New Jersey Democrat Sen. Bob Menendez was indicted on bribery charges Friday, and if it were 2013, the high-fiving by right-wing Twitter nerds wouldn’t be so cringey.
There’s nothing to be giddy about. Menendez has been in legal jeopardy for literally my entire career in Washington, D.C. He was investigated by the FBI in 2013 for allegedly having sex with underage prostitutes in the Caribbean. The Justice Department just five years ago dropped corruption charges after a State Department official testified that the senator threatened him on behalf of a rich donor friend.
If any previous attempts to prosecute Menendez were serious, whether it be for overseas sex crimes or blatant corruption at home, he would have served at least one day in prison. But, to date, that has never happened. He remains a sitting senator.
In fairness, Menendez recently reprimanded Joe Biden for incentivizing foreign governments to hold Americans hostage, and in 2021, he called the president’s deadly Afghanistan withdrawal “horrifying,” so he probably had another round of indictments coming.
The curious and sudden prosecution of a Democrat senator from a reliably Democrat state, which will fill the seat with another (likely corrupt) Democrat, is a distraction tossed out by Biden’s DOJ. It’s child’s play. Don’t eat what they throw on the floor.
See?! No one is above the law! Democrats are held to account, too!
The media will dutifully repeat the line, and the faction of the right that prefers publicly whining over actually accomplishing anything will oblige.
