Senator from New Jersey. Bob Menendez, who was found hiding more than $100,000 in gold bullion during a federal raid on his home, told friends he will resign after being convicted of bribery earlier this week, NBC News mentionted Wednesday.
Menendez, who is the first member of Congress to be convicted of acting as a foreign agent, faces up to 36 years behind bars.
Facing calls for his resignation for most of the year, Menendez finally resigned on Wednesday, a day after he was found guilty of federal corruption charges. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and dozens of Senate Democrats, including Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin and fellow Sen. Cory Booker, have called for his ouster from Congress and threatened him with expulsion if he does not voluntarily comply.
Menendez appeared to retreat after the guilty verdict, according to NBC News, which reported the senator was calling key allies to inform them of his intention to resign, ending his more than three-decade career in Congress.
One person Menendez is likely to call is Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who released a statement after Menendez's guilty verdict calling for his resignation. “In light of this guilty verdict, Senator Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate and our country and resign,” the statement said.
In September, Schumer announced that Menendez would step down as chairman of the Foreign Relations panel “until the matter is resolved,” but had not yet called for his resignation.
Menendez was convicted on Tuesday of 16 federal corruption charges. In exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gold bullion, Menendez used his power to help the governments of Egypt and Qatar and benefit three New Jersey businessmen. Menendez and his wife Nadine Arslanian were also found to have received several lavish gifts, including “mortgage payments, compensation for a low or no showing job, a luxury vehicle and other items of value” in addition to cash. and gold bars, prosecutors said.
Murphy, who first called for Menendez's resignation in September after his home was raided and more than $480,000 in cash envelopes were found in jackets bearing Menendez's name, will appoint a senator in the interim to complete the term of Menendez which expires in January next year. Investigators also found a search for the value of a “pound of gold” in Menendez's Google search history and also found the DNA of one of the men prosecutors say bribed Menendez in one of the files.
During his remarks at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night, Rep. Matt Gaetz joked, “Inflation has gotten so bad, you can no longer bribe Democratic senators with cash alone. You have to use gold bars for the bribes to have value.”
Menendez said he planned to run for re-election as an independent if acquitted. He said the $480,000 found in his home came from years of savings and was there “for emergencies.” He argued that prosecutors were confusing what “the normal work of a congressional office” entails and called the charges “baseless allegations.”
Menendez and his wife were charged with conspiracy to commit bribery, honest services fraud and extortion under color of official privilege in September. A superseding indictment then charged him with bribery of a foreign government, alleging that Menendez “provided sensitive U.S. government information and took other steps that covertly assisted the government of Egypt.”
This is the second federal corruption charge Menendez faces. In 2015, he was indicted on charges that he accepted lavish gifts from an optometrist in Florida. That case ended in a mistrial after the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict.
from our partners at https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/bob-menendez-resign-verdict-1235062940/