U.S. former senator sentenced 11 years in prison on bribery case

NEW YORK, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- Bob Menendez, a former U.S. senator from New Jersey, was sentenced to 11 years in prison on Wednesday following his conviction on bribery and corruption charges last July.

Sidney H. Stein, a judge from the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, delivered the sentencing after Menendez's lawyers submitted an emotion-laden appeal for leniency in early January.

Meanwhile, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York, requested a prison term of 15 years.

"The sentences imposed today result from an egregious abuse of power at the highest levels of the Legislative Branch of the federal government. Robert Menendez was trusted to represent the United States and the State of New Jersey, but instead he used his position to help his co-conspirators and a foreign government, in exchange for bribes like cash, gold, and a luxury car," Danielle R. Sassoon, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.

Born in 1954, Menendez served in the U.S. Senate from 2006 until his resignation in 2024 and chaired the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 2013 to 2015 and from 2021 to 2023.

From 2018 to 2022, Menendez and his wife Nadine Menendez accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of bribes in the form of gold, cash, a luxury convertible, payments toward Nadine's home mortgage, compensation for a low-or-no-show job for Nadine, home furnishings, and other things of value, according to the statement.

The sentencing also included a forfeiture of over 900,000 U.S. dollars for the disgraced Democrat.

The judge also sentenced two co-defendants to several years in prison on Wednesday.