Menendez prosecutors seek 15 years in prison in corruption case

Ryan Tarinelli, CQ-Roll Call on Jan 10, 2025

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WASHINGTON — Prosecutors say former Sen. Bob Menendez should receive at least 15 years in prison for his role in a wide-ranging corruption case, arguing that his conduct might be “the most serious for which a U.S. Senator has been convicted in the history of the Republic.”

The 71-year-old longtime New Jersey Democrat is set to be sentenced in New York on Jan. 29, and his attorneys have asked the court to hand down a sentence that relies “heavily on alternatives to incarceration.”

Menendez was found guilty last summer on 16 counts, including bribery, extortion and acting as a foreign agent, and his lawyers have said he will appeal the convictions.

In a sentencing memorandum filed Thursday, prosecutors outlined the case against Menendez and the two co-defendants he was tried with, saying their crimes amounted to “an extraordinary attempt, at the highest levels of the Legislative Branch, to corrupt the nation’s core sovereign powers over foreign relations and law enforcement.”

The memorandum also put Menendez’s conduct in the context of a dozen senators who faced charges stretching back to 1807, when Sen. John Smith of Ohio was indicted on charges relating to conspiring with Vice President Aaron Burr to commit treason. Smith was not convicted.

“The record shows Menendez’s conduct is perhaps more serious than that for which any other Senator has been convicted in United States history,” prosecutors wrote in the filing. “Very few Senators have even been convicted of any criminal offense, and of those, most of the Senators engaging in bribery accepted amounts that are a fraction of what Menendez reaped, even adjusting for inflation.”

Prosecutors said the offenses, to their knowledge, were the only ones “in U.S. history involving the corrupt abuse of a leadership position of a committee of the U.S. Senate,” an abuse that was “especially egregious” because the post gave Menendez more influence than other lawmakers over the foreign military sales program.

Prosecutors also stated it’s the first case in which a senator was convicted of serving as a foreign agent while being a public official.

Menendez, according to the sentencing memorandum, divulged sensitive non-public information to a foreign government and “corruptly promised” to influence national security, foreign relations and the rule of law.

“The gravity of each of these promised abuses of power is only underscored by the naked greed that motivated them,” the prosecutors said in the filing.

Prosecutors recommended that Menendez co-defendant Wael Hana receive at least 10 years in prison while co-defendant Fred Daibes receive at least nine years in prison.

The memorandum stated that the U.S. Probation Office recommended a 12-year sentence for Menendez, something Menendez’s attorneys have argued “would be draconian — likely a life and death sentence for someone of Bob’s age and condition.”

Attorneys for Menendez have asked a federal court for leniency when sentencing the former senator, framing him as a defeated man who has “suffered financial and professional ruin.”

“Senator Menendez has given his life to his country and to his community,” Menendez’s attorneys wrote in a sentencing memorandum of their own.

“With this case, his political and professional careers have ended; his reputation is destroyed; and the latter years of his life are in shambles,” the former senator’s attorneys wrote. “He is certain never to commit future offenses.”