U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, who’s recognized for his anti-Türkiye stance, was discovered responsible of all 16 felony counts in his graft probe on Tuesday.
The jury in Manhattan federal court docket deliberated for greater than 12 hours over three days earlier than reaching a verdict in a trial that had taken 9 weeks. Menendez, 70, had pleaded not responsible to the costs, which additionally included appearing as a overseas agent and obstructing justice.
U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein set Menendez’s sentencing for Oct. 29, every week earlier than the Nov. 5 election during which he’s working as an unbiased in a bid for an additional six-term time period within the Senate, however is taken into account a protracted shot to win.
After the jury’s foreperson learn the decision, Menendez rested his elbows on the desk, clasped his arms collectively, and stared straight forward.
The trial centered on what federal prosecutors known as a number of overlapping bribery schemes during which the senator and his spouse Nadine Menendez accepted a whole bunch of hundreds of {dollars} in money, gold bars and automotive and mortgage funds from three businessmen who needed his assist.
In trade for bribes, Menendez helped steer billions of {dollars} in American assist to Egypt, the place one of many businessmen, Wael Hana, had ties to authorities officers, in response to prosecutors. Menendez additionally was accused of in search of to affect felony probes involving two different businessmen, Fred Daibes and Jose Uribe.
Hana and Daibes have been co-defendants within the senator’s trial and have been additionally convicted on every of the counts they confronted. Uribe pleaded responsible and testified as a prosecution witness towards Menendez.
Menendez beforehand confronted corruption expenses however that case resulted in a 2017 mistrial in New Jersey on a narrower set of allegations.
Menendez stepped down as chair of the influential U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee upon being charged final September, however has resisted calls from fellow Democrats to resign.
During the trial, jurors have been handed among the gold bars that federal brokers seized from the New Jersey residence the senator shared along with his spouse. Agents additionally discovered greater than $480,000 of money, together with some stuffed in envelopes inside a jacket bearing the senator’s title.
Defense attorneys argued that Menendez’s advocacy for businessmen in his state was regular exercise for a senator, and sought guilty his spouse, who prosecutors described as a go-between for bribes. Defense legal professionals famous that the gold bars have been present in her closet. They contended that the 2 lived largely separate lives and she or he saved her husband at the hours of darkness about her funds.
The protection additionally mentioned that the senator for many years often withdrew money from banks and saved it at his residence. His older sister testified that he picked up the behavior from their dad and mom, who fled from Cuba with money that their father had saved in a clock.
Nadine Menendez is ready to be tried individually at a later date. She has not attended her husband’s trial after being recognized with breast most cancers.
Menendez has been a fixture in Washington for greater than three a long time. He has represented New Jersey within the Senate since 2006 after beforehand serving 13 years within the U.S. House of Representatives. Prior to that, he served within the New Jersey legislature and as a mayor.
The conviction handed a victory to the U.S. Justice Department in addition to to Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in Manhattan, who has made hunting down public corruption a precedence.
Before being charged, Menendez was not solely a strong Senate committee chair however an vital ally in President Joe Biden’s efforts to reassert U.S. affect overseas, rally help and cash to assist Ukraine, and stall advances by China.
Prosecutors mentioned that after Hana gave Nadine Menendez a “sham job” paying $10,000 a month, the senator pressured a U.S. Agriculture Department official to cease scrutinizing a monopoly that Egypt had awarded Hana’s firm to certify halal meat for export.
Menendez was additionally accused of attempting to stress regulation enforcement to put off Daibes, an actual property developer, and Uribe, an insurance coverage dealer who testified that he purchased Nadine Menendez a $60,000 Mercedes-Benz in trade for her husband’s assist.
Defense legal professionals had mentioned prosecutors did not show that the gold and money discovered within the senator’s residence have been bribe proceeds.
Anti-Türkiye stance
The mounting graft allegations and his shut ties to U.S.-based Greek and Armenian lobbies, each financially highly effective teams with appreciable political clout, have naturally introduced underneath query his longstanding anti-Turkish stance.
In August 2007, the then-U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration withdrew the nomination of Richard Hoagland for the place of Ambassador to Armenia after Menendez, then a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, positioned a maintain on the nomination attributable to Hoagland’s “unwillingness to acknowledge” the occasions of 1915 as a “genocide” – a cost Türkiye vehemently denies.
In Dec. 2019, Menendez co-authored the “Promoting American National Security and Preventing the Resurgence of ISIS Act” in “direct congressional response to Turkey’s military incursion into northeast Syria and attack on the Kurds, as well as their purchase of the Russian S-400 defense system.”
Although Türkiye was the primary nation to battle Daesh terror on the bottom with its personal troops, Menendez known as Turkish actions in Syria “destabilizing” and known as for help to “Syrian Kurds” – or slightly, members of U.S.-recognized terrorist group PKK’s Syrian wing YPG.
“From purchasing the Russian S-400 air defense system, to engaging in offensive operations in Syria against the Kurds, and committing, directing or knowingly facilitating human rights abuses against our Kurdish allies in Syria, the Foreign Relations Committee is saying enough is enough to [President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan with this strong sanctions package,” he mentioned in a press release – additionally calling for a “Special Immigrant Visa Program” for YPG terrorists.
In the identical month, Menendez additionally spearheaded efforts to make the U.S. authorities acknowledge the occasions of 1915 as a “genocide.”
Source: www.dailysabah.com