Robert Menendez, New Jersey’s disgraced former senator who was once one of the most powerful Democrats in Washington, was sentenced on Wednesday to 11 years in prison after being convicted of being at the centre of an audacious international bribery scheme.
The courtroom in Lower Manhattan was packed but silent as the judge imposed one of the longest sentences ever issued for a federal official in the United States.
“You were successful, powerful,” the judge, Sidney H. Stein of the Federal District Court, said before announcing the penalty. “You stood at the apex of our political system.”
“Somewhere along the way—I don’t know where it was—you lost your way,” he added. “Working for the public good became working for your good.”
Menendez, a skilled orator known for holding forth on the Senate floor, wept intermittently as he addressed the court before the sentence was announced. He said that he planned to appeal the jury’s guilty verdict but told Judge Stein that he stood before him as a “chastened man” who had suffered the ignominy of a guilty verdict and the resignation of his Senate seat.
“Every day I’m awake is a punishment,” Mr. Menendez, 71, said.
“I ask you to temper your sword of justice with the mercy of a lifetime of duty,” he added.
His sister and both of his children—Alicia Menendez, an anchor on the news network MSNBC, and Representative Rob Menendez, a Democrat serving his second term in Congress—sat directly behind him in the first row of a courtroom gallery filled.
After sentencing, Mr. Menendez addressed a crowd of reporters and onlookers outside the courthouse.
Chastened no more, he offered a scathing indictment of the justice system and what appeared to be a direct appeal to President Trump, who has the power to pardon him.
“Let me just say this,” he began. “This whole process has been nothing but a political witch hunt.”
“President Trump is right,” he added. “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.”
Mr. Menendez’s decline from prominence has been swift and steep. In August, he resigned from the Senate after a Manhattan jury convicted him of trading his political clout for stacks of $100 bills, bricks of gold, and a Mercedes-Benz convertible.
When indicted 16 months ago, Mr. Menendez was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, one of the most powerful committees in Washington.
