Robert Menendez, New Jersey’s disgraced former senator who was as soon as one of the crucial highly effective Democrats in Washington, was sentenced on Wednesday to 11 years in jail after being convicted of being on the heart of an audacious and yearslong worldwide bribery scheme.
The courtroom in Decrease Manhattan was packed however silent because the choose imposed one of many longest sentences ever issued for a federal official in the USA.
“You have been profitable, highly effective,” the choose, Sidney H. Stein of Federal District Courtroom, stated earlier than saying the penalty. “You stood on the apex of our political system.”
“Someplace alongside the way in which — I don’t know the place it was — you misplaced your approach,” he added. “Working for the general public good turned working for your good.”
Mr. Menendez, a talented orator recognized for holding forth on the Senate ground, wept intermittently as he addressed the courtroom earlier than the sentence was introduced. He has stated that he deliberate to enchantment the jury’s responsible verdict, however informed Decide Stein that he stood earlier than him a “chastened man” who had suffered the ignominy of a responsible verdict and the resignation of his Senate seat.
“Each day I’m awake is a punishment,” Mr. Menendez, 71, stated.
“I ask you to mood your sword of justice with the mercy of a lifetime of responsibility,” he added.
His sister and each of his youngsters — Alicia Menendez, an anchor on the information community MSNBC, and Consultant Rob Menendez, a Democrat serving his second time period in Congress — sat straight behind him, within the first row of a courtroom gallery stuffed to capability.
Mr. Menendez’s fall from grace has been steep and swift.
He resigned from the Senate in August after a Manhattan jury convicted him of buying and selling his political clout for stacks of $100 payments, bricks of gold and a Mercedes-Benz convertible.
When he was indicted 16 months in the past, Mr. Menendez served as chairman of the Senate International Relations Committee, one of the crucial highly effective perches in Washington.
The position gave him outsize affect over overseas navy help and worldwide coverage. And prosecutors with the U.S. legal professional’s workplace for the Southern District of New York emphasised the various methods during which Mr. Menendez used that energy throughout a nine-week trial final summer time.
Paul Monteleoni, one of many prosecutors, stated {that a} prolonged jail time period was warranted in response to crimes that constituted a “actually grave breach of belief.”
“He let his offenses overshadow the nice that he did,” Mr. Monteleoni stated.
“He believed that the facility that he wielded belonged to him,” Mr. Monteleoni added. “The facility of a Senate workplace will not be one thing he owns and has the facility to liquidate.”
Mr. Menendez was discovered responsible in July on all 16 counts he confronted, together with bribery, extortion, trustworthy companies wire fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and performing as an agent for Egypt.
When the jury introduced its verdict, Mr. Menendez, the son of immigrants from Cuba, turned the primary U.S. senator ever convicted of performing as an agent of a overseas energy.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan, who described Mr. Menendez’s conduct as presumably “probably the most critical for which a U.S. senator has been convicted within the historical past of the republic,” had requested Decide Stein to impose a sentence of at the least 15 years in jail.
Legal professionals for Mr. Menendez, citing his hardscrabble upbringing, lifetime of service and devotion to his household, initially sought a time period of not more than 27 months, with “at the least two years’ rigorous neighborhood service.”
On Wednesday, nevertheless, Adam Charge, considered one of his legal professionals, adjusted that suggestion and as an alternative urged Decide Stein to impose a sentence of not more than eight years in jail.
“If our worst moments outlined us and overshadowed no matter different mild we had put out into the world, many people, together with me, wouldn’t be right here right this moment,” Mr. Charge stated, noting what he referred to as Mr. Menendez’s “lifetime of extraordinary public service.”
Mr. Charge ticked off classes of criminals convicted of great violent crimes, describing them as “heartless, hardened people for whom a 10-plus-year sentence possibly matches the crimes.”
“Bob,” Mr. Charge stated, “is on the far reverse finish of the spectrum.”
A sentence of 10 years or extra, Mr. Charge stated, would preclude Mr. Menendez from serving his sentence at a minimum-security jail and “would expose him to a dramatically increased danger of hazard, intimidation, threats, harassment and violence.”
Testimony and proof offered at trial offered Mr. Menendez and his spouse, Nadine Menendez, as conspiring throughout furtive dinners and on encrypted calls in a scheme that was largely geared toward growing U.S. help to Egypt and serving to three New Jersey businessmen, who have been additionally charged within the case.
“The defendants’ crimes quantity to a rare try, on the highest ranges of the legislative department, to deprave the nation’s core sovereign powers over overseas relations and regulation enforcement,” the federal government wrote to Decide Stein.
This week, the previous senator’s legal professionals, saying the case offered troublesome appellate questions, requested Decide Stein to permit Mr. Menendez to stay free on bond pending his enchantment.
Two of Mr. Menendez’s co-defendants — the businessmen Wael Hana and Fred Daibes — have been additionally sentenced on Wednesday. Mr. Daibes obtained a seven-year jail sentence and a positive of $1.75 million. Mr. Hana was sentenced to barely greater than eight years in jail and fined $1.3 million.
A fourth defendant, the businessman Jose Uribe, pleaded responsible final 12 months and have become a star witness towards the senator at trial. He’s to be sentenced in April.
Ms. Menendez, 57, was to be tried along with her husband, however her trial was postponed by the choose after her legal professionals stated she can be present process therapy for breast most cancers. Ms. Menendez, who has pleaded not responsible and didn’t seem in courtroom on Wednesday, is now scheduled for trial on March 18.
Maia Coleman contributed reporting.
