Turtle didn’t appoint him to that position, after he’d already been indicted once before for corruption (and investigated a number of times).
To be sure, McConnell has done repugnant things. Let’s not lay blame at his feet for the things that should be better placed on the Democratic side.
The joke is that Republicans also seem to be foreign agents, of Russia instead of Egypt. NP didn’t blame McConnell when making that joke above.
The Republican public blames Democrats for their own corruption as a coping mechanism for continuing to elect Republicans of the same stripe.
It’s a habit better to not pick up.
I read that last bit wrong. Sorry.
I asked my senators to talk with him about resigning. Do you think we should email like the Senate Pro Temp too
Worth a try, but he’ll probably just dig in. Our Governor has asked him to resign and he refused.
I think he’s unlikely to resign short of a vote to expel being imminent. His resignation is a potential bargaining chip he can use in a plea deal.
Remind me again:
Sure looks like a pattern of favouring outside interests over those of the US.
The choices that they make has no relevance to the choices that you make. If OJ Simpson - as I’ve told many a Republican over the last few years - got off for murder, that doesn’t suddenly make it okay for you to murder. It’s still a bad thing, inexcusable, and you don’t make yourself look any better by blaming OJ for what you chose to do.
Menendez wasn’t elected by Republicans. He didn’t campaign in Alabama. Mitch McConnell didn’t appoint him to the Foreign Relations Committee. Menendez is purely the choice and actions of Democrats, the voters of New Jersey, and Chuck Schumer. There’s no finger pointing nor whataboutism that changes any of that.
Prosecutor, “Resign from the senate, pay fines of $xxxxx.xx, serve three years in prison, disavow any future run for political office, and we’ll drop all charges against your wife.”
Senator Menendez, “How about my wife serves time and no charges for me?”
Scumbag!
To me, Menendez goes to show that you can have crooks and bad entities on either side.
If you want to get into a discussion over whether Republicans or Democrats are worse over all in this regard, then that’s a different discussion, I don’t think this thread is for it. Menendez certainly isn’t a reason to say that Democrats are just as bad as Republicans, though. Just that having a D after your name doesn’t make you “one of the good guys”.
Quite true. I’ll stop.
More directly related to Menendez, he had a cameo in one of Legal Eagle’s Trump videos recently. LE was talking about the need to properly account for all one’s income and then there was a still shot of Menendez, with gold bars and dollar signs falling down around him. Was only up for a couple of seconds, just enough to register, and then LE was on to the next point he wanted to make.
Seems to me that as soon as he’s aknown foreign agent you rip his security clearance. Which pretty well requires he be pushed off any committee with any power and be prohibited from involvement in most of the Senate’s business.
I think there is widespread corruption in Washington at all levels, by both Republicans and Democrats. Don’t forget the Keating 5, or William Jefferson’s freezer full of money. Those people and Menendez are just the ones greedy enough or dumb enough to be caught.
Assuming politicians are being bought will explain a lot of the craziness we see in the government.
I heard one ex-politician say that the corruption and partisanship really started with the end of the earmark era. Earmarks were ways for politicians to wet their beaks, get donation money or bribes from people looking for an earmark, etc. It also caused politicians to work together in a ‘scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ way. Vote for my earmark-laden bill, and I’ll vote for yours.
When the earmarks went away, there was no reason for the two sides to work together, and the loss of a major source of grift caused more corruption in other areas.
I mean, consider insider trading. Politicians in Washington do it all the time, and they have access to information no one else does. The STOCK act was passed in 2012 to stop it. It didn’t. In 2020 a bunch of Senators bought and sold stock after getting a secret briefing on the Coronavirus. The FBI investigated, seized their phones, etc. As it turns out, the law against Congress engaging in insider trading has loopholes big enough to drive a truck through (what a surprise), and they all skated free. Republicans and Democrats both.
On the other side of every one of those trades were hapless Americans losing money because some asshole in Washington with special knowledge took it from them illegally. No one seems to care.
Menendez was the one dumb enough to be caught. I suspect half of Congress is on the take in one way or another.
The worst scandal of all may be unfolding as we speak: Robert Malley, the lead negortiator for the Iran deal and the point man on Iran in the Biden administration is on leave without pay after a ‘classified documents’ issue, but the story may be that he is an agent of Iran. We don’t know for sure yet exactly what’s going on there, and it’s a hijack from this thread to go into details, and maybe it will turn out to be nothing. But the timing of this is suspicious given what’s going on in hte middle east.
If anyone wants to discuss this, I will start a thread. All this is just to say that Menendez isn’t unique here.
Being a foreign agent doesn’t equate to being a spy.
Someone can correct me, but the news stories I see do not include allegations of spying. It rather seems that Menendez is accused of advocating for increased foreign aid and arms sales, to Egypt, in return for money.
Your post is understandable in that he stands accused of meeting with an Egyptian intelligence official, but he hasn’t been accused of giving the official secrets.
Spying and undisclosed lobbying are separate offenses in Federal law. Menendez is being charged with the latter in the superseding indictment.
Sure, there are some corrupt politicians, of all parties. That doesn’t imply that all are, and I think it’s likely that there are a good many who aren’t corrupt.
It doesn’t take very many politicians being bought to completely explain the level of craziness we see, especially because almost all of the craziness we see comes from the same party.
No, not official secrets, but information that could put people’s lives at risk, which he sold for money. So he’s not a spy, just a greedy amoral sleaze.
The correct word is ‘asset’. Menendez is allegedly an Egyptian asset, who for money will steer policy towards Egypt, given them sensitive information they want, etc.
The term of art is “traitor”. Shoot him after the appropriate fair trial. Then gather up some more convicted traitors and do the same.