NEW YORK — The once all-powerful senator of Cuban origin Robert Menendez withdrew his candidacy as an independent on Friday Senate American, ending a long career policy.
Outcast from the Democratic Party after his indictment for corruption in 2023, the 70-year-old New Jersey senator had announced his candidacy for a Senate seat as an independent in June, before a jury found him guilty of corruption, fraud and working as a foreign agent for the Egyptian government, among other positions.
“I am informing you that I wish to have my name removed from the rolls,” Menendez wrote in a message to New Jersey Elections Committee Acting Chair Donna Barber.
Menendez’s message coincided with the announcement, also on Friday, of the appointment of his replacement in the Senate as of August 20, after announcing his resignation on July 24, before his party expelled him.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, also a Democrat, announced that George Samir Helmy will represent the state in the remainder of the legislative session, which ends in January.
“This is a tragic end to a long and productive career in public service,” Murphy said of one of the most powerful Latino senators ever to sit in Congress.
As chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, a position he left when he was indicted by the courts 11 months ago, he largely shaped US foreign policy.
Fierce opponent of the Cuban dictatorship
A senator since 2006 and a member of the House of Representatives for 14 years before that, Menendez was a fierce opponent of normalizing relations with Cuba, a staunch enemy of Venezuela and China, and a staunch defender of Israel.
After a two-month trial, a jury found him guilty on July 16 of 16 charges of bribery, fraud, extortion, obstruction of justice and receiving payments to act as an agent of Egyptian governments and to assist a Qatari fund.
His sentence, which will be announced on October 29, could lead to him spending the rest of his life in prison.
During a 2022 raid on the home of Menendez and his wife, Nadine Arslanian, police found more than $480,000 in cash hidden among clothes and shoes and in a safe, as well as 13 gold bars valued at $150,000.
According to prosecutors, the son of Cuban parents who arrived in the United States in the 1950s, before the Cuban revolution, used his power and influence between 2018 and 2022 to help, along with his wife, businessmen Wael Hana, Fred Daibes and José Uribe, in exchange for bribes.
