On a chilly afternoon last Wednesday, in a Lower Manhattan courtroom, the epilogue of personal dignity was humiliatingly written and the grave of Robert Menendez’s long political career was humiliatingly sealed. In the dock, the Democratic senator, “America’s friend” to the Greeks, listened tearfully, with a tissue in his hand, as the judge loudly announced the sentence.

He was sentenced to 11 years in prison as he was found guilty of taking a bribe to cede his high political office to foreign powers and local rogue businessmen. It was a damning verdict that overwhelmingly consigned to public ridicule his more than 30-year career in the US House and Senate.

During the trial he appeared contrite, begging for mercy. He used emotional tones asking for leniency “not for me, but for Anthony”, referring to his 30-year-old son who has autism and is in his care. He invoked dozens of times that he is a patriot of integrity who has done more good than harm for his country. Futile efforts. So what if he chanted that “every day I’m awake is punishment for me”;

Gold Bars

The jury faced him unmoved. As if they were weighing in their palms the 12 gold bars worth more than $150,000 were found stashed in his home. As if they were counting with their fingers the stacks of bills totaling about half a million dollars. The ones that had been unearthed in bundles, cached loose in closets, scattered envelopes, jackets, and a hidden safe.

They would love for these everyday citizens chosen by lot to make up the jury to be gifted, as he was, a luxury Mercedes C-300 convertible so they don’t have to use public transportation themselves. They didn’t treat him with any vicious vindictiveness. But swirling in their minds was Abraham Lincoln’s dictum: “If you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

It all began on June 22, 2022, when the FBI, executing a court search warrant, broke into the house the senator shared with his second wife since October 2020, Nadine Arslanian, to whom he had proposed in front of India’s iconic Taj Mahal.

It was the moment when the couple’s recent romance was evaporating from the rushing invasion. During the raid, the FBI dusted everything in his wife’s modest suburban home in the Inglewood Cliffs. A privileged neighborhood of affluent residents on the Hudson River, facing northwest Manhattan, with stunning views of the New York City skyline.

The view, however, of the findings of the undeserved little treasure hidden in the house was more impressive to the researchers. According to the evidence, exhibits, and evidence gathered by the Justice Department, an indictment was drawn up against him for participating in a multi-year bribery scheme.

The… mitigating circumstances

When all these scandalous revelatory findings were presented to the court, his audacity and greed were demonstrated. They showed his manifestation of hubris against the moral norms and laws of the State. The jury watched carefully the mitigating evidence presented by his defense.

They argued that as the son of poor Cuban immigrants, he carried intact his obsession with hiding valuables like those hidden in his bosom by his parents, Mario and Evangelina, during their “escape” from the Caribbean island during the dictatorship of General Fulgencio Batista. Long before the revolution of Fidel Castro.

His lawyers even claimed “that he was pushed to accumulate cash at home as a psychological mechanism to cope with the fear of not having it. Because,” they insisted, “he was traumatically scarred by family tragedy. His gambling-addicted father committed suicide in 1978 over debts to the relentless loan sharks who were after him.”

American dream

Only this all happened many decades ago. The defendant himself was born in New York City and, more importantly, as an accomplished and respected citizen, no one persecuted him as a bachelor. On the contrary, his countrymen revered him as the epitome of the American dream. They admired the guts of the poor kid who escaped from an immigrant tenement in New Jersey.

He became the first in his family to go to university, grew into a respected lawyer, became actively involved in civic affairs, was elected mayor in his hometown of Union City, and was catapulted to the U.S. Congress. However, his path of personal sacrifice from lowly to top political office did not guarantee an unremarkable character. After all, a flawless record that “went wrong” somewhere was not being judged in court.

It was not his good or bad intentions that were weighed in the hearing room, but the fact that he “got it”. Agreed, he didn’t commit an armed robbery, but he dipped his finger in the honey. “Your work for the public good turned into work for your own good,” the federal judge bluntly stated, underscoring the downfall of his involvement with corruption, bungling, selfishness.

Signed with Trump

The last label that was mentally attributed to him was manifested by him on his way out of court, when, with his former dignity compromised, he stood gloomily before the microphones and media cameras, lambasting the prosecutors. He described the charges they used against him as “outrageous” and called his prosecution politically slanderous and corrupt to the core. He denounced the behind-the-scenes machinations that repeatedly tried to silence his voice and dig his political grave.

But he was now all alone. A defeated, down and beaten man who the more he justified himself without argument, the more he betrayed his guilt. In his rhetorical crescendo, he unexpectedly vindicated the megalomaniac Donald Trump. Perhaps out of solidarity with his own multiple legal adventures. But he went further than that. He aligned himself with the Republican president’s heavy criticisms of the judicial system.

This staunch lifelong liberal Democratic politician expressed hope that the new president would “clean out the cesspool and restore the integrity of the system.” At the same time, he underestimated the notion of the ethical stance that a prestigious public official ought to have. Let alone as a powerful figure in the Senate, a leading voice for national immigration policy, and a dynamic and popular representative of voters in his constituency.

He was now permanently sliding downhill. Gone were his accomplishments as a pioneer in rebuilding New Jersey after the colossal devastation caused in the state by Hurricane Sandy. His initiative to establish a National Museum of American Indians in Washington, D.C., also went to waste. His posterity had now sunk into disdain even among his most ardent Hispanic supporters.

Other suspicions

Bob had faced other legal adventures in the past. Federal authorities had investigated the senator in 2006, as he had allegedly helped a nonprofit organization receive millions of dollars in federal funding. He was then alleged to have collected rent from it. In other words, he was funneling government money into his pocket. Prosecutors closed the investigation without charging him in 2011.

Four years later, a new federal indictment focused on his bizarre relationship with a Florida ophthalmologist who allegedly offered him gifts and trips to an ultra-luxury villa in the Dominican Republic. Allegedly in return, the senator helped him secure US visas for several of his Dominican girlfriends. At the 2017 trial, the jury deadlocked and the Justice Department dropped the charges.

Menendez certainly possessed undeniable political skills. Especially in handling international issues. He was beloved in Greece for his outspoken philhellenism. He proclaimed at every opportunity that Greece shared in many areas the same values as the United States in terms of democracy, human rights, the rule of law. “For me,” he stressed, “it is a country that is not hostile to its neighbours, but just the opposite.” He had referred several times to Turkey’s violations and aggression towards Greece. He furiously regarded the neighbor as a troublemaker and as the greatest threat to the Eastern Mediterranean.

Close contacts

He was betting geostrategically on Greece as a factor of stability in the region. Presiding over the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he had become a champion of Greek interests. He had fought hard to maintain the embargo on the sale of U.S. F-16 aircraft to Turkey and threatened to veto any attempt to unblock it. He had called Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan a “brutal dictator” and implicitly called him a “Vito Corleone,” or mafia godfather of international relations.

In his interventions, he handed out “raps” to the Turkish government, denounced its decision to convert Hagia Sophia into a mosque and gave the green light for the sale of F-35 aircraft to Greece. It reiterated its steadfast support for the Cyprus Republic and vociferously expressed that it was an affront to international law for Turkey’s continued defiant occupation of its territories.

Regarded as a genuine American friend, with traditionally close contact with the Greek-American community, he was welcome in our country, which he did not fail to visit. He was here, well-mannered, relaxed, and cheerful for a vacation in the summer of 2023, shortly before he was indicted. On the eve of August Fifteenth, he strolled under the hot sun through the Ancient Agora and dined in the shadow of the Acropolis at the “Old Ithaca” tavern in Plaka with his explosively blonde, 58-year-old wife.

Born in Beirut, Lebanon to Armenian parents, divorced with two children, and recently diagnosed with breast cancer. A few days later she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Athens in an official ceremony. It was not the first time Menendez had arrived to enjoy general honors and admiration in Athens. He was present at the Acropolis Museum in August 2021 to speak at an event organized by the Greece 2021 Committee.

Embarrassed

He enjoyed the same confidence in Cyprus, where former President of the Republic Nikos Anastasiades awarded him the honorary distinction of the Order of the Grand Cross of the Order of the National Lord Makarios III. Inevitably, the sudden revelation of his involvement in a smelly scandal came as a shock to Hellenism. His wretched downfall was applauded by our neighbors from the East.

Devastated, ashamed, and batty, after his cash matzah and 24-karat pure gold bars were seized, he did not attempt misleading legalistic tricks in another court last summer. There where, after a three-day deliberation, he was found guilty of 16 felonies.

Among others, for bribery, spying for Egypt, obstruction of justice, extortion, and conspiracy. He automatically resigned from the Senate last August. Perhaps he thought he would be pardoned by outgoing President Baden. Wasted hope. Then again, he probably thought he’d get a pass in the next court. Vain hope. He was sentenced to the longest sentence ever handed down to the fewest perjured senators in the history of his country.

Nevertheless, the unhinged Bob is not going to be stuffing himself into a cell anytime soon. He has preplanned his defense in advance. By vigorously appealing the verdicts and pursuing strong appeals of the court’s conviction. This means that the process until his sentence is carried out could take years. But no matter how many terms are served, he will never be free of the stigma of his defiant public dishonesty.