Disgraced former US Senator Bob Menendez jailed for 11 years in corruption case
Former New Jersey senator Bob Menendez has been jailed for 11 years for his involvement in a years-long corruption scheme in which he wielded his political influence to conduct favors for the Egyptian government in exchange for lavish gifts.
Once a three-term senator who chaired the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Menendez sat before a federal judge in downtown Manhattan on Wednesday, flanked by lawyers, to receive his punishment after becoming the first senator to ever be convicted of acting as a foreign agent.
Menendez, 71, accepted bribes – in the form of lavish gifts – from three New Jersey businessmen who sought his help in meddling in state and federal criminal investigations and securing lucrative deals with officials from Egypt and Qatar.
Roughly six months ago, a jury found Menendez guilty on 16 counts including bribery, extortion, corruption, obstruction of justice, and acting as a foreign agent for Egypt – what prosecutors described as 'the most serious' conduct that a senator has been convicted for 'in the history of the republic.'
When federal agents descended upon Menendez's home in 2022 and 2023 they made a startling discovery.
More than $100k worth of gold bars, one found in a Ziploc bag, stuffed in a closet, a Mercedez-Benz convertible parked in the driveway, and more than $480,000 in cash stuffed into coat jacket pockets, shoes and bags.
Those, in addition to jewelry and other gifts, were all bribes that Menendez and his wife Nadine Menendez accepted from two co-defendants, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, as well as a former co-defendant who took a plea deal, Jose Uribe.
Federal prosecutors asked Judge Stein to sentence Menendez to 15 years in prison and impose a $2.8 million fine and more than $920,000 in restitution.
The former senator's attorneys asked the judge for leniency, asking him to consider home detention and 'rigorous community service' instead.
Hana, an Egyptian-American businessman with a halal-meat certifying business, connected Menendez with Egyptian intelligence officials. With Menendez's help, Hana secured a lucrative contract with U.S. officials to be the exclusive certifier of halal meat to Egypt.
Menendez pushed the U.S. to give Egypt millions in military aid and sent Egyptian officials nonpublic information.
Hana was sentenced to roughly eight years in prison.
Daibes, a real-estate developer, gave Menendez gold and cash in exchange for his help interfering with a criminal investigation and securing investors in a development project. Daibes introduced Menendez to a Qatari investor who was also a member of the Qatari royal family.
Menendez later supported a Senate resolution praising Qatar.
Daibes was sentenced to seven years in prison on Wednesday.
Uribe, an insurance executive, pleaded guilty telling prosecutors he gave Menendez and his wife a Mercedes-Benz convertible in exchange for Menendez to interfere in a state fraud investigation. Menendez then spoke directly with the New Jersey attorney general about the case.
Uribe will be sentenced in April.
The senator's wife allegedly played a pivotal role in the scheme, according to Menendez's lawyers who sought to push the blame on Nadine for pressuring Menendez to accept the lavish gifts.
Nadine is expected to stand trial in March. Her trial was severed from her husband's last year after she revealed she is battling breast cancer.
From the moment Menendez was indicted until sentencing, he has maintained his innocence and vowed to appeal the conviction.
Even while facing calls to resign from fellow Democratic members of Congress, Menendez refused to let go of his power. He initially teased running for re-election in the state, this time as an independent candidate. However, after his conviction Menendez resigned.
'I have never been anything but a patriot of my country and for my country,' Menendez said after the verdict. 'The decision rendered by the jury today would put at risk every member of the United States Senate in terms of what they think a foreign agent would be.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Western Telegraph
26 minutes ago
- Western Telegraph
US does not seek war, says Pentagon after bombing Iran's nuclear sites
The mission, called Operation Midnight Hammer, involved decoys and deception, and met with no Iranian resistance, Mr Hegseth and US Air Force General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news conference on Sunday. Mr Hegseth said it is important to note the US strikes did not target Iranian troops or the Iranian people, a veiled effort to indicate to Tehran they do not want retaliation on American targets in the region. 'This mission was not and has not been about regime change,' Mr Hegseth added. Mr Caine said the goal of the operation – destroying nuclear sites in Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan – had been achieved. US President Donald Trump earlier claimed the facilities had been 'completely and fully obliterated'. 'Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction,' Mr Caine said. The operation inserted the United States into Israel's war aimed at destroying Iran's nuclear programme, though the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran insisted the programme will not be stopped. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has condemned the US attacks, while foreign minister Abbas Araghchi warned diplomacy is no longer an option. 'This aggression showed that the United States is the primary instigator of the Zionist regime's hostile actions against the Islamic Republic of Iran,' Mr Pezeshkian said on Sunday. 'Although they initially tried to deny their role, after our armed forces' decisive and deterrent response and the Zionist regime's clear incapacity, they were inevitably forced to enter the field themselves.' Mr Araghchi meanwhile declared that while the 'door to diplomacy' should always be open, 'this is not the case right now'. Joint Chiefs chairman Dan Caine addressed the media at the Pentagon (Alex Brandon/AP) He added: 'The warmongering, lawless administration in Washington is solely and fully responsible for the dangerous consequences and far reaching implications of its act of aggression.' Satellite images taken on Sunday show damage to the mountainside at the underground site at Fordo. The images, by Planet Labs PBC, show the once-brown mountain now has parts turned grey and its contours appear slightly different than in previous images, suggesting a blast threw up debris around the site. That suggests the use of specialised American bunker-buster bombs on the facility. Light grey smoke also hung in the air. Iran and the UN nuclear watchdog said there were no immediate signs of radioactive contamination at the three locations following the strikes. It is not clear whether the US will continue attacking Iran alongside its ally Israel, which has been engaged in a nine-day war with Iran. Iran targeted Tel Aviv with missiles in the hours after the US attack (Oded Balilty/AP) Mr Trump acted without congressional authorisation, and he warned there will be additional strikes if Tehran retaliates against US forces. 'There will either be peace or there will be tragedy for Iran,' he said. Iran's foreign ministry said Washington had 'betrayed diplomacy' with the military strikes, and that 'the US has itself launched a dangerous war against Iran'. Its statement added: 'The Islamic Republic of Iran reserves its right to resist with full force against US military aggression and the crimes committed by this rogue regime, and to defend Iran's security and national interests.' Hours after the American attacks, Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said it launched a barrage of 40 missiles at Israel, including its Khorramshahr-4, which can carry multiple warheads. Israeli authorities reported that more than 80 people suffered mostly minor injuries, though one multi-storey building in Tel Aviv was significantly damaged, with its entire facade torn away to expose the apartments inside. Houses across the street were almost completely destroyed. Following the Iranian barrage, Israel's military said it had 'swiftly neutralised' the Iranian missile launchers that had fired, and that it had begun a series of strikes towards military targets in western Iran. President Donald Trump addressed the nation from the White House following the air strikes (Carlos Barria/pool/AP) Iran has maintained its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only, and US intelligence agencies have assessed that Tehran is not actively pursuing a bomb. However, Mr Trump and Israeli leaders have argued Iran could quickly assemble a nuclear weapon, making it an imminent threat. The decision to directly involve the US in the war comes after more than a week of strikes by Israel that significantly degraded Iran's air defences and offensive missile capabilities, and damaged its nuclear enrichment facilities. But US and Israeli officials have said American B-2 stealth bombers and the 30,000-pound bunker-buster bomb that only they have been configured to carry offered the best chance of destroying heavily fortified sites connected to the Iranian nuclear programme buried deep underground. Mr Trump appears to have made the calculation – at the prodding of Israeli officials and many Republicans – that Israel's operation had softened the ground and presented a perhaps unparalleled opportunity to set back Iran's nuclear programme, perhaps permanently. 'We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordo, Natanz, and Esfahan,' Mr Trump said in a post on social media. 'All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordo. All planes are safely on their way home.' Mr Trump later added: 'This is an HISTORIC MOMENT FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ISRAEL, AND THE WORLD. IRAN MUST NOW AGREE TO END THIS WAR. THANK YOU!' Israel announced on Sunday that it had closed its airspace to both inbound and outbound flights in the wake of the US attacks. US officials said the attack used bunker-buster bombs on Iran's Fordo nuclear fuel enrichment plant, while submarines launched about 30 Tomahawk missiles. The decision to attack was a risky one for Mr Trump, who won the White House partially on the promise of keeping America out of costly foreign conflicts and scoffed at the value of American interventionism. But he has vowed he will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon and he had initially hoped the threat of force would bring the country's leaders to give up its nuclear programme peacefully.
NBC News
28 minutes ago
- NBC News
‘It was our intelligence': VP Vance says attack on Iran wasn't based on Israeli intelligence
Vice President JD Vance tells Meet the Press that the White House relied on American intelligence sources when deciding whether to launch an attack on 22, 2025
Powys County Times
an hour ago
- Powys County Times
How could Iran retaliate after US strikes its nuclear programme?
Iran has spent decades building multi-tiered military capabilities at home and across the region that were at least partly aimed at deterring the United States from attacking it. By entering Israel's war, the US may have removed the last rationale for holding them in reserve. That could mean a wave of attacks on US forces in the Middle East, an attempt to close a key bottleneck for global oil supplies, or a dash to develop a nuclear weapon with what remains of Iran's disputed programme after American strikes on three key sites. A decision to retaliate against the US and its regional allies would give Iran a far larger target bank and one that is much closer than Israel, allowing it to potentially use its missiles and drones to greater effect. The US and Israel have far superior capabilities, but those have not always proven decisive in America's recent history of military interventions in the region. Since Israel started the war with a surprise bombardment of Iran's military and nuclear sites on June 13, Iranian officials from the supreme leader down have warned the US to stay out, saying it would have dire consequences for the entire region. It should soon be clear whether those were empty threats or a grim forecast. – One theory is that Iran's next move might be to target the Strait of Hormuz. The narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf sees 20% of all oil traded globally pass, and at its narrowest point it is just 21 miles wide. Any disruption there could send oil prices soaring worldwide and hit American pocket. Iran boasts a fleet of fast-attack boats and thousands of naval mines that could potentially make the strait impassable, at least for a time. It could also fire missiles from its long Persian Gulf shore, as its allies, Yemen's Houthi rebels, have done in the Red Sea. The US, with its 5th Fleet stationed in nearby Bahrain, has long pledged to uphold freedom of navigation in the strait and would respond with far superior forces. But even a relatively brief firefight could paralyse shipping traffic and spook investors, causing oil prices to spike and generating international pressure for a ceasefire. – Another theory is for Tehran to attack US bases and allies in the region. The US has tens of thousands of troops stationed in the Middle East, including at permanent bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, Arab Gulf countries just across the Persian Gulf from Iran – and much closer than Israel. Those bases boast the same kinds of sophisticated air defences as Israel, but would have much less warning time before waves of missiles or swarms of armed drones. Even Israel, which is several hundred miles further away, has been unable to stop all of the incoming fire. Iran could also choose to attack key oil and gas facilities in those countries with the goal of exacting a higher price for US involvement in the war. A drone attack on two major oil sites in Saudi Arabia in 2019 – claimed by the Houthis but widely blamed on Iran – briefly cut the kingdom's oil production in half. – Iran could also opt to activate its regional allies. Tehran's so-called Axis of Resistance – a network of militant groups across the Middle East, is a shadow of what it was before the war ignited by Hamas's October 7, 2023, attack on Israel out of the Gaza Strip – but it still has some formidable capabilities. Israel's 20-month war in Gaza has severely diminished the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups, and Israel mauled Lebanon's Hezbollah last autumn, killing most of its top leadership and devastating much of southern Lebanon, making its involvement unlikely. But Iran could still call on the Houthis, who had threatened to resume their attacks in the Red Sea if the US entered the war, and allied militias in Iraq. Both have drone and missile capabilities that would allow them to target the United States and its allies. Iran could also seek to respond through militant attacks further afield, as it is widely accused of doing in the 1990s with an attack on a Jewish community centre in Argentina that was blamed on Iran and Hezbollah. – It is also feared Tehran may now sprint towards nuclear arms. It could be days or weeks before the full impact of the US strikes on Iran's nuclear sites is known. But experts have long warned that even joint US and Israeli strikes would only delay Iran's ability to develop a weapon, not eliminate it. That is because Iran has dispersed its programme across the country to several sites, including hardened, underground facilities. Iran would likely struggle to repair or reconstitute its nuclear programme while Israeli and US warplanes are circling overhead. But it could still decide to fully end its co-operation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and abandon the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. North Korea announced its withdrawal from the treaty in 2003 and tested a nuclear weapon three years later, but it had the freedom to develop its programme without punishing air strikes. Iran insists its programme is peaceful, though it is the only non-nuclear-armed state to enrich uranium up to 60%, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%. US intelligence agencies and the IAEA assess Iran has not had an organised military nuclear programme since 2003.
