The United States Federal Court Tuesday convicted Senator Bob Menendez of all criminal counts including bribery and acting as an unregistered foreign agent.
The federal court jury in Manhattan delivered its verdict after deliberating for more than 12 hours over three days. The conviction on all 16 counts against him exposes Menendez to a sentence of more than 200 years in prison, though such a heavy sentence is unlikely.
The Senator who pushed for sanctions against several countries including Uganda faced a widely watched corruption trial in New York and is now set for sentencing in October this year.
After the verdict was read out, Menendez rested his elbows on the table, clasped his hands together, and stared straight ahead. He said afterwards that he plans to appeal.
“I have never been anything but a patriot of my country and for my country. I have never, ever been a foreign agent,” Menendez said.
Prosecutors had accused Menendez, a New Jersey lawmaker and an influential figure in the Democratic Party, of taking part in overlapping bribery schemes in which he and his wife accepted bribes from three businessmen who wanted Menendez’s help.
In exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, gold bars, and car and mortgage payments, Menendez helped steer billions of dollars in US aid to Egypt, where one of the businessmen, Wael Hana, had ties to government officials, according to prosecutors.
Menendez also was accused of seeking to influence criminal probes involving two other businessmen, Fred Daibes and Jose Uribe.
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