Former Sen. Bob Menendez should spend at least 15 years in prison, federal prosecutors said in a sentencing request filed on Thursday.
Prosecutors from the Southern District of New York said the disgraced senator’s crimes were extraordinary because of their “stunning brazenness, breadth and duration.”
“This case is the first ever in which a Senator has been convicted of a crime involving the abuse of a leadership position on a Senate committee,” they wrote. “It is the first ever in which a Senator — or any other person — has been convicted of serving as a foreign agent while being a public official.”
A jury found Menendez guilty of 16 different corruption charges last summer, including taking bribes and acting as an agent of the Egyptian government while leading the Senate’s powerful foreign relations committee. He resigned following the conviction.
Since then, he has sought to get the conviction thrown out, citing errors prosecutors made when they inadvertently gave jurors access to material a judge ruled should not be used as evidence.
At the same time, Menendez is seeking a drastically more lenient sentence, citing his “destroyed” reputation and a life now “in shambles.”
U.S. District Court Judge Sidney Stein is expected to sentence Menendez and two New Jersey businesspeople guilty of bribing the senator later this month.
Prosecutors asked Stein to sentence Egyptian-American businessperson Wael Hana to a decade in prison and New Jersey real estate developer Fred Daibes to nine years.