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NEW YORK \u2014 Bob Menendez, New Jersey\u2019s disgraced former senator who was once one of the most powerful Democrats in Washington, was sentenced Wednesday to 11 years in prison after being convicted of being at the center of an audacious and yearslong international bribery scheme.<\/p>\n
The courtroom in lower Manhattan was packed but silent as the judge imposed one of the longest sentences ever issued for a federal official in the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were successful, powerful,\u201d the judge, Sidney H. Stein of U.S. District Court, said before announcing the penalty. \u201cYou stood at the apex of our political system.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomewhere along the way \u2014 I don\u2019t know where it was \u2014 you lost your way,\u201d he added. \u201cWorking for the public good became working for your good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Menendez, a skilled orator known for holding forth on the Senate floor, wept intermittently as he addressed the court before the sentence was announced. He has said that he planned to appeal the jury\u2019s guilty verdict but told Stein that he stood before him a \u201cchastened man\u201d who had suffered the ignominy of a guilty verdict and the resignation of his Senate seat.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery day I\u2019m awake is a punishment,\u201d Menendez, 71, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI ask you to temper your sword of justice with the mercy of a lifetime of duty,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
His sister and both of his children \u2014 Alicia Menendez, an anchor on news network MSNBC, and Rep. Rob Menendez, a Democrat serving his second term in Congress \u2014 sat directly behind him, in the first row of a courtroom gallery filled to capacity.<\/p>\n
Bob Menendez\u2019s fall from grace has been steep and swift.<\/p>\n
He resigned from the Senate in August after a Manhattan jury convicted him of trading his political clout for stacks of $100 bills, bricks of gold and a Mercedes-Benz convertible.<\/p>\n
When he was indicted 16 months ago, Menendez served as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, one of the most powerful perches in Washington.<\/p>\n
The role gave him outsize influence over foreign military aid and international policy. And prosecutors with the U.S. attorney\u2019s office for the Southern District of New York emphasized the many ways in which Menendez used that power during a nine-week trial over the summer.<\/p>\n
Paul Monteleoni, one of the prosecutors, said that a lengthy prison term was warranted in response to crimes that constituted a \u201ctruly grave breach of trust.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe let his offenses overshadow the good that he did,\u201d Monteleoni said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe believed that the power that he wielded belonged to him,\u201d Monteleoni added. \u201cThe power of a Senate office is not something he owns and has the power to liquidate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Menendez was found guilty in July on all 16 counts he faced, including bribery, extortion, honest services wire fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and acting as an agent for Egypt.<\/p>\n
When the jury announced its verdict, Menendez, the son of immigrants from Cuba, became the first U.S. senator ever convicted of acting as an agent of a foreign power.<\/p>\n
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan, who described Menendez\u2019s conduct as possibly \u201cthe most serious for which a U.S. senator has been convicted in the history of the republic,\u201d had asked Stein to impose a sentence of at least 15 years in prison.<\/p>\n
Lawyers for Menendez, citing his hardscrabble upbringing, life of service and devotion to his family, originally sought a term of no more than 27 months, with \u201cat least two years\u2019 rigorous community service.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, however, Adam Fee, one of his lawyers, adjusted that recommendation and instead urged Stein to impose a sentence of no more than eight years in prison.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf our worst moments defined us and overshadowed whatever other light we had put out into the world, many of us, including me, would not be here today,\u201d Fee said, noting what he called Menendez\u2019s \u201clifetime of extraordinary public service.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fee ticked off categories of criminals convicted of serious violent crimes, describing them as \u201cheartless, hardened individuals for whom a 10-plus-year sentence maybe fits the crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBob,\u201d Fee said, \u201cis at the far opposite end of the spectrum.\u201d<\/p>\n
A sentence of 10 years or more, Fee said, would preclude Menendez from serving his sentence at a minimum-security prison and \u201cwould expose him to a dramatically higher risk of danger, intimidation, threats, harassment and violence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Testimony and evidence presented at trial presented Menendez and his wife, Nadine Menendez, as conspiring during furtive dinners and on encrypted calls in a scheme that was largely aimed at increasing U.S. assistance to Egypt and helping three New Jersey businesspeople, who were also charged in the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe defendants\u2019 crimes amount to an extraordinary attempt, at the highest levels of the legislative branch, to corrupt the nation\u2019s core sovereign powers over foreign relations and law enforcement,\u201d the government wrote to Stein.<\/p>\n
This week, the former senator\u2019s lawyers, saying the case presented difficult appellate questions, asked Stein to allow Menendez to remain free on bond pending his appeal.<\/p>\n
Two of Menendez\u2019s co-defendants \u2014 Wael Hana and Fred Daibes \u2014 were also sentenced Wednesday. Daibes received a seven-year prison sentence and a fine of $1.75 million. Hana was sentenced to slightly more than eight years in prison and fined $1.3 million.<\/p>\n
A fourth defendant, the businessperson Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty last year and became a star witness against the senator at trial. He is to be sentenced in April.<\/p>\n
Nadine Menendez, 57, was to be tried with her husband, but her trial was postponed by the judge after her lawyers said she would be undergoing treatment for breast cancer. Menendez, who has pleaded not guilty and did not appear in court Wednesday, is now scheduled for trial on March 18.<\/p>\n
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n