Former Sen. Bob Menendez D-N. Federal prosecutors levied allegations of bribery, extortion and acting as a foreign agent against Menendez, then-chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in fall Last summer, he became the first public official ever convicted of acting as a foreign agent while in office.
A New York jury found the senator and his wife, Nadine, accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, gold bars and luxury cars from three New Jersey businessmen. In exchange, Menendez protected the halal meat certification monopoly of one of the businessmen, Wael Hana, in exchange for lucrative kickbacks, and intervened in separate criminal cases involving the other two men, Jose Uribe and Fred Daibes.
Before the judge handed down his sentence Wednesday, Menendez, 71, tearfully asked for leniency, citing his decades of public service.
District Judge Sidney H. Stein, according to The Associated Press. But the judge was not convinced. Menendez was ordered to report to prison by June 6. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system.
Hana was also sentenced Wednesday to just more than eight years in prison, and Daibes to a seven-year prison term. Uribe, who pleaded guilty before facing trial, is set to be sentenced in June. As the powerful chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Menendez signed off on several multimillion-dollar weapons sales to Egypt, which he repeatedly asked his wife to relay to the businessmen, who then passed on the intel to Egyptian officials, between and Following a nine-week trial, Menendez was found guilty on all 16 counts he faced.
