The jury deliberated for more than 12 hours over three days before delivering the verdict in a trial that lasted nine weeks.
The 70-year-old Menendez pleaded not guilty to charges including bribery, acting as a foreign agent, and obstruction of justice.
The trial focused on what federal prosecutors described as “multiple overlapping bribery schemes,” wherein the senator and his wife, Nadine Menendez, allegedly accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, gold bars, cars, and mortgage payments from three businessmen in need of his assistance.
In return for the bribes, Menendez helped direct billions of dollars in U.S. aid to Egypt, where one of the businessmen, Wael Hana, had connections with government officials, according to prosecutors.
Menendez was also accused of attempting to influence criminal investigations involving two other businessmen—Fred Daibes and Jose Uribe. Hana and Daibes were co-defendants in the case and were also convicted on all counts. Uribe pleaded guilty and testified against Menendez as a prosecution witness. Menendez had previously faced corruption charges, but that case ended in a mistrial in New Jersey in 2017 on a narrower set of charges.
Menendez stepped down as chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee after the charges were brought last September but resisted calls from fellow Democrats to resign. He is running for re-election as an independent candidate in November but is considered to have little chance of winning.
During the trial, several gold bars seized by federal agents from the senator’s New Jersey home, which he shared with his wife, were presented to the jury. Agents also found over $480,000 in cash, including several envelopes stashed in a jacket bearing the senator’s name. Defense attorneys argued that Menendez’s support for the businessmen in his state was standard senatorial activity and sought to blame his wife, whom prosecutors described as the intermediary for receiving the bribes. Defense lawyers noted that the gold bars were found in her closet. They argued that the couple mainly lived separately, and she kept her financial dealings from her husband.
The defense also stated that the senator had regularly withdrawn cash from banks over the decades and kept it at home. His elder sister testified that he adopted this habit from their parents, who fled Cuba with cash their father kept hidden in a watch. Nadine Menendez’s trial will take place later.
She did not attend her husband’s trial, having been diagnosed with breast cancer earlier.
