Judge delays Menendez sentencing to 2025

A judge on Monday delayed former Sen. Bob Menendez’s (D-N.J.) sentencing in his federal corruption case by three months, pushing any criminal punishment into 2025.

In a brief order, U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein rescheduled Menendez’s sentencing to Jan. 29. The disgraced New Jersey Democrat was set to be sentenced Oct. 29.

Menendez was convicted in July on all 16 counts he faced, from accepting luxurious bribes in exchange for his political clout to acting as a foreign agent of Egypt. Once chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he is now staring down decades in prison.

Ahead of Menendez’s sentencing, several friends wrote letters to the judge urging him to weigh the former senator’s decades of public service when deciding his sentence and asking for a lenient punishment.

“Surely the way he has uplifted his community and each individual whose life Bob has improved must count for something to help minimize the consequences which you have the power to impose,” Joan Dublin, president of the Metropolitan Family Health Network in Jersey City, wrote in one of the letters.

So far, none of Menendez’s colleagues in the Senate has written letters in his support that were made public in court filings.

Despite resigning from the Senate in August, Menendez has maintained his innocence and pleaded not guilty. He has vowed to appeal the conviction.

Two New Jersey businessmen who were convicted alongside Menendez for trading the bribes of cash, gold bars and other gifts for the then-senator’s power are now also scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 29. A third who pleaded guilty before the trial began will be sentenced in April.

Menendez’s wife, Nadine, was charged alongside the senator and businessmen but has not yet gone to trial due to a breast cancer diagnosis. Though no trial date has officially been set, Stein ordered Nadine Menendez’s attorney and the government to keep their trial calendars clear for January and February. A pretrial conference is scheduled for Dec. 9.