US Senator Bob Menendez has been found guilty on all 16 counts, including his corruption trial for bribery, completing the dramatic downfall of the once powerful Democrat from New Jersey.
The jury in federal court in Manhattan deliberated for more than 12 hours over three days before reaching a verdict in a trial that lasted nine weeks.
Menendez, 70, had pleaded not guilty to the charges, which include acting as a foreign agent and obstruction of justice.
U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein scheduled Menendez’s sentencing for October 29, a week before the November 5 election. Menendez is running as an independent in that election and is seeking another six-year term in the Senate, but his chances of winning are considered slim.
After the jury foreman read the verdict, Menendez rested his elbows on the table, folded his hands and stared straight ahead.
Shortly after the conviction, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called on Menendez to resign.
At the heart of the trial were what federal prosecutors called several overlapping bribery schemes in which the senator and his wife, Nadine Menendez, accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, gold bars, and car and mortgage payments from three businessmen who sought his help.
In exchange for bribes, Menendez helped funnel billions of dollars in U.S. aid to Egypt, where one of the contractors, Wael Hana, had ties to government officials, according to prosecutors.
Menendez was also accused of attempting to influence investigations into two other businessmen, Fred Daibes and Jose Uribe.
Hana and Daibes were co-defendants in the senator’s case and were also found guilty on all counts against them.
Uribe pleaded guilty and testified as a prosecution witness against Menendez.
Menendez has faced previous corruption charges, but that case ended in a mistrial in New Jersey in 2017 based on a series of limited charges.
Menendez resigned from his post as chairman of the influential US Senate Foreign Relations Committee last September after the indictment, but resisted calls from his fellow Democrats for his resignation.
During the trial, jurors were shown some of the gold bars that federal agents had seized from the senator and his wife’s New Jersey home.
Agents also discovered more than $480,000 ($712,600 Australian dollars) in cash, some of which was in envelopes inside a jacket bearing the senator’s name.
Defense attorneys argued that Menendez’s advocacy of his state’s business interests was normal for a senator and sought to shift the blame onto his wife, who prosecutors said was a bribe-monger.
The defense pointed out that the gold bars were found in her closet.
They claimed that the two largely led separate lives and that she kept her husband in the dark about her finances.
The defense also said the senator had been regularly withdrawing cash from banks and keeping it at home for decades.
His older sister testified that he inherited the addiction from his parents, who fled Cuba with cash their father had kept in a watch.
A separate trial against Nadine Menendez is scheduled to take place at a later date.
She did not attend her husband’s court hearing after he was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The defense had stated that the prosecution had failed to prove that the gold and cash found in the senator’s house were bribes.
Menendez has been a fixture in Washington DC for more than three decades
He has represented New Jersey in the Senate since 2006, after serving in the U.S. House of Representatives for 13 years.
Previously, he served as a member of the New Jersey State Assembly and mayor.