Former New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez (D) was sentenced to 11 years in prison on Wednesday after his conviction last year on 16 federal charges related to bribery.
United States District Judge Sidney Stein handed the sentence down after Menendez made a statement to the court. Saying he had “lost everything,” Menendez asked the judge “to temper your sword of justice with the mercy of a lifetime of duty.”
“For a man who spent his entire life in public service, every day I am awake is a punishment,” he added.
Manhattan prosecutors had asked the court to sentence Menendez to “at least 15 year” in addition to paying millions in forfeiture and fines.
Menendez, 71, served in the Senate for 18 years, from 2006 until his resignation in August last year. He was convicted on charges of bribery, wire fraud, extortion, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy for accepting payments in cash and gold from the Egyptian government and three businessmen seeking an assortment of favors.
They said the payments included gold bars and more than $480,000 in cash, in addition to a Mercedes-Benz C-300 given to his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, by two of the businessmen.
In exchange, prosecutors said, Menendez passed classified information to the Egyptian government that was made available to him as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He also sought to increase U.S. military aid to the country while lobbying the State Department and other government agencies to support the Egyptian government’s policies. He also helped one of the businessmen, Wael Hana, in securing a monopoly for his company to certify meat exported from the U.S. to Egypt as halal.
Hana and one of the other businessmen, Fred Daibes, were sentenced on Wednesday alongside Menendez. The court handed Hana a sentence of 97 months and $1.25 million in fines, while giving Daibes a sentence of 84 months in prison and $1.75 million in fines.
The third businessman, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty and testified against Menendez during his nine-week trial. Uribe’s sentencing is scheduled to take place later in the year.
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The case was Menendez’s second run-in with federal authorities during his tenure in the Senate. The first occurred in 2015, when he was indicted on charges that he accepted bribes from a New Jersey ophthalmologist. However, he won a mistrial in 2017, and the Justice Department dropped the remaining charges of he was acquitted on several counts in 2018.
Menendez’s wife, Nadine, was indicted along with him in September 2023, but her trial was disrupted after her diagnosis with cancer. Her trial is set to begin in March.