XPost: nj.politics, alt.politics.democrats.senate, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns, alt.society.liberalism   
   From: nospam@ix.netcom.com   
      
   With less than a month to go before Robert Menendez, New Jersey’s   
   disgraced former U.S. senator, is scheduled to be sentenced for   
   corruption, his lawyers submitted an emotion-laden appeal for leniency   
   based on what they depicted as Mr. Menendez’s hardscrabble upbringing,   
   life of service and devotion to family.   
      
   In a legal brief filed minutes before midnight on Thursday, the lawyers,   
   Avi Weitzman and Adam Fee, laid out Mr. Menendez’s rise to political   
   prominence in Hudson County, N.J., and a catalog of good deeds done for   
   constituents during three decades in Congress.   
      
   As they did during Mr. Menendez’s two-month bribery trial in Manhattan,   
   Mr. Weitzman and Mr. Fee suggested that their client’s greatest failing   
   was being led astray by a conniving wife.   
      
   Nadine Menendez, the former senator’s wife, was charged with her husband   
   with conspiring to trade his political influence for bribes of cash, gold   
   bars and a Mercedes-Benz convertible. Her trial is expected to start next   
   month.   
      
   “The evidence showed that Senator Menendez was unaware of activities that   
   Nadine was undertaking, including the receipt and sale of gold bars by   
   Nadine, and cash she stored in her locked closet and her safe deposit   
   box,” the lawyers wrote in their filing.   
      
   And in a letter of support also filed on Thursday, Mr. Menendez’s   
   daughter, Alicia Menendez, a high-profile anchor on the cable news network   
   MSNBC, hinted at the sacrifices her father continued to make for his wife,   
   who was being treated for breast cancer.   
      
   “During the darkest days of his own life, he has navigated his wife’s   
   breast cancer diagnosis with a type of grace and forgiveness I honestly do   
   not understand but admire,” Ms. Menendez wrote.   
      
   Her letter is among more than 120 filed on behalf of Mr. Menendez, part of   
   an attempt to justify a prison term far shorter than the 12 years   
   recommended by the court’s probation department. The U.S. attorney’s   
   office for the Southern District of New York, which prosecuted Mr.   
   Menendez, is expected to disclose the government’s sentencing   
   recommendation in the coming weeks.   
      
   A spokesman for the Southern District declined to comment on the filing,   
   as did Ms. Menendez’s lawyer, Barry Coburn.   
      
   Mr. Menendez and two New Jersey businessmen, Fred Daibes and Wael Hana,   
   were convicted in July of being at the center of a vast international   
   bribery conspiracy. A onetime powerful Democrat who led the Senate Foreign   
   Relations Committee, Mr. Menendez was found guilty of each of the 16   
   counts he faced, including acting as an agent of a foreign government.   
      
   Mr. Menendez, 71, has maintained his innocence and plans to appeal the   
   jury verdict.   
      
   But the federal judge handling the case, Sidney H. Stein, has denied Mr.   
   Menendez’s request to delay his Jan. 29 sentencing until after his wife’s   
   trial.   
      
   In Thursday’s filing, the former senator’s lawyers argued that the   
   probation department’s recommendation of a 12-year prison term was   
   “draconian — likely a life and death sentence for someone of Bob’s age and   
   condition.”   
      
   Mr. Weitzman and Mr. Fee suggested that the guidelines instead merited a   
   sentence of no more than 27 months — and even that, they wrote, was too   
   long.   
      
   They urged Judge Stein to consider a period of imprisonment of less than   
   27 months paired with “at least two years’ rigorous community service.”   
      
   “He is certain never to commit future offenses,” the lawyers wrote about   
   Mr. Menendez. “And his current state — stripped of office and living under   
   a permanent shadow of disgrace and mockery — are more than sufficient to   
   reflect the seriousness of the offenses and to promote respect for the   
   law.”   
      
   The letters of support came from former constituents, friends, family   
   members and a small handful of elected community leaders in New Jersey.   
      
   Mr. Menendez’s son, Representative Robert Menendez, said that he hoped his   
   father would have an opportunity to be a presence in his grandchildren’s   
   lives, offsetting the decades of “precious moments that he missed” away   
   from his own young family while serving in Congress.   
      
   Hector C. Lora, the mayor of Passaic, N.J., described Mr. Menendez as “a   
   man who remembers where he came from and who carries a deep-rooted sense   
   of responsibility toward those less fortunate.”   
      
   Danny O’Brien, a former chief of staff for Mr. Menendez, commended the   
   former senator’s willingness to meet with students and to encourage them   
   to “consider public service as a way of fighting for change and giving   
   back.”   
      
   “I never observed any of the things like those charged in this matter,”   
   wrote Mr. O’Brien, who worked closely with Mr. Menendez in Washington for   
   at least six years. “What Bob Menendez did show me was an abiding love of   
   country and humanity.”   
      
   The former senator’s lawyers argued that his exceedingly public fall from   
   grace was in part punishment enough, and that it had rendered him a   
   “national punchline” and left him in financial ruin.   
      
   “Of the countless minor indignities he now faces, his name has been   
   stripped from an elementary school in New Jersey,” they wrote. “His once   
   broad circle of friends and political allies have largely disappeared.”   
      
   The filing also included a statistical analysis of other recent sentences   
   for public corruption and concluded that there was “no reason whatsoever   
   to presume that the guidelines provide useful guidance in bribery cases.”   
      
   The filing cited the sentences of a half-dozen convicted fallen former New   
   York political luminaries like Dean Skelos, a former leader of the State   
   Legislature.   
      
   A review of these cases, Mr. Menendez’s lawyers wrote, suggests that a   
   sentence of just half of what has been proposed “would be one of the   
   harshest ever imposed.”   
      
   https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/nyregion/robert-menendez-bribery-   
   sentencing.html   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)