Former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez was sentenced Wednesday to 11 years in prison for accepting bribes of gold and cash and acting as an agent of Egypt — crimes his lawyer said he’s been mocked for as “Gold Bar Bob.”
The judge delivered the sentence after Menendez tearfully addressed the court, saying he’d lost everything he cared about, except his family. The Democrat resigned last year after becoming one of only a handful of U.S. senators ever convicted while in office.
“You were successful, powerful, you stood at the apex of our political system,” U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein told Menendez in a packed Manhattan courtroom. ”Somewhere along the way, and I don’t know when it was, you lost your way and working for the public good became working for your good.”
The ex-senator was convicted of selling his once-considerable clout for bribes worth a fortune. FBI agents who searched his house found $480,000, some of it stuffed inside boots and pockets of clothing, and gold bars worth an estimated $150,000.
If you can’t skip to the end, here’s how he begged for a pardon: “President Trump was right. This process is political, and it’s corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system.”