The Fixed and Limited Life-Course of Bob Menendez: You Are What You Eat

Robert “Bob” Menendez entered politics as a school board member in 1974, also serving as an aide for the Union City, New Jersey’s mayor. After finishing a Juris Doctorate at Rutgers School of Law in 1979, he entered private practice in 1980. In 1982 Menendez ran against his former mayoral boss and lost, but he returned to testify against the mayor during a corruption trail and eventually defeated him in 1986 and served in that capacity until 1991. Running for election again and working his way through the state’s General Assembly and House of Representatives, he was appointed to fill a vacancy in the Senate by the Jersey Governor and subsequently won a special election for the seat. He was also the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

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In 2015 Menendez was indicted by the Justice Department for accepting bribes for assisting Salomon Melgen, who was also indicted for one of the largest Medicare fraud cases in history. The jury was unable to arrive at a verdict in the case and there was no retrial. Melgen was convicted of 67 counts and was later pardoned by Trump. Menendez was later admonished by the Senate Ethics Committee for his inappropriate actions.

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Not until 2023 was Menendez, his current wife, and other associates indicted again for federal corruption charges that involve expensive cars and gold bars from Egyptian officials in exchange for favorable recommendations to lift $300 million in foreign aid. In addition, Menendez allegedly was attempting to use his influence to appoint a New Jersey U.S. Attorney.

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Living the privileged senate life, the current wife of Menendez, while driving a Mercedes received from Egyptian funds struck and killed a pedestrian in 2018. After a scant on-scene investigation and a visit from a retired policeman to the accident location, Mrs. Menendez was released from the scene without any alcohol/drug testing or cell phone seizure, however; the Mercedes was impounded. To suggest that this course of traffic death investigation was lax would be accurate, and to believe that those investigating did not know who the driver was would be insulting. These unadvertised benefits are only the small tip of an age-log iceberg of life among many of the Washington illuminati.

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Clearly, Senator Menendez has some degree of impoverished character that he has clearly demonstrated throughout his political career. He certainly must be removed from his elected position and made to be responsible for his illegal and unethical actions. Publicly, we may only know the superficial illegal and unethical acts by Menendez and perhaps other less obvious, but similar actions will come to light in the future. Menendez has no ethical standards; therefore, similar admonishment would again be ineffective.

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Menendez may be the exception to the rule for elective officials’ behavior, but there are many exceptions still out there. To believe he is the exception when large sums of money are certainly available to some politicians for favorable decisions is truly laughable. These actions by Menendez are yet another indicator that term limits and other restrictive factors for elected officials are long overdue. Congress has been quick to appoint committees to investigate reported corruption and misconduct by police with much less substantiated proof of such, so let’s review these rules, regulations, and stipulations for holding political offices, because there is a chronic problem here and Menendez is only one example of the living, breathing state of corruption that has rooted in our nation's capital.