Menendez Is ‘Severely Admonished’ by Senate Panel for Accepting Gifts

The Senate Ethics Committee “severely admonished” Sen. Robert Menendez on Thursday for accepting gifts from a wealthy doctor while using his position as a senator to promote the doctor’s personal and financial interests.

It also ordered Menendez, D-N.J., to repay the market value of all improper gifts he has not already repaid.

The admonition stems from the same actions for which Menendez was indicted in 2015. His trial — in which the doctor, Salomon E. Melgen, was a co-defendant — ended with a deadlocked jury in November 2017, and the federal government chose not to retry Menendez. In its letter of admonition, the Ethics Committee acknowledged that the trial “did not result in a conviction,” but wrote, “The criminal system, however, neither enforces nor supplants the Senate’s rules or standards of conduct, and the committee’s action stands independent from that result.”

The committee’s three Republicans and three Democrats found that from 2006 to 2013, Menendez “knowingly and repeatedly accepted gifts of significant value from Melgen without obtaining required committee approval” and “failed to publicly disclose certain gifts as required by Senate rule and federal law.” The gifts included private flights and nights at luxury hotels, among them a villa in the Dominican Republic.

“While accepting these gifts, you used your position as a member of the Senate to advance Dr. Melgen’s personal and business interests,” the committee wrote in a letter to Menendez. It continued: “Your assistance to Dr. Melgen under these circumstances demonstrated poor judgment, and it risked undermining the public’s confidence in the Senate. As such, your actions reflected discredit upon the Senate.”

Among other things, Menendez intervened when Melgen was accused of overbilling Medicare by nearly $9 million. On Melgen’s behalf, he lobbied the secretary of health and human services and officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Melgen was eventually convicted of Medicare fraud and sentenced to 17 years in prison.) The senator also helped arrange visas for the doctor’s girlfriends to come to the United States. Both men argued that their actions were tokens of friendship, not bribery.

Marc E. Elias, a lawyer for Menendez, said in a statement that many of the committee’s conclusions were at odds with the earlier legal proceedings.

“As those who followed the 11-week trial know, many of the findings in the letter were not only contradicted by the presiding judge and rejected by the jury, but the proceedings clearly demonstrated that there was no violation of any law,” Elias said. “This was further underscored when the Department of Justice dropped its baseless charges in January.”

Menendez is “glad that this Ethics Committee process that began nearly six years ago is now finally resolved,” Elias added, and “looks forward to continuing to serve the people of New Jersey.”

Republicans, not unexpectedly, drew a different conclusion about Menendez, who is up for re-election in November.

“Bob Menendez’s scandalous conduct laid out in this letter should outrage every New Jersey voter,” Bob Salera, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a statement. “The Senate Ethics Committee found what was already crystal clear from Menendez’s criminal trial — Bob Menendez is a crook and an embarrassment.”

The letter of admonition came after a long dormant period for the Ethics Committee, which rarely publicly chastises sitting senators. According to the committee’s records, it last took a similar action in 2012, when it issued a “qualified admonition” of then-Senator Tom Coburn. Coburn, R-Okla., had participated in a meeting with a former Senate aide who was improperly lobbying senators.

Rare though the censure may be, however, Menendez is not the first senator from New Jersey to face it. In 2002, the committee similarly admonished Sen. Robert G. Torricelli, a Democrat, for actions that closely resembled Menendez’s: secretly accepting gifts from a wealthy businessman, David Chang, while using his power as a senator to help Chang.

His reputation badly tarnished, Torricelli ended his re-election campaign later that year. The political fallout for Menendez, who announced last month that he would run for re-election, remains to be seen. His most prominent Republican challenger is Bob Hugin, a former pharmaceutical executive.