Sen. Menendez and his wife indicted on bribery charges

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https://twitter.com/prem_thakker/status/1705234303326511138?s=20


Paragraph 42 of the indictment is also downright comical:

42. On or about October 17, 2021, ROBERT MENENDEZ and NADINE MENENDEZ, a/k/a “Nadine Arslanian,” the defendants, returned from Egypt as described in paragraph 29.f, landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Upon their arrival, a driver for FRED DAIBES, the defendant (“DAIBES’s Driver”), picked up MENENDEZ and NADINE MENENDEZ from the airport and drove them to their home in New Jersey. The next day, MENENDEZ performed a web search for “how much is one kilo of gold worth.” As discussed herein, multiple gold bars provided by DAIBES were found during the court-authorized June 2022 search of MENENDEZ and NADINE MENENDEZ’s residence.

[Senator Incitatus]

It's still very early but I'm noting that the calls to resign are almost entirely coming from the genteel suburbs, with the very notable exceptions of Jones (East Orange), Fulop (Jersey City, but a longtime personal rival) and Currie (Paterson).

If Payne, Baraka, Norcross, Booker, Stack, etc. were to come out and call for resignation, I think then it would truly be over. But Menendez actually does have a slim chance of surviving on a purely urban base by playing this ethnicity card, especially if he faces two or more challengers.

[Senator Incitatus]

It's still very early but I'm noting that the calls to resign are almost entirely coming from the genteel suburbs, with the very notable exceptions of Jones (East Orange), Fulop (Jersey City, but a longtime personal rival) and Currie (Paterson).

If Payne, Baraka, Norcross, Booker, Stack, etc. were to come out and call for resignation, I think then it would truly be over. But Menendez actually does have a slim chance of surviving on a purely urban base by playing this ethnicity card, especially if he faces two or more challengers.

The Bergen, Middlesex, Essex & also Statewide, Passaic, and Morris county chairs all called for him to resign as of 1 hour ago. That's literally the northern urban Democratic machine right there except maybe Union and Hudson. Pascrell and Pallone also joined in after the governor-led mass denouncement.

There is no divide lol, the dam broke.

Pascrell is the only person or group here who has a predominantly urban base; even the Essex County party is increasingly run out of Montclair.

Menendez has vowed to fight on and the silence of the state's urban black and Hispanic leadership (again, for now) is the main reason why he's not yet doomed.

edit: Scutari did call on him to resign, though like Pascrell he is an old-line white ethnic urban.

Anyway, the point of my post was to note an interesting trend in the calls for his resignation but not to say he'll actually hang on. My guess is the dam will actually break sometime soon, with Booker or an ambitious figure like Baraka pulling the trigger. I would say the chances Menendez holds his small, silent coalition together is something like <25%, and the chances that he could ride it to victory even if does are also something like that.

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This tweet above says a whole lot more about whoever Max Cohen is than it does about Chris Smith.

Basically the entire state Republican legislative caucus, all of the legislative candidates, and the Republican Party organization formally and quickly called on Menendez to resign. They're borderline calling for his execution; it's just underreported because it's dog-bites-man and they've been doing it for years.

Smith is the exception because of who he is as a person, famously neither a bomb-thrower nor a jumper-to-conclusions in the House. He is probably genuinely concerned about the standard of guilt and doesn't have a staff of fifty vetting his statements; Cohen should do his homework.

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My neighbor across the street is friends with Robert Torricelli of all people. I wonder what he has to say about this

Torricelli's problems are overstated in retrospect, mostly as a result of him dropping out of the race and the ensuing fracas, and they never came close to what is alleged against Menendez; he wasn't even indicted. He's still a pretty popular speaker.

The general election wound up being close in 1996 but it's worth noting that the primary victim of his campaign finance chicanery was, in fact, Bob Menendez.

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The official White House position is that it is good that Menendez stepped down as Foreign Relations chair but that it's his own decision whether to resign from the Senate. Why?

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Be real people the guy is cooked. Short of having giant burlap sacks of cash with dollar signs printed on it, it's hard to imagine a more open and shut case.

You may be overlooking the recent de facto legalization of bribery.