Bob Menendez Is Sentenced to 11 Years in Prison

Mr. Menendez, a powerful longtime senator from New Jersey, was convicted last year on federal bribery and corruption charges.

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 for his central role in 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 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.”

Mr. 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 has said that he planned to appeal the conviction, but told Judge Stein that he stood before him 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 mercy for a lifetime of duty,” he added.

Mr. Menendez’s 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.

After the sentencing concluded, Mr. Menendez lingered briefly in the courtroom, one knee on a chair as he grasped his children’s hands. Then he headed out to address a crowd of reporters and onlookers in front of 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. (The president has given no indication that he would entertain granting a pardon for Mr. Menendez.)

“Let me just say this,” Mr. Menendez 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.”

Danielle Sassoon, the new acting head of the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement that the sentencings of Mr. Menendez and two of his co-defendants “send a clear message that attempts at any level of government to corrupt the nation’s foreign policy and the rule of law will be met with just punishment.”

The former senator’s fall from grace has been steep and swift. He resigned from the Senate in August after a jury convicted him of trading his political clout for hundreds of thousand of dollars, bricks of gold and a Mercedes-Benz convertible.

When he was indicted 16 months ago, Mr. Menendez was serving as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, one of the most powerful perches in Washington.

The role gave him outsize influence over foreign military aid and international policy. And during a nine-week trial that ended last summer, federal prosecutors emphasized the many ways in which Mr. Menendez used that power.

The prosecutors, in a recent memo to Judge Stein, described Mr. Menendez’s conduct as possibly “the most serious for which a U.S. senator has been convicted in the history of the republic,” and asked the judge to impose a sentence of at least 15 years in prison.

Paul M. Monteleoni, a prosecutor who spoke Wednesday in court before the sentence was imposed, said Mr. Menendez’s crime constituted a “truly grave breach” of the public trust.

“He believed that the power that he wielded belonged to him,” Mr. Monteleoni said. “The power of a Senate office is not something he owns and that he’s entitled to liquidate into a pile of cash or gold.”

Mr. Menendez was found guilty in July on all 16 counts he faced, including bribery, extortion, honest services wire fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and acting as an agent for Egypt.

When the jury announced its verdict, Mr. Menendez, the son of immigrants from Cuba, became the first U.S. senator ever convicted of acting as an agent of a foreign power.

At the trial, jurors were told how Mr. Menendez secretly drafted a letter on behalf of Egyptian officials who were hoping for millions more in military aid from the United States. He shared sensitive details about U.S. Embassy personnel in Cairo. He also attempted to interfere with state and federal criminal prosecutions in New Jersey on behalf of allies.

In return, gold and cash made their way to the modest home in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., he shares with his wife, Nadine Menendez, who prosecutors say served as an intermediary and is expected to stand trial in March.

Lawyers for Mr. Menendez, citing his hardscrabble upbringing, five decades of public service and devotion to his family, originally sought a term of no more than 27 months, with “at least two years’ rigorous community service.”

On Wednesday, however, Adam Fee, one of his lawyers, adjusted that recommendation and instead urged Judge Stein to impose a sentence of no more than eight years in prison.

“If our worst moments defined us and overshadowed whatever other light we had put out into the world, many of us, including me, would not be here today,” Mr. Fee said, noting what he called Mr. Menendez’s “lifetime of extraordinary public service.”

Mr. Fee ticked off categories of criminals convicted of serious violent crimes, describing them as “heartless, hardened individuals for whom a 10-plus-year sentence maybe fits their crimes.”

“Bob,” Mr. Fee said, “is at the far opposite end of the spectrum.”

A sentence of 10 years or more, Mr. Fee said, would preclude Mr. Menendez from being jailed at a minimum-security facility and would “expose him to a dramatically higher risk of danger, intimidation, threats, harassment and violence” in prison.

“He deserves punishment and he will get it,” Mr. Fee said, adding, “He does not deserve to die in jail.”

Testimony and evidence introduced at trial showed Mr. Menendez and his wife conspiring during furtive dinners and on encrypted calls. The scheme, according to the indictment, largely revolved around efforts to steer aid to Egypt and help three New Jersey businessmen, who were also charged.

“The defendants’ crimes amount to an extraordinary attempt, at the highest levels of the legislative branch, to corrupt the nation’s core sovereign powers over foreign relations and law enforcement,” the government wrote to Judge Stein.

Earlier this week, the former senator’s lawyers, saying the case presented difficult appellate questions, asked Judge Stein to allow Mr. Menendez to remain free on bond pending his appeal. That motion is still pending.

But Judge Stein did delay the start of Mr. Menendez’s sentence until early June so that he would be able to attend his wife’s trial.

Two of Mr. Menendez’s co-defendants — the businessmen Wael Hana and Fred Daibes — were also sentenced on Wednesday. Mr. Daibes received a seven-year prison sentence and a fine of $1.75 million. Mr. Hana was sentenced to slightly more than eight years in prison and fined $1.3 million.

A fourth defendant, Jose Uribe, a failed insurance broker, pleaded guilty last year and became a star witness against the senator at trial. He is to be sentenced in April.

Mr. Hana, a U.S. citizen born in Egypt, maintained his innocence before he was sentenced and said that his longtime friendship with Ms. Menendez had been “twisted into something it never was.”

“I never bribed Senator Menendez or asked his office for influence,” said Mr. Hana, who founded a halal certification company that won a lucrative monopoly with the government of Egypt. Prosecutors say the company was used to funnel bribes to Mr. Menendez through his wife.

Ms. Menendez, 57, was to be prosecuted with her husband, but her trial was postponed by the judge after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She has pleaded not guilty and did not appear in court on Wednesday, but Mr. Menendez spoke of her lovingly when he addressed the court.

“I want to see her pain-free, happy again, and hope to return to a joyful future together,” he said.

Maia Coleman contributed reporting.