We’ve Never Seen Anything Like the Menendez Indictment

Even before Bob Menendez was charged earlier this month with conspiring to act as a foreign agent, dozens of his fellow Democrats were calling on him to resign. Prosecutors say Menendez used his political office to influence American policy at the behest of the Egyptian government. He remains a senator—for now—but the latest indictment, coming after corruption charges last month, further complicates his fate. Last week, Menendez, who has pleaded not guilty to all counts, missed an all-senators classified hearing on Israel—no small indignity for a former chair of the Foreign Relations Committee.

According to the , the senator from New Jersey passed along sensitive information to Egypt, acted as a ghostwriter for its officials, and accepted “hundreds of thousands of, a history of the foreign-lobbying industry in the United States, I didn’t come across anything quite like these allegations. They appear to be the first time that an elected federal official has been formally accused of acting as an agent of a foreign government.