“I look forward to proving our innocence and being exonerated,” the 63-year-old Robert Menendez told reporters last week. | Julio Cortez/AP Once a corruption fighter, Menendez now set to stand trial on bribery charges

As a 20-something political upstart in New Jersey, Robert Menendez sat in a witness box in federal court — so fearful of retribution he wore a bullet-proof vest — and pointed a finger at his political mentor: William V. Musto, the mayor of Union City.

Thirty-five years later, Menendez, now one of the highest-ranking Democrats in Washington, is returning to federal court in the same city in which he became a government witness.


This time, the senior senator from New Jersey is the one facing accusations, charged with bribery in a case that could end his career and land him in prison. With opening statements scheduled Wednesday in what could be a two-month trial, Menendez says he is ready to put up a fight.

“I look forward to proving our innocence and being exonerated,” the 63-year-old Menendez told reporters last week after one of several public events he attended. He laughed when asked whether he’d consider a plea deal.

But his confidence can't hide the enormity of what he’s about to face. It’s been nearly four decades since a sitting U.S. senator stood trial for charges of bribery and, outside of that case, almost a century since another member of the Senate was convicted of a crime.

Menendez is accused of accepting a series of lavish vacations, jet flights and campaign cash in exchange for doling out political favors for a close friend, and the stakes are high, stretching from Union City to the halls of Congress. The case has the potential to draw in major Democratic leaders, give Republicans a new punching bag as the midterm elections approach and even shift the power in the Senate, where a repeal of Obamacare failed by a single vote.

If it ends in a conviction, the trial could set up an all-out war to remove Menendez from the Senate before Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, leaves office in January and loses his chance to appoint a replacement.

And, in the new legal landscape created by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to toss the conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, the case will help define what actually constitutes public corruption in the United States.

“If he’s found guilty, it won’t be the end of the matter,” said Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor and former executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Menendez, former chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, will be tried next to the man from whom he’s accused of accepting bribes: Salomon Melgen, a wealthy ophthalmologist and businessman from Florida. Melgen was found guilty in April, in a separate criminal case, of improperly billing the federal government for more than $100 million in medical insurance payments.

In this case, a grand jury indictment accuses Menendez of carrying out numerous political favors for Melgen, a close friend. Melgen gave more than $750,000 in campaign contributions, flights on his private jet and hosted the senator at his private villa in the Dominican Republic’s Casa de Campo resort, a haven for rock stars and business moguls alike, according to the indictment.

In exchange, prosecutors allege, Menendez used his job and influence to help Melgen with personal and professional issues.

Among the accusations is that the senator met with then-Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to argue that the federal government was being unfair to Melgen, who was involved in a billing dispute with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Menendez is also accused of urging federal officials to pressure the Dominican Republic to honor a port security contract that would have benefited a company Melgen owned, of interceding with officials to get visas for then-married Melgen's girlfriends from other countries and of failing to disclose the gifts he had received.

The son of Cuban refugees, Menendez has been involved in New Jersey politics for four decades. Since joining the Senate in 2006, he's been targeted in at least two other criminal investigations, neither of which ever led to charges. In one case, he was given a rare “clearance” letter saying he was not a suspect.

Even as he dodged those probes, withstood other jarring accusations and now faces a criminal indictment — allegations he has, at times, blamed on the governments of Cuba and Iran — he has portrayed himself as a crusader against corruption.

He worked to build that reputation after his 1982 testimony against Musto, a towering figure in the hard-knocks world of Hudson County politics. With the help of Menendez's testimony, Musto was convicted of racketeering.

Musto was sentenced to prison on a Monday and re-elected on Tuesday, his supporters insisting he had been framed.

Now, Menendez is the one hoping a friend doesn’t point the finger at him, and that his own die-hard supporters don’t lose faith as he tries to clear his name.

For Menendez, his testimony against Musto became a cornerstone on which to launch his career: A new kind of politician, ready to face criminals who steal from those who elected them.

“Someone who stands up to a corrupt political regime at the age of 28 and swears and testifies against their own party, and wears a bullet-proof vest because his life is threatened, is ultimately someone who is not going to [pervert] that point of view in his public career,” Menendez later said in a debate.

The senator quickly rose up the political ranks in Union City, Hudson County and, ultimately, New Jersey, but he got his start years before his testimony against Musto.

Menendez has been interested in public service since he was in high school, says Donald Scarinci, a childhood friend and the founding partner of the law firm Scarinci Hollenbeck. The two met when they were teenagers and remain close, Scarinci said, adding that he and Melgen are “probably the two closest friends to Bob.”

“We never went to movies and ate popcorn; we were trying to change the world,” Scarinci said. “If you go back in time to 1973, 1974, in the shadow of Vietnam, in the shadow of Watergate, to be involved in government and be involved was the highest calling you could have.”

So, at the age of 19, Menendez ran a petition drive to force Musto to reform the local school board. The next year, while a student at Saint Peter's College in Jersey City, Menendez was elected to a seat on that very same board. The mayor kept Menendez on as his protégé, until things eventually turned ugly.

Within four years of Musto’s conviction, Menendez himself had become the mayor of Union City, a densely populated place perched atop of the New Jersey Palisades, overlooking Manhattan. With a population approaching 60,000 at the time, the city had become a haven for many Latino immigrants and their families, some of whom had fled Cuba. It earned the nickname “Havana on the Hudson.”

And like the rest of Hudson County, the politics there were and still are fierce.

“That place is absolutely the toughest, grittiest political cauldron you could possibly find,” Michael Weinstein, a former Department of Justice prosecutor and now a top defense attorney at the law firm Cole Schotz, said of Hudson County. “He survived and thrived in that, and you don’t get out of that if you don’t have the ability, the talent, the perseverance, the drive and the thick skin.”

In 1987, a year after becoming mayor, Menendez was elected to the state Assembly. He continued to do both jobs until he was elected to the state Senate in 1991 and then, in 1992, made a run for Congress. He won a seat in the House of Representatives, after a redistricting that gave him some advantage, and held it until being appointed to the Senate in 2006 by then Gov. Jon Corzine, a Democrat.

He won a full Senate term that fall, despite the issuance of subpoenas against his campaign some 60 days before the election — part of an investigation started under then U.S. Attorney Chris Christie. Menendez was never charged and eventually was cleared in 2012.

During his time in the House and in the Senate, Menendez has built a reputation as a fighter on issues ranging from immigration to Iran and Cuba - at times rubbing his colleagues the wrong way.

“Bob has a very competitive nature,” said Robert Torricelli, who represented New Jersey in the House and the Senate. Torricelli, who expressed admiration for Menendez, would like to run for Menendez's seat if the senator leaves office. “It was very awkward at first. We were active on the same issues. I was very interested in the Port of New York and the maritime trade, and foreign policy issues, including Cuba. It created early tension. And I think I left for the Senate just in time to avoid any conflicts.”

But Menendez also built the same sort of reputation he had in Union City — someone people could turn to for help — in Congress, Torricelli said.

Indeed, back in New Jersey, where Menendez's 26 percent approval rating in a recent poll is still 10 points higher than Christie’s, few if any politicians of either party dare attack him publicly. On multiple occasions in recent months, Christie has refused to discuss the potential outcome of the trial and, at one point, dressed down a reporter who asked about a possible vacancy in the Senate.

Asked recently about Menendez’s legacy, Christie went on for several minutes, praising the Democrat as “a very strong advocate for the state.” If they agreed philosophically, Christie said, “I’d give a full-throated endorsement in that regard. He may not want one, but I’d give him one.”

And in Hudson County, he’s still given the benefit of the doubt by most.

At an event last week to rally against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, local leaders stood at Menendez's side, knowing his trial was just a week away.

Why?

“He’s one of us,” Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto, a Cuban immigrant and fellow Hudson County Democrat, said after the event. “I couldn’t tell you I have ever met a more honest, upstanding person than Bob, that puts legislation and puts his constituents before him.”

Matt Friedman contributed to this report.