With all of the other breaking news chewing up the press this week, it might have been easy to miss a story out of New Jersey dealing with Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, which Ed covered yesterday. The Teflon Don of Trenton's lucky streak of not being convicted following years of allegations of influence peddling and corruption came to an end when he was convicted on multiple counts. Perhaps the literal gold bars and doubloons stuffed in his wife's closet were a bit too much for the jury to ignore this time. The question now is, what can be done about it? There are still several more steps to play out in this process and Menendez doesn't give the appearance of going anywhere. Yet some people in his own party don't seem inclined to wait. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has already called on Menendez to resign. (National Review)
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) called for Senator Bob Menendez to resign after the New Jersey Democrat was convicted Tuesday on a slew of corruption charges.
“In light of this guilty verdict, Senator Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our country, and resign,” Schumer said in a social media statement less than twenty minutes after Menendez was convicted on all charges brought in this trial.
Menendez was found guilty of 16 felony charges related to obstruction of justice, acting as a foreign agent, bribery, extortion, and honest services wire fraud. In prior statements, Schumer had stopped short of calling for Menendez to resign, only saying he was “very disappointed” in the New Jersey Democrat for failing to meet the standards of the U.S. Senate.
Menendez has already stated that he plans to appeal the convictions and that could take quite a while. In theory, the rest of the chamber could eject him on a two-thirds vote, but that hardly ever happens because they prefer to let the process play out. (Only 15 senators have ever been ejected.) It could be rather awkward if he were given the boot and then his convictions were overturned on appeal, as unlikely as that sounds.
Even if he left immediately, nothing much would change in terms of the balance of power in the short term. New Jersey's Democrat Governor would be able to appoint another Democrat almost immediately and that person would run for a full term of their own in November, when Menendez's term would have expired anyway.
But how long would that situation hold? Most of us have thought of New Jersey as a solidly blue state for quite some time now and Democrats have been taking the state for granted. But as crazy as it may sound, Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden in the Garden State in the latest round of polling, though the margin is razor thin. It would be damaging enough to the Democrats if Trump snuck away with New Jersey's electoral votes, but can you imagine how many heads would be exploding in November if he dragged a Republican Senator over the finish line with him? That's hardly a sure thing, obviously, but it does make the unrest surrounding Menendez all the more interesting.
The other possibility that can't be entirely taken off the table is that Joe Biden could bigfoot his way into the situation and preemptively pardon Menendez or at least commute his sentence. After all, based on current House Oversight investigations, Scranton Joe knows a thing or two about influence peddling and corruption himself, and birds of a feather flock together, as the saying goes. Plus, if Menendez knows someone who is in the habit of giving away gold bars, that's probably a person that the Bidens would like to be introduced to. And yet, while a pardon or commutation would keep Menendez out of the Crowbar Hotel, would it keep him in the Senate? He would still have a conviction on his record. But he barely has six months left in his term and he's 70 years old. I'm not sure that they would bother giving him the boot at this point, particularly since he has remained a reliable vote for the Democrats.
