Booker Says Menendez Should Resign, Breaking Silence

Senator Cory Booker called on Senator Robert Menendez, his fellow New Jersey Democrat, to resign Tuesday morning, ending days of silence after Mr. Menendez was indicted on bribery charges.

As New Jersey’s junior senator, Mr. Booker often has described Mr. Menendez as a friend, ally and mentor. His decision to join the growing chorus of state and federal officials calling on Mr. Menendez to step down demonstrates the deepening crisis facing a senator who until last week occupied one of the most powerful and secure positions in American politics.

“The details of the allegations against Senator Menendez are of such a nature that the faith and trust of New Jerseyans as well as those he must work with in order to be effective have been shaken to the core,” Mr. Booker said, adding: “I believe stepping down is best for those Senator Menendez has spent his life serving.”

Mr. Menendez was charged on Friday with using his power as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee to assist the government of Egypt and businessmen in New Jersey in exchange for bribes that included bars of gold bullion, a Mercedes-Benz convertible, exercise machines and more than $500,000 in cash.

Mr. Menendez has responded defiantly, saying in a news conference on Monday that prosecutors had framed the allegations against him to be “as salacious as possible” and predicting that he would be exonerated.

Mr. Booker’s statement came as a flood of Democrats, particularly those facing re-election next year in competitive states, have called on Mr. Menendez to step aside. Many top Democrats in New Jersey, including Gov. Philip D. Murphy, have also said he should resign.

Mr. Booker and Mr. Menendez have been allies since Mr. Booker’s first months in the Senate, in 2013, when he was one of the first to co-sponsor a bill by Mr. Menendez to punish Iran for its nuclear weapons program by imposing tougher economic sanctions.

In the decade since, the two senators have appeared together at hundreds of news conferences and other public events, each praising the other as a friend and a defender of New Jersey voters.

The friendship survived an earlier set of corruption allegations against Mr. Menendez, in 2015, when the senator was charged with using his power to help an eye surgeon in New Jersey who later was sentenced to prison for Medicare fraud.

That trial ended in a mistrial in November 2017. The judge later acquitted Mr. Menendez of several charges and the Justice Department dismissed the others.

“Bob is my friend. There’s no senator I’ve worked more closely with. He is an extraordinary senator. I’ve seen him in the most intimate moments and didn’t see a hint of corruption,” Mr. Booker said in an interview with HuffPost in 2019. “I will stand by Bob Menendez.”

The two senators displayed their bond on a national stage this January, when they joined President Biden for an event in Manhattan celebrating new federal funding for a long-delayed project to rebuild a train tunnel connecting New York City to New Jersey.

Even as he called on Mr. Menendez to resign, Mr. Booker praised his colleague for his “boundless work ethic,” and said he supported Mr. Menendez’s efforts “to mount a vigorous defense.”

But Mr. Booker underscored the extreme, occasionally tawdry details in the indictment, describing it as containing “shocking allegations of corruption and specific, disturbing details of wrongdoing.”

Even before the latest charges were announced, opinion polls indicated that public support for Mr. Menendez was waning, said Patrick Murray, director of the Polling Institute at Monmouth University in New Jersey.

During Mr. Menendez’s first indictment, “New Jersey voters, and particularly Democrats, were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt,” Mr. Murray said. “This time, public opinion is different.”

Mr. Booker’s statement came one day after Mr. Menendez responded to the indictment at the news conference, where he said he had withdrawn the cash found in his home from his own savings account.

This appeared to contradict statements by federal prosecutors, who said that some of the cash was found in envelopes containing the fingerprints and DNA of at least one of Mr. Menendez’s alleged co-conspirators.

Such brazenness may partly explain why politicians have reacted more negatively to this latest indictment than to the previous one, said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University.

“How did their DNA get all over the cash you got out of the bank? It doesn’t pass the smell test,” said Mr. Rasmussen, who served as press secretary to James E. McGreevey, the New Jersey governor who was forced to resign in 2004 after his own corruption scandal. “I think it spells electoral death for him.”

Even some of Mr. Menendez’s longstanding allies agree. Raymond Lesniak served alongside Mr. Menendez in the New Jersey Senate. Later, as chairman of the state Democratic Party, he drew a voting map that included a district heavy with Latino voters, which helped Mr. Menendez get elected to Congress in 1992.

“As far as his re-election prospects, it’s over,” Mr. Lesniak said.

Tracey Tully contributed reporting.