New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez Has Been Dirty For Years
But a resignation in an almost evenly divided Senate is tough to navigate
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This latest episode was predictable. Take it from a Philadelphian: Bob Mendez isn’t just dirty; he is old-school dirty. Even Spiro Agnew-level dirty. As The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes writes in his Morning Shots Substack:
There’s something almost nostalgic about reading the indictment against New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez. By which I mean clownishly nostalgic, because it’s a throwback to an age when our corrupt politicians were old-school crooks, and frankly, rather stupid. There are no seven-levels of separation influence-peddling, no elaborate shell-companies, or conspiracies.
What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a throwback — a house full of gold bars, envelopes stuffed with cash ($480,000), and a shiny new Mercedes parked in the garage. A slightly modern twist: DNA linking all of this boodle to the guys who paid cash for their own U.S. senator.
You can read the indictment here if you want to know what Egypt got for its money. And yes, as Sykes notes further down, this is also a case with national security implications.
Menendez’s explanation for why all the cash and gold were stashed in his home this year is that he is a traumatized Cuban émigré who never knows when he will have to flee the country. From a survivalist or a Holocaust survivor, this explanation makes total sense: from a United States Senator, and particularly one who was indicted and tried on corruption charges already, it is so flimsy as to be laughable. As Washington Post columnist Helaine Olen tweeted, Menendez “would have you believe he has so little faith in the United States government he just needs to keep more than $400,000 in cash and a few gold bars around the house in case of sudden government confiscation.”
But you have to wonder what Menendez has on everyone else, don’t you, because this seems like a very clear case of Piggy returning to the trough one too many times. Of the 48 Democratic Senators and three independents who caucus with Democrats, eighteen have demanded his resignation by press time. Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman was first out of the box, then two senators running for re-election, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Pete Welsh of Vermont. Others include Tammy Baldwin (Wisconsin) and Jon Tester (Montana, and also running for re-election) jumped in the next day.
In case you have forgotten that Fetterman has a good eye for hypocrisy, he announced that he hoped “to see my colleagues fully address the alleged systemic corruption of Senator Menendez with the same vigor and velocity they brought to concerns about our dress code." His spokesperson said they were in the process of returning the $5,000 donation Menendez’s Leadership PAC made to the 2022 campaign “in envelopes stuffed with $100 bills.”
Today, New Jersey’s junior Senator, Democrat Corey Booker, added his voice to those calling for Menendez to step down, which may open the floodgates.
But one voice is missing: Majority Leader Charles Schumer. Although he asked for and received Menendez’s resignation as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. But that’s a Senate rule: if you are under indictment, you can’t chair a committee (seriously! But you can run for President!) So, technically, Schumer has taken no public stance on the Menendez situation at all other than calling for “due process.” The indicted Senator retains his seat on Foreign Relations, as well as the Banking and Finance Committees. Is Schumer haunted by the ghost of former Minnesota Senator Al Franken, whom he pressured to step down in 2017 amid multiple sexual harassment charges? Franken’s loyal fans are still grumping about this six years later, even though everyone agrees that former Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith has done a great job.
Don’t get me wrong: I think Franken should have resigned. This is not because #MeToo was making everyone super-sensitive to handsy men in powerful positions or because you don’t want to waste a good liberal with stage presence, but because his behavior towards women was disgraceful and well-documented. It defied belief that Franken did not do what he was accused of and that he no longer belonged in the Senate. Similarly, what we know so far about who Menendez’s home stash of cash, gold bars, and Mercedes can be traced to, and his wife’s participation in these schemes, doesn’t require a trial to believe. There is no excuse for accepting gifts from a foreign agent, failing to report them, and, in return, doing favors for the government of Egypt. If he can’t be convicted, there is something wrong with the law (and in fact, there is something wrong with the law: a 2016 Supreme Court case where another political grifter got off scot-free narrowed the grounds for a quid pro quo corruption conviction.)
But once again, there is a structural problem that Schumer must grapple with, whether Menendez resigns or is removed from his committee assignments. As with the Feinstein situation earlier this year, Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his caucus can veto any replacement, either by denying unanimous consent to a new member or by filibustering the motion to replace.
This brings us back to the fix that the Democrats are in. If Menendez resigns, the committees he is on will cease to function unless McConnell agrees to seat another Democrat, which means Senator Wiley E. Coyote gets to exact a price for allowing Schumer to replace the errant Senator. And even then, it might not work. Because of his periodic public freezes, there’s blood in the water around McConnell, too, and he has caucus members (Tommy Tuberville, Ted Cruz) whom he doesn’t seem to be able to control. So even if McConnell and Schumer were to complete this little transaction, it could set off a conflagration in the Republican caucus when both men need to hold it together because of the looming budget crisis.
How might the Democrats have prevented this crisis? Cutting the cord with Menendez in 2018 and taking the risk of running a fresh candidate who could be trusted. But neither the New Jersey Democratic Party nor the national party seemed willing to do that.
So here we are. As we enter another presidential election season, Democrats have their own mini-Trump to strategize around. Let’s hope they bite the bullet and dump Menendez.
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Short takes:
At Popular Information, Judd Legum explores Florida’s latest censorship scandal. Charlotte County, Florida officials have ordered all books with LGBTQ characters removed from school libraries “even if the book contained no sexually explicit content” or are not “'how to' manuals for how to be an LGBTQ+ person." (Seriously. They said this.) Charlotte County Superintendent Mark Vianello also warned that none of these books should ever enter a classroom, even if they have been selected by a student for silent reading and approved by that student’s parent. Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who is also a presidential candidate, “has insisted that allegations that his policies, including the "Don't Say Gay" law, are being used to ban a wide range of books is a `hoax.’" (September 26, 2023)
Was there ever any substance behind the idea that the Ivy-educated Josh Hawley, Blake Masters, and J.D. Vance were an “intellectual New Right”? Let’s forget about the question of how many times you can attach the word “new” to “right” and be describing anything at all and turn to this great essay by Ginny Hogan in The Nation. Hogan mined Vance’s tweets (which, among other things, display a lawyer pretending to be ignorant about things like RICO indictments.) Particularly notable is Vance’s compulsion to call people he disagrees with “cat ladies.” This is short for “childless cat lady,” an insult that dovetails with Vance’s disdain for people who choose not to have children. “I have to wonder why, six months into his term, a US senator is being this tediously petty,” Hogan asks. (September 26, 2023)
Have anti-Trump Republicans become Democrats? Evidence suggests that some have. “This tranche of voters is not huge, but they may be decisive—in 2020, 16 percent of self-identified moderate or liberal Republicans voted for Biden, according to an analysis by Pew, twice the share that did so in 2016,” writes Ben Jacobs at The New Republic. These “erstwhile Republicans has opted out of the fight and simply decided to back Democrats. With many of these well-educated suburbanites poised to vote for Joe Biden again in 2024, the question isn’t just whether they will swing what is likely to be yet another tight election next year, but whether they are part of the Democratic coalition moving forward.” (September 21, 2023)
What I’m Reading:
Emma Donoghue, Learned By Heart (Little, Brown, 2023) a book that I can guarantee you is banned in Florida. Donoghue fans will note the return of an important theme from her debut novel, Room (Little, Brown, 2015): two people whose intimacy blossoms in a private space they also struggle to escape. But in this novel, it’s the early 19th century, and the pair is Eliza Raine, an orphaned Anglo-Indian heiress, and my lesbian ancestor Anne Lister, both 14-year-old students at a dismal boarding school for girls.
Great piece. Yes, the Dems are in a fix. But here's a novel idea: elected officials who are dirty should be asked to resign by their party, political expediency be damned. If the Democratic Party can simply pledge to this quite simple reaction to bad behavior, not only will life become so much simpler, but also everyone will be forewarned. Oh, and the American People might start believing Democrats are actually different from Republicans, too, which could come in really handy in the next election cycle.
Additionally, as a Hispanist and a huge fan of the brilliant and long-suffering Cuban people, I feel like throwing up when someone like Menéndez tries to offer up some sort of post-revolutionary PTSD defense for his crimes. I mean, he was born in New York City, for heaven's sake! The three Senators of Cuban parentage, Menéndez, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio, are among those who have done the most damage to American democracy all the while doing everything they can to keep actual Cubans on the island from getting any kind of break from the economic disaster they've been struggling through since the 90s.
Start fitting Menéndez for an orange jumpsuit, please. And, yes, what did the Egyptians get for their money, one wonders? The AP has a good idea: https://apnews.com/article/bob-menendez-wife-egypt-gold-bars-4d4a3f37a39143e86340572038acc0df
Great piece Claire. I forgot about the Mitch M. problem and seating RM's replacement. Ugh.