Senator Menendez Found Guilty on All Counts in Corruption Trial

The verdict made Mr. Menendez the first United States senator to be found guilty of acting as an agent of a foreign power and the seventh to be convicted of a federal crime while in office.

Mr. Menendez, 70, now faces the possibility of many years in prison when he is sentenced by the judge, Sidney H. Stein. Eight of the counts on which he was convicted carry potential 20-year sentences. The judge said he would sentence Mr. Menendez on Oct. 29.

The resounding verdict will almost certainly deliver a final blow to Mr. Menendez’s storied four-decade political career and create intense pressure for him to leave office before his term expires at year’s end. Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and majority leader, said in a statement, “In light of this guilty verdict, Senator Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate and our country, and resign.”

Mr. Menendez had resisted calls to step down before his trial, but he could now face a rare expulsion vote by his Senate colleagues if he does not leave voluntarily. If the seat is vacated, Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey would be able to name a replacement to fill out his term.

Outside the federal courthouse, Mr. Menendez said he was “deeply, deeply disappointed by the jury’s decision.” He said he had “every faith that the law and the facts did not sustain that decision” and that he would be successful upon appeal.

“I have never violated my public oath,” Mr. Menendez said. “I have never been anything but a patriot of my country and for my country.”

The senator, who had criticized the prosecution for criminalizing routine legislative activity, addressed charges that he acted as an agent for the government of Egypt.

“I have never, ever been a foreign agent,” Mr. Menendez said, “and the decision rendered by the jury today would put at risk every member of the United States Senate in terms of what they think a foreign agent would be.”

Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, whose office prosecuted the senator, said, “This wasn’t politics as usual; this was politics for profit.” He said Mr. Menendez’s “years of selling his office to the highest bidder have finally come to an end.”

“Corruption isn’t costless,” Mr. Williams added. “It erodes public trust, and it undermines the rule of law.”

The verdict comes seven years after Mr. Menendez was tried in an unrelated federal bribery case, held in New Jersey, in which a jury said it could not reach a verdict and a mistrial was declared. When Mr. Menendez was indicted in Manhattan last September, he became the first U.S. senator ever to face federal bribery charges twice.

Two businessmen — Wael Hana, 40, and Fred Daibes, 66, — were charged alongside Mr. Menendez. They were also found guilty of all counts they faced.

Lawrence S. Lustberg, Mr. Hana’s lawyer, and César de Castro, Mr. Daibes’s lawyer, each said their clients would pursue appeals.

“We’re obviously very disappointed in today’s verdict,” Mr. Lustberg said. “We think it is contrary to justice and contrary to both the facts and the law.”

Mr. Menendez’s lawyers, Adam Fee and Avi Weitzman, said the senator was “eager to aggressively pursue the very substantial legal issues on appeal to a higher court,” and they said they expected he would be vindicated on appeal.

Jurors left the courthouse without speaking to reporters.

Mr. Menendez’s trial was bookended by extraordinary legal and political turmoil. As it began in mid-May, former President Donald J. Trump was on trial in a state court down the block, where he was convicted on 34 felony counts two weeks later. Each morning, Mr. Trump’s motorcade would roll up Worth Street directly past the entrance Mr. Menendez used to enter the federal courthouse.

Mr. Menendez spent the duration of the two-month trial in court and was not present in Washington, where he ordinarily would be at the center of legislative action. As the trial ended, he was absent from the debate over whether President Biden should continue his campaign for re-election. The day after the jury began deliberating, Mr. Trump was shot and injured in an assassination attempt during a political rally in Pennsylvania.

Even before the jury’s verdict on Tuesday, the explosive array of bribery charges against Mr. Menendez had thrust New Jersey politics into disarray.

Representative Andy Kim, a Democrat, entered the race for Mr. Menendez’s seat a day after the senator was indicted, drawing the ire of Democratic Party bosses in New Jersey who had already been asked to support a different candidate — Tammy Murphy, the governor’s wife.

Ms. Murphy, whose candidacy was damaged by claims of nepotism, dropped out of the contest in late March, days before the collapse of a mainstay of politics in New Jersey — preferential ballot placement for candidates endorsed by party leaders.

After Mr. Kim filed a lawsuit challenging the practice, which for decades had given those candidates an often insurmountable edge by allowing them to be grouped in a single line, a judge ordered Democrats to redesign the ballots for the primary being held in June.

Mr. Kim won the Democratic nomination with 75 percent of the vote after a campaign that highlighted the shocking nature of the allegations against Mr. Menendez. He is now the odds-on favorite to win the seat in the November general election.

Over the years, Mr. Menendez attracted federal scrutiny as he rose through New Jersey’s notoriously corrupt political circles and became one of the most powerful Latino politicians in Washington.

Soon after he was indicted last September, Mr. Menendez, the son of Cuban immigrants, said he had been singled out by prosecutors who “simply cannot accept that a first-generation Latino American from humble beginnings could rise to be a U.S. senator.”

Throughout the trial, prosecutors presented testimony and other evidence that placed Mr. Menendez at the center of a web of corruption that intermingled sensitive matters of security in the Middle East and the bare-knuckle, backroom dealings of the senator’s home state.

Mr. Menendez was charged with steering aid and weapons to Egypt, using his clout to help the government of Qatar and propping up Mr. Hana’s lucrative halal certification business monopoly for meat sold in Egypt. Mr. Hana, in a text to an Egyptian general, referred to Mr. Menendez, who held sway over U.S. military sales, financing and other aid, as “our man.”

Prosecutors also cited evidence showing Mr. Menendez tried to disrupt criminal investigations in New Jersey on behalf of two allies — Mr. Daibes, a real estate developer, and Jose Uribe, a former insurance broker — who helped funnel bribes to the senator and his wife, Nadine Menendez.

Ms. Menendez, 57, was indicted with her husband but was not tried with him. In April, Judge Stein postponed her trial after her lawyers said she would be undergoing treatment for breast cancer. She has pleaded not guilty.

In the scheme, Ms. Menendez was the senator’s “go-between, demanding payment, receiving payment and passing messages, but always — always — keeping him informed,” a prosecutor, Paul M. Monteleoni, said in a closing argument at the senator’s trial.

“It wasn’t enough for him to be one of the most powerful people in Washington,” Mr. Monteleoni told the jury. “No, Robert Menendez wanted all that power, but he also wanted to use it to pile up riches for himself and his wife.”

“So, Menendez sold the power of his office,” Mr. Monteleoni added.

When the F.B.I. raided the Menendezes’ home in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., in June 2022, agents found bars of gold bullion worth more than $100,000 and about $480,000 in cash, the evidence showed. They also found, parked in the driveway, a 2019 Mercedes-Benz convertible Mr. Uribe had given to Ms. Menendez.

Mr. Menendez has proclaimed his innocence ever since he was charged. In January, he delivered a defiant speech on the floor of the Senate, calling the case against him “baseless” and saying it had set a dangerous precedent that could be used against other senators.

During the senator’s trial, his lawyers largely sought to shift blame for his troubles to Ms. Menendez. In an opening statement to the jury, his lawyer, Mr. Weitzman, cast her as an opportunist in dire financial straits who had kept her husband “in the dark” about what she was asking others to give her, and who “tried to get cash and assets any which way she could.”

The senator’s other lawyer, Mr. Fee, said in a closing argument that the government’s case was based on half-truths, factual leaps, unsupported inference and guesses.

“The gaps you are being asked to fill are not based on evidence,” Mr. Fee said.

In court Tuesday, as the jury forewoman announced the verdict, repeating “guilty” over and over again, Mr. Menendez leaned forward, elbows on the table in front of him, chin resting on his clasped hands. Later, after the jury was discharged and the packed courtroom cleared, Mr. Menendez quietly stood up, picked up a large folder holding documents and walked out.

Maia Coleman and Olivia Bensimon contributed reporting.