NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JANUARY 29: Former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) gives a brief statement after sentencing at Manhattan Federal Court on January 29, 2025 in New York City. Menendez, who was found guilty on bribery and corruption charges last year, was sentenced to 11 years in prison. His co-defendant Fred Daibes was sentenced to seven years in prison and fined $1.75 million. A second co-defendant, Wael Hana, was sentenced to more than eight years in prison and fined $1.3 million. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced former Sen. Bob Menendez, the only sitting senator ever to be convicted of acting as a foreign agent, to 11 years in prison for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for helping three businessmen and the governments of Egypt and Qatar.
Menendez, 71, implored Judge Sidney H. Stein for mercy at his afternoon sentencing at the federal courthouse in Manhattan, saying he was “a chastened man.”
“I have lost everything I have cared about. Every day I’m awake is punishment,” he said. “I’ve done far more good than bad. I ask you, your honor, to judge me in that context.”
But Stein said the jury’s July guilty-on-all-counts verdict was “based on substantial overwhelming evidence” and a lengthy sentence was warranted, to serve as both punishment and a deterrent to others.
“Somewhere along the way, I’m sorry to say, you’ve become a corrupt politician,” Stein told him. “I don’t know what led you to commit these crimes .. Greed was certainly part of it. Hubris was part of it. I don’t know, you’ll have to try to figure it out yourself, over time.”
Stein also ordered Menendez, a Democratic member of Congress for more than 30 years, to forfeit all the proceeds of his crimes, including more than a dozen gold bars and coins, cash, a Mercedes-Benz convertible, and other riches that federal agents found in a bank security deposit box and the Englewood Cliffs home he shares with his wife, Nadine.
Menendez’s children, Rep. Rob Menendez and MSNBC host Alicia Menendez, and his sister, Caridad Gonzalez, who testified during the trial in her brother’s defense, sat in the front row.
Outside the courthouse afterward, Menendez addressed reporters and struck a different chord that was decidedly less chastened. He called the Southern District of New York, where federal prosecutors brought the case, “the Wild West of political prosecutions.”
While he didn’t explicitly ask for a pardon, he sent an unmistakable signal to President Donald Trump, who’s already pardoned more than 1,500 people, mostly Jan. 6 rioters, less than two weeks into his second presidency.
“President Trump was right — this process is political, and it’s corrupted to the core. I hope that President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores integrity to the system,” he said.
Menendez appealed his conviction last August, and Wednesday, he vowed he would fight his case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Menendez’s 11-year sentence was far less than what he faced under sentencing guidelines, which suggested a prison sentence of up to 30.4 years.
Defense attorneys earlier this month had proposed 21 to 27 months of incarceration. But after Stein sentenced Menendez co-defendants Wael Hana and Fred Daibes earlier Wednesday to much weightier sentences, they shifted gears and suggested a sentence of less than eight years would be fair.
Defense attorney Adam Fee ticked off Menendez’s accomplishments over more than three decades in public service, recounted his background as the son of poor Cuban immigrants who became one of the nation’s most powerful public officials, and noted more than 130 people had written letters to the judge supporting him.
Fee said his client’s fall from grace has already punished him plenty, saying he resigned from his Senate seat and is now known as “Gold Bars Bob.”
“Bob may never walk out of prison,” Fee said. “The history books, no matter what happens here, are going to treat him with derision and brand him as corrupt. He deserves punishment, and he will get it here. He does not, your honor, deserve to die in jail.”
Stein did not fine Menendez, acknowledging that he lost his job and would be forfeiting the proceeds of his crime, but levied a court fee of $1,500 — $100 for each of his crimes.
He ordered him to report to federal prison on June 6 so that he can attend his wife’s bribery trial, which is set to start March 18 in Manhattan and last up to 10 weeks.
Among those seeking leniency for Bob Menendez: a N.J. ethics commissioner
The co-defendants
Daibes and Hana also will see prison time.
Stein sentenced Daibes, 67, a real estate developer in Edgewater, to seven years in prison and Hana, who relied on Menendez’s help to hold a monopoly on halal meat exports to Egypt, to just over eight years in prison. He ordered both men to report to prison on April 4 to begin serving their sentences.
He also directed each to pay hefty fines — $1.75 million for Daibes and $1.25 million for Hana. The fines are meant to be punitive and also reflect the high net worth of both men, Stein said.
The courtroom was packed with family and friends for Daibes, 66, the first of the three men to be sentenced Wednesday. During his tearful statement to the judge, his supporters, filling six courtroom benches, wept, sniffled, and held hands. In apologetic testimony, he asked the judge for leniency, citing his age, health, and his 30-year-old autistic son.
“I wish people would think of the impact on family members before they engage in criminal acts,” Stein told Daibes.
Hana, whose three young daughters live in Egypt, was less apologetic when he spoke to the judge. Hana insisted he’s an innocent man who never bribed a senator, and said his 10-year friendship with Nadine was twisted into “something it never was.”
Hana, 41, said he “never bribed Sen. Menendez or asked his office for influence.”
“I never imagined my generosity and decisions doing what’s right would bring me to this,” he said. “I regret the terrible injustice that has put us here today.”
Fall from grace
Menendez joins just 13 U.S. senators, dating back to 1807, who have been charged with crimes.
His sentencing served as a stunning coda to a lifetime of public service during which he climbed to “the apex of our politics,” as Stein noted Wednesday, as chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee until shortly after his indictment in 2023.
Over nine weeks of testimony last spring and summer, prosecutors showed how Hana and Daibes showered Menendez and his wife with cash, gold bars, exercise equipment, paychecks for a fake job for Nadine Menendez, and more in exchange for the ex-senator exerting his influence to benefit their business interests and the governments of Egypt and Qatar, as well as derail various criminal probes and prosecutions.
Menendez promised to influence national security including the release of U.S. military aid, divulged sensitive information to Egypt that risked the safety of employees at the U.S. embassy in Cairo, pressured U.S. agriculture officials to ignore the halal meat-exporting monopoly he helped Hana secure in Egypt, and tried to disrupt multiple felony criminal proceedings, including by influencing the selection of U.S. attorney for New Jersey.
Menendez had pleaded not guilty to bribery, honest services fraud, extortion, conspiracy, acting as a foreign agent, and obstruction. But a jury found him guilty last summer after three days of deliberations. Menendez resigned in August.
Businessman Jose Uribe was also charged in the scheme, but he pleaded guilty in a cooperation deal.
Menendez, a lawyer by trade, started in politics at the age of 20, when he was elected to the school board in Union City. He became Union City’s mayor in Union City in 1986 and then moved to the state Legislature in 1988, the U.S. House in 1993, and the U.S. Senate in 2006.
He beat unrelated corruption charges in 2017 when a jury deadlocked on federal charges that he took and failed to report gifts from donor Salomon Melgen and used his influence to help Melgen.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.