Appearances and the Menendez Case

[Draggingtree]

Commentary : Appearances and the Menendez Case

Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary03.09.2015 - 12:25 PM

 

On Friday the Justice Department decided to leak to the press that an indictment of Senator Robert Menendez on corruption charges was imminent. While the ongoing investigation of the New Jersey Democrat, the most important critic of President Obama’s foreign policy, was no secret, the timing of the announcement raised more than a few eyebrows. Coming as it did the same week that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Congress about Iran, an issue on which there has been heated disagreement between Menendez and the president, the willingness of the government to go public with its plans to seek to put the senator on trial gives the prosecution the air of a political vendetta. But would such an accusation, which would make the president appear more like a banana-republic dictator than the leader of the free world, be fair? Not entirely. The case involves the sort of cozy cronyism that makes both liberals and conservatives queasy. It also reflects the somewhat loose political morals of the Garden State. But in addition to that, the decision to try to nail Menendez may tell us more about the way out-of-control federal prosecutors act than it does about an Obama administration that likes to punish its enemies as much as any of its predecessors.

[Valin]

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Appearances and the Menendez Case

Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary03.09.2015 - 12:25 PM

 

On Friday the Justice Department decided to leak to the press that an indictment of Senator Robert Menendez on corruption charges was imminent. While the ongoing investigation of the New Jersey Democrat, the most important critic of President Obama’s foreign policy, was no secret, the timing of the announcement raised more than a few eyebrows.

 

 

 

Oh Absolutely! The thing is there is a good chance Bob is dirty as sin.

[Valin]

It’s Not ‘Either…Or’ with Menendez

Andrew C. McCarthy

March 8 2015

 

(Snip)

 

So, as one would expect, Menendez sympathizers are claiming that the Obama administration’s apparently imminent prosecution of this prominent Democrat is strictly political intimidation: an attempt to criminalize politics-as-usual in order to silence and perhaps sideline a dissenter at a critical moment in the Iran negotiations. Administration sources counter that the investigation of a prominent Democrat shows that the administration is not partisan when it comes to law enforcement; the timing of the charges, they add, is driven not by political considerations but by the statute of limitations: apparently, one or more of the potential charges against the senator will be time-barred if the Justice Department does not indict them soon.

 

It is only natural that the competing camps should offer these divergent views. The case, however, is not an “either … or” situation. It is perfectly reasonable to believe both that Menendez may be guilty of corruption offenses and that his political opposition on Iran is factoring into the administration’s decision to charge him. Put another way, if Menendez were running interference for Obama on the Iran deal, rather than trying to scupper it, I believe he would not be charged.

 

Set the salacious allegations aside (because if they are provably true, Menendez is toast). Plainly, countless politicians cross ethical lines in the legally murky area of bribery and unlawful gratuity. Obama, a creature of Chicago politics who had shady dealings with convicted crook Tony Rezko, is no stranger to this phenomenon. So unsavory dealings between politicians and donors present classic cases of prosecutorial discretion: the Justice Department can often justify both proceeding with a case in the interest of rooting out corruption or deciding not to prosecute on the “everybody does it” theory of not criminalizing politics.

(Snip)