Why Robert Menendez Shouldn’t Step Out: The Casey-Carrying Sen. Bob Casey re-joins
This column will be obsolete by the time you read it, if Democratic leaders in the Senate do the right thing. I would have written it earlier, but I thought that at any moment, the dam would break and Robert Menendez, the recently indicted senator from New Jersey accused of spectacular acts of treachery and corruption, would be pushed out. There has not been a unified front of condemnation since the Department of Justice gave us all a look at Menendez’s jacket and gold bars. As I write this, more than a dozen Democratic senators have called on him to step down. Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, should join them.
At a defiant news conference on Monday, Menendez insisted he’s staying in the Senate and offered a preposterous excuse for the hundreds of thousands of dollars that F.B.I. agents found at his house. He said he kept it for emergencies, “because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba.” According to a report, he wants us to believe that he feels the need to hedge against communism in America because of intergenerational trauma. (Ironically, his family now, indeed, faces government confiscation.) He also claimed to be the victim of racist persecution by those who “simply cannot accept that a first-generation Latino American from humble beginnings could rise to be a U.S. senator” — a deployment of identity politics so audaciously cynical, it belongs in a caustic TV farce, some deranged mash-up of “Veep” and “The Sopranos.”
A major step for Booker in calling for his fellow senator to resign is that he works closely with him. His statement is one of many made by Democrats.
“While he is entitled to the presumption of innocence, serving in public office is a privilege that demands a higher standard of conduct,” said Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., in a Tuesday statement calling for his resignation.
Federal prosecutors in New York indicted the couple on three charges of conspiracy to commit bribe, honest services fraud and extortion. According to the indictment, Menendez and his wife accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes. The businessmen were helped by an U.S. senator in return for providing information about the US’s relations with Egypt.
New Jersey is under a lot of pressure for Menendez to step aside. The governor and members of the House delegation called for him to resign, and Andy Kim plans to challenge him in the Democratic primary if he does not leave congress before then.
The mounting calls put pressure on party leadership, including President Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, to take a position. “It’s a serious matter, but the president hasn’t weighed in on resignation calls,” said Kimree Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary. In a statement last week, Schumer said that he supported the decision of Menendez to give up his position as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.