Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we’ll take a closer look at the trial of Senator Robert Menendez, who with his wife, Nadine Menendez, was accused of taking bribes of cash, gold and a Mercedes-Benz in a case that the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York said was about “shocking levels of corruption.”
It has now been a week since Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey was convicted on corruption charges that grew out of what prosecutors said was an international bribery scheme. The verdict — guilty on all 16 counts against him — further tarnished the career of a once-powerful lawmaker who had stepped down as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after he was indicted. I asked Tracey Tully, who covered the case for the Metro desk, to analyze the trial and assess Menendez’s future.
Will he resign?
We have been told that he’s discussed his options, including resignation, with a small, trusted circle of friends and family members. It would be an obvious conversation to have.
He is about five months away from the end of his third six-year term in the Senate. A jury found him guilty of 16 federal crimes. And even though he and his lawyers are expected to ask a judge to vacate the conviction and, if needed, pursue an appeal, he has lost the confidence of his congressional colleagues and of New Jersey voters, 75 percent of whom told pollsters that they believed he was “probably guilty” — even before the trial started.
Is he daring the Senate to expel him?
The Senate hasn’t expelled a member since 1862. In the 20th century, four of the 10 senators who faced expulsion resigned first, avoiding the ignominy of an ouster vote by colleagues.
In Menendez’s case, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, has called for Menendez’s resignation, and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, Menendez’s political protégé and legislative ally, has volunteered to lead the expulsion effort.
It takes a two-thirds vote for the Senate to expel a member. Assuming all Democrats voted to expel Menendez, they would probably need at least 17 Republicans to concur.
On Monday, the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, which opened an investigation after Menendez was indicted, voted unanimously to advance its inquiry. That signaled that the committee was moving to lay the groundwork necessary to expel him. I expect that the committee will return its findings before the Senate breaks for its summer recess next month. Once that happens — or possibly even sooner — the pressure on Menendez to resign and to avoid a potentially ugly intraparty airing of dirty laundry will only intensify.
If he does resign, Gov. Philip Murphy of New Jersey would have the power to name someone to serve the remaining five months of Menendez’s term. Would Murphy appoint his wife, Tammy Murphy?
The governor has said he would make a temporary appointment if given the opportunity. That’s been interpreted to mean anyone but Andy Kim, the South Jersey congressman who last month won the Democratic nomination to run for Menendez’s seat after a bruising campaign against Tammy Murphy.
Given the lingering stink of the Menendez trial, New Jersey Republicans smell blood in the water. They believe that they have their first real shot in 50 years of electing a Republican senator.
And while it might be unpleasant for the governor to appoint an insurgent who vanquished his wife, naming Kim to the seat could give the congressman a meaningful head start in his November race against Curtis Bashaw, a moderate Republican. Tapping Kim would also be likely to please Democratic leaders in Washington, who are already fighting on several fronts to retain their narrow majority in the Senate.
The governor, who can’t run for re-election, has made no secret of the fact that he envisions a future for himself in the Democratic Party. So while Tammy Murphy would of course be on her husband’s shortlist of replacement candidates, the governor is also likely to feel pressure to turn to Kim.
This was the second time Menendez had been tried on corruption charges. The first case, in 2017, ended in a mistrial. How was this trial different?
One of the most obvious differences is that jurors in the 2017 trial in New Jersey could not reach a unanimous verdict. Last week, the 12 jurors from Manhattan, the Bronx and Westchester County took about 13 hours to convict Menendez and two co-defendants.
This case involved a complex international bribery scheme that implicated five people who were charged, including Menendez and his wife, Nadine Menendez. Her trial was postponed because she is being treated for breast cancer. Another defendant, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty and testified against the other three men.
All of that combined to make it a far different proceeding than the earlier one.
Menendez said he’d appeal the verdict, and his legal team includes Yaakov Roth, who represented Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia in a bribery case and argued on behalf of Bridget Kelly, a defendant in the “Bridgegate” case whose 2016 conviction was later overturned by the Supreme Court. What will Menendez’s lawyers base this appeal on?
Unsurprisingly, Menendez’s lawyers have not offered many clues about their legal strategy, other than to say that they think they have viable grounds for appeal. But I expect the appeal arguments would touch on the Supreme Court’s decision clearing McDonnell, as well as the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause, which precludes federal lawmakers from being prosecuted for votes or actions they take as part of their legislative duties.
When the indictment against Menendez was made public last year, Andy Kim said he had asked a neighbor what he thought of the charges. The man answered, “That’s Jersey.” Did the verdict do anything to change people’s assessment of the political culture in New Jersey?
If anything, it showed that no one is above the law and that state and federal prosecutors were not swayed by partisan politics.
The case against Menendez, a Democrat, was handled by an office run by a U.S. attorney appointed by a Democrat. The trial showed that a Democratic attorney general in New Jersey held firm, too.
Well before the verdict, the tawdry nature of the bribery charges against Menendez prompted a lawsuit by Kim that upended a central pillar of machine politics in New Jersey. The suit led a federal judge, appointed by Democrats, to order Democrats to redesign primary ballots that for decades had allowed party leaders to give their favored candidates preferential placement. The redesigned ballots are far more likely to have a long-term effect on the state’s political culture than the verdict itself.
Weather
Expect a chance of showers with temperatures in the mid-80s. At night, showers are likely to continue, and temperatures will drop to the mid-70s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Aug. 13 (Tisha B’Av).
The latest New York news
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Parents of teen driver who killed girl are sentenced: A New York couple were sentenced to probation and parenting classes after their teenage son drove his BMW at speeds of more than 100 miles an hour, crashed into a truck and killed his passenger, a 14-year-old girl.
METROPOLITAN diary
Counterman
Dear Diary:
Three construction workers line up at a deli counter near Stuyvesant Town. They give their orders, speaking to the cook’s back because he is hunched over an enormous, beautifully flat grill. Ketchup on the eggs. No onions. Extra green peppers. No salt. Extra salt. Turkey bacon. No peppers. Double sausage. Extra bacon.
The cook nods and begins to crack eggs. He piles them up as they sizzle, preparing for the scramble.
He makes the pile into separate mounds and begins attending to the rest: onions and peppers and salt and no salt and so on. All the while, he keeps an eye on the sausages and bacon, clanging his spatula as he flips and turns the meat.
Then it is time to scoop everything into containers: eggs, salt, peppers, no salt, no bacon, extra onions, sausage, no onion, turkey bacon, extra pepper, extra bacon.
One, two, three containers snap shut. Everything in its place, elastic around each, price scribbled on top and slid across the counter.
There you go! Next!
— Trevor Laurence Jockims
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Hannah Fidelman and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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The post What Comes Next for Robert Menendez? appeared first on New York Times.