The Menendez Indictment
To steal from the comedian Jon Stewart - “I’m from New Jersey.’’
I know its beaches, its turnpikes, its clubby side, and its seedy side. I know its history: Springsteen sitting in the corner writing song lyrics in his notebook while his bandmates partied in Asbury Park; the scientists at Bell Labs in Holmdel creating early programming languages and solar energy cells; the Hindenburg blowing up in Lakehurst.
I grew up strapping my basketball to my green Schwinn 10-speed bike and riding to pick-up games, wishing we could live in the big city instead of the 1970s woods of Middletown, NJ. It was innocent, even primitive.
All the while, there was a political world in New Jersey playing out in Trenton and the northern reaches of the state.
There has always been something about the Sopranos that captures New Jersey. The state has a long and outrageous record of public corruption. In some ways, it is no worse than other states or cities. Boston has its own record. So does Tallahassee. But New Jersey, unfairly or not, is known for its corruption, especially in Hudson County adjacent to New York City.
Senator Harrison Williams was caught by the FBI taking bribes from business people for influencing peddling illegal drugs in 1981. In the late 90s, Senator Robert Torricelli ended his career voluntarily after accepting campaign contributions and illegal gifts from a corrupt donor. Governor Chris Christie shut down the commuter highway into New York City, stranding thousands all because he was angry at the mayor of Jersey City for not endorsing him. His aides took the fall, their lives ruined.
My great-grandfather was the governor in 1902, a liberal Republican who fought in the Civil War and championed worker protections and child labor laws. I have no doubt he made political deals and walked up close to the ethical line. That is the reality of politics. But I can pretty much guarantee he didn’t accept sports cars and mortgage payments from business cronies.
Enter Robert Menendez, the senior senator from New Jersey, who was indicted this week for bribery, fraud, and extortion. Those are fancy ways of saying he sold his office and influence to the Egyptian government and New Jersey business people who made him rich.
Now in all fairness, it is NOT a federal crime to stash hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash in your jacket pockets around the house. Nor is it a crime to store gold bars around the same house. It’s unusual. But not a crime, even in the Soprano districts of the Garden State.
Nor is it a crime to accept a Mercedez Benz sports car and mortgage payments from a businessman seeking to influence you.
Nor is it a crime for a US Senator to meddle in the appointment of a federal prosecutor in hopes that he will go easy on the business associate bribing him.
What is a crime is when you add all this behavior together and look under the hood at what’s really going on.
In order to make money, foreign players in Egypt along with New Jersey business types bribed Senator Menendez into doing their dirty work. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a crime.
When you look more closely, the tawdry details paint a clearer picture. As simply as I can put it, Menendez is accused of selling his power and influence to New Jersey business people and the Egyptian government to enrich his wife and himself.
The bribery and the extortion are what will land Menendez in the slammer. But beyond the alleged crimes, there is a whole laundry list of behaviors that disqualify him from being a US senator.
The senator ghost-wrote and edited letters his wife sent to Egyptian officials that would be used to lobby Congress for millions of military aid. That is wrong.
He shared sensitive national security information with Egyptian officials. That is wrong because it endangers the lives and security of U.S. diplomats abroad.
He set up his wife with a no-show job with New Jersey business people. That is wrong and illegal, especially if she paid no taxes.
He made sure that an Egyptian company won a sole source contract to control meat products from the U.S. That is wrong because it uses his power to deliver favors to a private company against the interests of others.
He used his position to facilitate military equipment sales to Egypt.
Menendez may be found guilty or not guilty by a jury but his behavior, criminal or not, disqualifies him from serving in the government. The governor of NJ said so immediately. So did many others. Vermont Senators Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch called on him to resign while other senators, including Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, have not.
To New Jersey political people, Menendez’s behavior is nothing new. They have known this about him for years. Like any sub-culture, New Jersey politics is actually a very small community. Everyone knows each other. Senator Menendez has a well-deserved reputation for playing political hardball and working “close to the line’’ of corruption with donors and favor seekers.
One political friend of mine back home called the senator’s behavior a “sickness.’’ He has always been this way, my friend said. And everyone in New Jersey politics has known about it. But they were just afraid to take him on.
That says it all.
