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NEW YORK (AP) — Prosecutors say former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez should be imprisoned for 15 years for a “grave abuse of his power,” after the New Jersey Democrat became the first person to be convicted of abusing a Senate committee leadership position and the first U.S. public official to be convicted of serving as a foreign agent.
In papers filed late Thursday in Manhattan federal court, prosecutors called for the lengthy prison term for the 71-year-old Menendez when he is sentenced on Jan. 29.
Menendez was convicted in July of 16 corruption charges brought after an FBI raid on his home in 2022 turned up $150,000 in gold bars and $480,000 in cash, much of which prosecutors alleged was the result of bribes paid by three New Jersey businessmen who wanted the senator to use his power to protect their interests and make them money.
When he was charged in the fall of 2023, Menendez was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was forced out of that position that year and gave up his Senate seat last August.
In presentence arguments last week, defense lawyers called for Judge Sidney H. Stein to be lenient, saying Menendez’s conviction had “rendered him a national punchline and stripped him of every conceivable personal, professional, and financial benefit.”
“Bob is deserving of mercy because of the penalties already imposed, his age, and the lack of a compelling need to impose a custodial sentence,” the lawyers said.
Two businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, were also convicted along with Menendez, while a third pleaded guilty and testified at the July trial. Prosecutors called for Hana to receive at least 10 years in prison and Daibes to spend at least nine years behind bars. Prosecutors said the crimes occurred from 2018 to 2022.
In their submission, prosecutors called the case a “historical rarity” because Menendez abused his powerful post on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and because he acted as an agent of Egypt.
“The defendants’ crimes amount to an extraordinary attempt, at the highest levels of the Legislative Branch, to corrupt the nation’s core sovereign powers over foreign relations and law enforcement,” prosecutors wrote.
“He corruptly promised to influence foreign relations, including attempting to pressure a federal agency engaged in diplomatic attempts to protect U.S. businesses from an extractive monopoly granted by a foreign nation to one of his coconspirators. And he corruptly promised to subvert the rule of law by disrupting multiple felony criminal proceedings, state and federal, including by influencing the selection of the chief federal law enforcement officer for New Jersey,” they added.
With Menendez’s support, Hana was granted the sole right to certify that meat exported to Egypt from the United States conformed to Islamic dietary requirements.
The monopoly that Hana’s company received forced out several other companies that had been certifying beef and liver exported to Egypt and occurred over a span of several days in May 2019, according to trial testimony.
Meanwhile, prosecutors wrote, Menendez in multiple instances promoted the Egyptian government’s viewpoints and assisted the Egyptian government in ways “directly adverse to his own fellow U.S. Senators” as he modulated his public criticism of Egypt.
They noted that Menendez helped ghost-write a letter seeking to justify Egypt’s alleged human rights abuses.
“In short, while a U.S. Senator himself, Menendez literally not just took the side of, but secretly authored a response in the voice of, a foreign government against his own fellow U.S. Senators,” prosecutors wrote.
At another point, prosecutors said, Menendez briefed the head of Egyptian intelligence on questions other U.S. senators planned to ask Egypt about reports that it had aided in a notorious human rights abuse, the murder and dismemberment of a journalist who was a legal U.S. permanent resident.
“Menendez’s provision of non-public information to Egypt was — like his advocacy on behalf of the Egyptian government — also indefensible and a grave abuse of his power,” they wrote.
Menendez’s wife, Nadine Menendez, is scheduled to stand trial on Feb. 5 on many of the same charges as her husband. She has pleaded not guilty. Her trial was delayed after she required surgery last year after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Larry Neumeister, The Associated Press
