71, who will be sentenced on Jan. 29.
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(*15*)Menendez was convicted in July of 16 corruption charges following an FBI raid on his home in 2022 that turned up $150,000 in gold bars and $480,000 in cash, most of which prosecutors say was the result of bribes paid by three businessmen from New Jersey, who wanted the senator to operate his power to protect their interests and make money.
(*15*)When Menendez was charged in the fall of 2023, he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was forced to leave that position that same year and resigned from the Senate last August.
(*15*)During our opening arguments last week, defense attorneys called for leniency from Judge Sidney H. Stein, saying Menendez’s conviction “was a national blow to him and deprived him of every possible personal, professional and financial advantage.”
(*15*)“Bob deserves mercy given the sentences already imposed, his age and the lack of compelling need for a prison sentence,” the lawyers said.
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(*15*)Two businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, were also convicted along with Menendez, and a third pleaded guilty and testified at the July trial. Prosecutors asked that Hana receive at least 10 years in prison and Daibes receive at least nine years behind bars. The prosecutor’s office said the crimes occurred between 2018 and 2022.
(*15*)In their opinion, prosecutors called the case a “historical rarity” because Menendez abused his influential position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and acted as an agent of Egypt.
(*15*)“The defendants’ crimes represent an extraordinary attempt at the highest levels of the legislature to corrupt the nation’s fundamental sovereign foreign relations and law enforcement powers,” prosecutors wrote.
» READ MORE: From gold bars to an exorbitant car: all the bribes Senator Bob Menendez has been accused of taking over the years
(*15*)“He promised to corruptly influence foreign relations, including attempting to pressure a federal agency involved in a diplomatic attempt to protect U.S. businesses from a mining monopoly granted by a foreign nation to one of his co-conspirators. And he corruptly promised to undermine the rule of law by disrupting numerous state and federal criminal prosecutions, including influencing the election of New Jersey’s top federal law enforcement officer,” they added.
(*15*)With Menendez’s support, Hana gained the exclusive right to certify that meat exported to Egypt from the United States complied with Islamic dietary requirements.
(*15*)According to trial testimony, the monopoly obtained by Hany’s company displaced several other companies involved in the certification of beef and liver exported to Egypt and occurred over the course of several days in May 2019.
(*15*)Meanwhile, prosecutors wrote, Menendez in many cases promoted and aided the Egyptian government’s viewpoint in ways “directly to the disadvantage of his own fellow U.S. senators” by modulating his public criticism of Egypt.
(*15*)They noted that Menendez helped the ghost write a letter justifying alleged human rights violations in Egypt.
(*15*)“In short, while serving as a U.S. senator, Menendez literally not only sided with a foreign government, but also secretly wrote a response on behalf of the foreign government against other U.S. senators,” prosecutors wrote.
(*15*)At another point, prosecutors said, Menendez briefed Egypt’s intelligence chief about questions other U.S. senators planned to ask Egypt over reports of its assistance in the notorious human rights abuses, murder and dismemberment of a journalist who was a lawful constant resident of the U.S.
(*15*)”Menendez’s transmission of non-public information to Egypt was, like his acting on behalf of the Egyptian government, also indefensible and constituted a grave abuse of his authority,” they wrote.
(*15*)Menendez’s wife, Nadine Menendez, is scheduled to go to trial on February 5 on many of the same charges as her husband. She pleaded not guilty. Her trial was delayed after her required surgery last year after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
