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New Jersey doesn’t have the best record when it comes to political corruption. Even by those historically low standards, U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez has repeatedly managed to fall short of an already low bar.
The longtime Democratic senator is now facing his second federal indictment. He is accused of participating in a years-long bribery scheme along with his wife and several New Jersey businessmen.
Despite Menendez insisting that he is innocent, and pleading not guilty on Wednesday, the recently unsealed indictment is sprawling and eye opening — and not only because it details how investigators reportedly found hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gold bars at Menendez’s home. He previously survived allegations of bribery when his trial ended in a hung jury in 2017. He was later taken to task by the Senate Ethics Committee.
With these most recent allegations, he is afforded the presumption of innocence as a bedrock principle of our justice system. But he should still resign his public office for the integrity of the Senate and to respect the people he represents.
The Democratic governor of his state thinks so. His friend and fellow senator from New Jersey thinks so. We think so.
“The details of the allegations against Senator Menendez are of such a nature that the faith and trust of New Jerseyans as well as those he must work with in order to be effective have been shaken to the core,” the other U.S. senator from New Jersey, Democrat Cory Booker, said Tuesday in a statement calling on Menendez to step down. Booker previously stood by Menendez during his earlier legal woes.
“Stepping down is not an admission of guilt but an acknowledgement that holding public office demands tremendous sacrifices at great personal cost,” Booker continued.
If the new charges against Menendez are true, he has treated public office as anything but a “tremendous sacrifice.” He’s been accused of using that public office as a tool for self-enrichment.
As we’ve emphasized with former President Donald Trump, a federal indictment — or in Trump’s case, a set of four — is not a conviction, but it’s not nothing, either. Menendez and others are entitled to due process and the presumption of innocence in the courts, certainly, but that doesn’t mean he has a right to retain the honor and responsibility of serving in the U.S. Senate. Staying would cloud both his work and the respectability of the entire body.
As highlighted in a piece from Politico this week, Menendez’s situation offers echoes from a previous scandal also involving a senator from New Jersey. When the Senate was trying to figure out how to deal with then-U.S. Sen. Harrison “Pete” Williams after he was convicted of taking bribes in the early 1980s, one colleague suggested that expulsion should be reserved for transgressions like treason and insurrection.
U.S. Sen. Thomas Eagleton of Missouri wasn’t having any of that. His response, according to Politico magazine contributor Joshua Zeitz: “If non-treasonous behavior be the sole benchmark of fitness to serve in this body, then one must ask how fit is this body in which we serve?”
That was a good quote in 1981, and sadly, it still applies well today.
Let’s be honest, the fitness of the U.S. Senate and Congress generally isn’t great at the moment. But scandals on each side of the political aisle, and basement-level public trust in government, must not lull the public or public servants into accepting grift and self-enrichment as a cost of doing the people’s business. We deserve public servants who actually serve the public, not themselves. That calls for strong reform on issues such as congressional stock trading, and strong rebukes when scandals like this emerge.
Consider the ongoing case of Republican U.S. Rep. George Santos of New York. Even before he was indicted on charges of fraud, money laundering, false statements and theft of public funds, it was clear to us and others that he was unfit to serve in Congress. Prominent members of his own party, including Republican presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson, agreed that action was needed.
“It breaches the trust between the electorate and their elected official,” Hutchinson said about Santos’ behavior, which he said needed to be dealt with by the House Ethics Committee. “We have to have more integrity in our political environment, in our elected leaders.”
The same is true of Menendez and his situation, even though the underlying accusations and circumstances are different. Across the board, Americans should expect — and receive — more integrity and respect from the elected officials who are supposed to be serving us. Menendez has the presumption of innocence, yes, but he also has a responsibility to people of New Jersey.