Big news today:
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown on Monday joined calls for the resignation of his Democratic U.S. Senate colleague Bob Menendez of New Jersey, who has been indicted on bribery charges that allege he used his post on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for personal gain.
“Senator Menendez has broken the public trust and should resign from the U.S. Senate,” said a single-sentence statement from Brown, who also called for Minnesota Democratic Sen. Al Franken to resign in 2017 when he was accused of sexual harassment.
Brown - who chairs the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs where Menendez is a senior member - is the second Democratic U.S. senator to call for his resignation, joining U.S. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. A banking subcommittee hearing on flood insurance that Menendez was supposed to chair on Wednesday has been postponed.
Mendendez refuses to resign:
Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey returned Monday to the familiar territory of Hudson County, N.J., a Democratic bastion where he rose to political prominence, to publicly address the corruption charges that now threaten his career and his freedom.
Standing alone at a lectern, accused of bribery for the second time in a decade, he indicated that he had no intention of bowing to the chorus of voices calling for his resignation.
The allegations, he said, were framed by prosecutors to “be as salacious as possible.”
“I recognize that this will be the biggest fight yet,” Mr. Menendez, a Democrat, said as heavy rain beat against the windows of a community college not far from where he grew up in Union City, the child of Cuban refugees.
But he said he expected that once the judicial process concluded, “not only will I be exonerated, I will still be New Jersey’s senior senator.”
If you have a Democratic Senator, click here to contact them and urge them to call for Menendez’s resignation.
And If Mendenz’s doesn’t do the right thing, we need to defeat him in the primary. Luckily we have a terrific candidate in Rep. Andy Kim (D. NJ):
We need to keep the Senate clean and Blue. Click below to donate and get involved with Brown and Kim’s campaigns:
Sherrod Brown
Andy Kim