However Tuesday, simply after 9 a.m., Menendez grew to become a ward of the identical authorities that he as soon as helped to guide when he entered a federal jail in Pennsylvania to start an 11-year sentence for political corruption.
He will likely be generally known as prisoner No. 67277-050 at Federal Correctional Establishment Schuylkill in Minersville, roughly three hours away from the house he has shared in New Jersey along with his spouse, Nadine Menendez, who is anticipated to be sentenced in September for her position within the scheme. Federal brokers discovered bribes starting from kilo bars of gold, a Mercedes-Benz convertible and greater than $480,000 in money throughout a search of the couple’s modest split-level residence in Englewood Cliffs. A federal spokesperson confirmed that Menendez was within the custody of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons quickly after a pink automotive with New Jersey license plates was noticed coming into and exiting the ability.
After a nine-week trial in New York Metropolis, Bob Menendez, a Democrat, grew to become the one U.S. senator ever to be convicted of performing as an agent of a international authorities. Prosecutors have since referred to as the crimes on the coronary heart of a posh, yearslong bribery conspiracy “stunningly venal” and probably the most critical “within the historical past of the republic,” as they argued for a sentence even stiffer than the one imposed.
Legal professionals for Menendez, who’s 71, have referred to as it a demise sentence. “It’s well-recognized that inmates with a level of celeb,” they wrote in a authorized submitting, “are at elevated danger of consideration, harassment and violence from their fellow inmates.” The Schuylkill facility features a medium-security, 980-person lockup that homes infamous criminals like James Coonan, the onetime head of a New York Metropolis gang generally known as the Westies, and Gurmeet Singh Dhinsa, a gasoline station magnate serving a life sentence for homicide.
Menendez is anticipated to be assigned to an adjoining 225-person minimum-security camp within the complicated, the place prisoners sleep in dormitory-style rooms, usually in bunk beds, in response to two individuals accustomed to his jail designation.
The 2 websites have a number of issues in widespread, in response to Brad Troup, who was convicted of distributing heroin that brought on a demise and served his closing years of incarceration at Schuylkill’s medium-security jail.
Prisoners eat the identical meals, can buy an identical objects from the commissary and take part in a shared jail business — electronics restore and recycling. On the camp, prisoners are taught to repair damaged electronics, like computer systems and electrocardiogram machines. Objects which might be deemed past restore go to the medium-security jail, the place they’re dismantled, and the metals are separated to be offered for scrap, Troup stated.
Books could be despatched to detainees via authorized distributors, and visiting privileges could be adjusted based mostly on habits.
The inhabitants of Schuylkill is about 60% Black, 21% Hispanic and 18% white, in response to a current federal report. And through meals and within the yard, it’s extremely segregated by race, in response to Troup, 47.
“It is like going again in time,” he stated. “Whites with whites. Blacks with Blacks. Gangs with gangs. There’s fixed rigidity.”
Menendez’s coaching as a lawyer, and his skill to assist different inmates draft appeals and authorized motions, is more likely to be useful, Troup stated.
“The primary factor is, you actually need to get into the movement of issues,” he stated. “It often takes about six months so that you can get a sample. It is very humbling when you enter jail.”
Earlier than his trial started final spring, when Menendez determined in opposition to operating for reelection to the Senate as a Democrat, he launched a nine-minute video chronicling what he noticed as his most significant congressional contributions. And few individuals accustomed to the lengthy arc of his profession in New Jersey would dispute that Menendez was as soon as among the many most influential politicians in Congress.
He labored relentlessly to supply federal help to residents devastated by Superstorm Sandy in 2012 and helped to jot down the laws to broaden well being care protection that grew to become generally known as Obamacare.
“It is a unhappy and humbling day,” stated Michael Soliman, Menendez’s longtime political adviser who ran his campaigns. “However the jury verdict doesn’t erase Sen. Menendez’s profound and long-standing constructive contributions in so many areas affecting New Jersey and the nation.
“These, too, will likely be part of his earned legacy.”
Menendez had served because the mayor of Union Metropolis, New Jersey, the place he was raised, and its consultant within the state Home earlier than being elected to the U.S. Home. He grew to become the primary Latino to characterize New Jersey within the Senate after being chosen for the place in 2005 by Jon S. Corzine, who vacated the seat early to take over as New Jersey governor.
Virtually instantly, the federal prosecutors’ workplace in New Jersey, led on the time by Chris Christie, a Republican, started an inquiry into Menendez tied to rental revenue on a constructing he owned. That investigation was closed with no costs filed, and Menendez went on to beat Thomas Kean Jr. — now a U.S. consultant — to win a six-year time period.
Menendez and his Democratic allies maintained that the inquiry had been motivated by nothing aside from politics, however about 9 years later, after an unrelated investigation, he can be charged for the primary time with taking bribes. A trial in New Jersey ended with a hung jury in November 2017, and prosecutors later dropped the case.
The bribery scheme that put him in jail Tuesday started only some months later.
Prosecutors with the U.S. legal professional’s workplace for the Southern District of New York spent weeks laying out an audacious , yearslong plot involving a halal meat certification firm and the governments of Egypt and Qatar. A jury convicted Menendez of performing as an agent of Egypt, together with ghostwriting a letter for Egyptian officers to affect his Senate colleagues and steering arms to the nation. He was additionally discovered responsible of attempting to quash state and federal felony prosecutions on behalf of New Jersey allies.
“You stood on the apex of our political system,” the trial choose, Sidney H. Stein, stated earlier than sentencing Menendez to 11 years.
“Someplace alongside the way in which, I am sorry to say, you grew to become a corrupt politician, serving to to feed the unlucky cynicism of many individuals,” he added.
It was the longest sentence ever issued to a U.S. senator. Solely 5 of the 13 senators to be charged with crimes since 1807 had been convicted, in response to court docket filings. Till Menendez’s case, the longest sentence imposed had been three years — a penalty issued to Sen. Harrison Williams Jr., additionally of New Jersey, for his position in a bribery conspiracy that grew to become generally known as Abscam.
Menendez’s fall from grace led to sweeping modifications in his state’s political life. Hours after he was indicted, a younger member of the Home, Andy Kim, jumped into the race for Menendez’s Senate seat. Kim vanquished the state’s first girl, Tammy Murphy, and, after submitting a lawsuit, ended a observe that gave political bosses who thrived throughout Menendez’s period outsize energy to pick out candidates. Kim grew to become the primary Korean American member of the Senate after being elected in November by almost 10 proportion factors.
Final week, a federal appeals panel voted 2-1 to reject Menendez’s request to delay the beginning of his sentence, pending the end result of his attraction.
That very same day, Menendez took to social media to once more plead his case to an viewers of 1: President Donald Trump, who has granted a flurry of pardons to political allies through the first 5 months of his second time period.
Menendez, in posts on social platform X, has mimicked lots of the president’s complaints a few “weaponized” Justice Division. In some, he has tagged Trump. In others, he refers back to the president as “DJT.”
“President Trump is correct,” Menendez wrote, minutes after he was sentenced. “This course of is political and has been corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores integrity to the system.”
Such lobbying efforts have paid off for others, together with Mayor Eric Adams of New York, a Democrat, whose indictment on corruption costs was dropped by federal prosecutors. The Justice Division has made clear that among the offenses for which Menendez was convicted are not even a precedence.
Lengthy earlier than Tuesday, Menendez had grow to be a pariah in New Jersey.
A former shut good friend declined to debate his longtime ally’s destiny. His legal professionals, Adam Payment and Avi Weitzman, didn’t reply to requests for remark, nor did Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, who in 2017 was keen to vouch for Menendez’s character throughout his first corruption trial.
For the final 12 months, Menendez and his spouse have been retaining their very own counsel in New Jersey, former associates say. After Stein granted a weeklong delay to the beginning of his sentence, Bob Menendez attended Nadine Menendez’s daughter’s marriage ceremony in Massachusetts.
On Tuesday, simply earlier than 9 a.m., as a heavy fog shrouded the roadway main into the jail complicated, a pink automotive with New Jersey license plates changed into the ability. The automotive carried a single passenger within the again seat and accelerated because it handed a handful of reports reporters ready on the perimeter of the jail.
The automotive left about quarter-hour later with solely a driver. There was no signal of Nadine Menendez or both of the previous senator’s two grownup youngsters.
Quickly after, a federal spokesperson confirmed in an e mail that “Robert Menendez is within the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (B.O.P.) on the Federal Correctional Establishment (F.C.I.) Schuylkill in Minersville, Pennsylvania.”
Menendez is the final of the three males convicted final summer season within the corruption scheme to enter jail. (Jose Uribe, who pleaded responsible to attempting to bribe Menendez by giving his spouse a Mercedes, cooperated with prosecutors and is anticipated to be sentenced within the fall.)
Fred Daibes and Wael Hana, who had been discovered responsible at trial of bribing the senator in alternate for political favors, started serving sentences final month at a federal jail in New Jersey. Even earlier than Trump’s blitz of pardons, their legal professionals had argued that Daibes’ seven-year sentence and Hana’s eight-year sentence had been disproportionate to different current penalties for political corruption.
“Extreme and brutal,” stated Lawrence S. Lustberg, who represented Hana, the founding father of a halal meat certification enterprise that was granted a profitable monopoly by the federal government of Egypt and was used to funnel bribes to Menendez and his spouse.
“Anybody who has ever been to a jail is aware of that even a day, every week or a month is horrible. However seven, eight and 11 years — that’s means past what’s required for both punishment or deterrence.”
This text initially appeared in The New York Occasions.
