- Sen. Bob Menendez has been accused of federal corruption and has called for his resignation.
- Menendez explained the $480,000 in cash that prosecutors claimed was discovered at his New Jersey residence.
- some of the packages had the fingerprints of one of the individuals accused of bribing Menendez.
Sen. Bob Menendez has been accused of federal corruption, and two Democratic senators, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Peter Welch of Vermont, have called for his resignation. Brown and Welch opposed Menendez’s initial statements in public following the Friday unsealing of the charges against him and his wife.
Brown, the chair of a subcommittee on Menendez’s Banking panel, declared that he would not step down and that, if all the information is known, he would be cleared.
Bob Menendez
Menendez explained the $480,000 in cash that prosecutors claimed was discovered at his New Jersey residence. He insisted that the money belonged to him and had been obtained legally.
He insisted that the funds came from his personal savings account, which he had kept on hand in case of exigencies and because his family had previously experienced a seizure in Cuba.
According to the indictment, some of the packages had the DNA or fingerprints of one of the individuals accused of bribing Menendez or that individual’s driver.
In his remarks, Menendez did not address this assertion, and he also declined to answer questions from the media. All the facts must be presented to his legislative counterparts, he pleaded.
Brown and Welch did not change their positions on calling on Menendez to resign despite his public comments. Welch urged Senator Menendez to resign in a tweet, saying that the accusations “wholly compromised” his ability to carry out his duties. Menendez has betrayed the public’s confidence and ought to retire from the U.S. Senate, according to Brown’s prior statement.
Menendez’s case, notably his “emergency” justification for the significant amount of cash in his home, didn’t seem to faze Fetterman either. He also corroborated The Messenger’s story that $5,000 in contributions made to his 2022 campaign by Menendez are being returned.
Democrats in the House and Democratic leaders in New Jersey, including as Governor Phil Murphy, have repeatedly demanded that Menendez step down. Democrat from New Jersey Rep. Andy Kim declared his intention to challenge Menendez on Saturday.
Menendez and his wife were charged with conspiring to extort money, provide false information to government officials, and commit honest services fraud.
