2024 Battleground

Chuck Schumer Under Fire Over Senator Bob Menendez’s Criminal Indictment

Photo by Senator Bob Menendez, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Chuck Schumer is facing a dilemma.

Schumer’s position as Senate Majority Leader is at stake.

And Chuck Schumer considered a resignation announcement that will change everything.

As Great American Daily reports:

Chuck Schumer refused to call on the Senate to expel New Jersey Democrat Senator Bob Menendez despite the Justice Department filing a superseding indictment against Menendez and his wife Nadine on charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, public official acting as a foreign agent, bribery, extortion and honest services wire fraud.

“The Senate has certain standards that we must live up to,” Schumer stated. “I am very disappointed that Sen. Menendez has not lived up to those standards.”

Menendez, his wife, and three business associates already faced charges of bribery – where the Menendezes allegedly accepted cash, gold bars, and a Mercedes-Benz – in exchange for Menendez acting as an unregistered agent for the Egyptian government.

In the new indictment, prosecutors alleged Menendez misled his lawyers causing them to tell investigators Menendez had no knowledge of a $23,568 payment for the Mercedes-Benz given to his wife until 2022.

“In truth and in fact, and as Menendez well knew, Menendez had learned of both the mortgage company payment and the car payments prior to 2022, and they were not loans, but bribe payments,” the indictment stated.

Prosecutors alleged that Nadine met with Jose Uribe – one of the business associates who pleaded guilty – shortly after the FBI raided Menendez’s home.

Nadine allegedly asked Uribe what he planned to say about the car payments to which Uribe responded that he would falsely tell the authorities it was a loan.

Bob Menendez denied all wrongdoing.

“Not content – or capable – of meeting those facts fairly at trial, the government has now falsely alleged a cover-up and obstruction,” Menendez declared.

“The latest charge reveals far more about the government than it says about me,” Menendez continued. “It says that the prosecutors are afraid of the facts, scared to subject their charges to the fair-minded scrutiny of a jury, and unconstrained by any sense of justice or fair play. It says, once and for all, that they will stop at nothing in their zeal to get me.”

House Republicans joined with Democrats to expel Congressman George Santos after prosecutors indicted him on campaign finance crimes.

Those were nickel-and-dime charges compared to the allegations Menendez faces which include passing sensitive information to a foreign government in exchange for a bribe.

And this episode shows that – once again – Democrats expect to live under and benefit from a double standard that they create knowing their allies in the media will hound Republicans about the slightest accusations of wrongdoing and give Democrats a pass on every scandal under the sun.