Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) was indicted for corruption and bribery this morning. It took all of a few hours for New Jersey’s top Democrats to call on him to resign from the Senate. Starting with the governor: New Jersey governor calls on Sen. Menendez, a fellow Democrat, to resign.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and other top Garden State Democrats are calling on Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez to resign – a sign of how quickly the senator’s political support may erode after Friday’s shocking indictment on federal bribery charges.
“The alleged facts are so serious that they compromise the ability of Senator Menendez to effectively represent the people of our state,” Murphy, a Democrat, said in a statement.
New Jersey Democratic Congresspeople are also calling for his resignation:
Frank Pallone
Andy Kim
Mikie Sherrill
Bill Pascrell
and from the House Democratic leadership: Dean Phillips (D-Minn.)
Just in (5:30 PM PDT) — other NJ state officials calling for Menendez’s resignation:
Nick Scutari (State Senate president)
Craig Coughlin (Assembly speaker)
and:
Democratic leaders in Sen. Bob Menendez's home state of New Jersey met on Friday afternoon about a possible removal of his name from the party line on next year's ballot, according to three people familiar with the matter. www.politico.com/...
Other state officials came out against Menendez without explicitly calling for his resignation at this time:
LeRoy J. Jones Jr. (NJ Dem. committee chair)
Matthew Platkin (attorney general)
The indictment was announced on PBS at about 10:30 this morning Eastern time. By six hours after that, powerful New Jersey Democrats were saying that Menendez should resign, If more haven’t joined the chorus yet, please give them a little time; it IS a Friday afternoon, after all.
Now, it’s true that the Senate Majority Leader didn’t join in calling his resignation (yet):
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement that Menendez "rightly decided to step down temporarily" from his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee "until the matter has been resolved."
- Under Senate Democratic Caucus rules, committee chairs under indictment must relinquish their roles.
- Schumer did not go as far as to call for Menendez to resign from the Senate, however, calling him a "dedicated public servant" who "has a right to due process and a fair trial." www.axios.com/...
As Majority Leader, he has to be more careful in what he says and when and how he says it. We don’t know what he’s saying behind the scenes. But, again, it’s only been a few hours. Can we at least wait until after the weekend to jump on him?
PS: GOP Senate rules also call for a chair or ranking member to step down if indicted.