The Justice Department is dropping its case against Sen. Robert Menendez, less than two weeks after it announced it would retry the New Jersey Democrat on corruption charges.

The federal judge overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge William H. Walls, last week entered acquittals on seven of the 18 charges in the indictment against Menendez and his co-defendant, South Florida ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen.

That appeared to be a turning point for federal prosecutors, even though Walls left the rest of the government’s case intact. “Given the impact of the Court’s Jan. 24 Order on the charges and the evidence admissible in a retrial, the United States has determined that it will not retry the defendants on the remaining charges,” DOJ spokeswoman Nicole Navas Oxman said in a statement.

Walls declared a mistrial in November after individually interviewing members of the jury after it deadlocked.

After last week’s ruling, Menendez flashed what has become an increasingly confident and defiant tone about the case.