Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey announced Tuesday that he would resign from Congress effective in late August, bowing to intense pressure from Democratic colleagues who had pushed him to step down or face an expulsion vote after his conviction in a vast international bribery scheme.
Menendez has maintained his innocence and vowed to appeal a guilty verdict returned last week by a federal jury in Manhattan. But with the Senate Ethics Committee fast-tracking a vote to expel him, he opted to quit his term months early, rather than force an ugly intraparty fight that threatened to make him the first senator ousted since the Civil War.
Menendez conveyed his resignation in a letter to Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey, shortly after he shared the news with what remained of his staff. Murphy, a Democrat, said he would promptly appoint a replacement who would serve until January.
In the letter, Menendez, 70, said he had concluded that his presence in the Senate would only complicate his efforts to clear his name and salvage his legacy.
However, he notably left open the possibility that he might remain a long-shot candidate for reelection this fall as a political independent; he has until Aug. 16 to take his name off the ballot.
“While I fully intend to appeal the jury’s verdict, all the way and including to the Supreme Court, I do not want the Senate to be involved in a lengthy process that will detract from its important work,” the senator wrote.
By delaying his departure until August, Menendez will allow his staff members time to find new jobs but also ensure that he receives another month’s salary and health insurance at a time when his finances are crumbling and his wife, Nadine Menendez, is undergoing cancer treatment.
His resignation will not immediately affect his federal pension, though the senator could still stand to lose it under an anti-corruption law if his conviction is upheld.
And yet there was no avoiding the magnitude of the collapse of his storied five-decade career — one that saw Menendez, the son of Cuban immigrants, rise from mayor of his hometown, Union City, New Jersey, to become the powerful chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and one of the most senior Latinos in Washington.
Now Menendez has been branded a felon, convicted of selling his office for bars of gold and making himself an agent of a foreign power.
He faces decades in prison when Judge Sidney H. Stein of U.S. District Court sentences him Oct. 29.
Menendez had faced calls for his resignation since he, his wife and three New Jersey businesspeople were first charged last fall with taking part in a yearslong bribery conspiracy. But demands that he step aside intensified after the jury found him guilty of 16 federal crimes on July 16.
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