Bob Menendez drops out of Senate re-election race after corruption conviction

After resigning as a senator last July, Bob Menendez is also abandoning his campaign as an independent for re-election to the Senate. The former chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee was convicted of involvement in a corruption scheme in which his wife, Nadie Arslanian, is also implicated.

Bob Menendez managed to garner enough support to run as an independent in November, even despite the controversial case he faces. Shortly before the deadline to remove his name from the ballot, Menendez sent a one-sentence e-mail this Friday to the New Jersey Elections Division requesting his withdrawal.

It's all in the wake of his guilty conviction for charges of obstruction of Justice, acting as a foreign agent, bribery, extortion and honest services wire fraud.

The case against Menendez began in 2023 when authorities raided several of his homes, after which they seized several bars of gold and nearly half a million dollars in cash. These 13 bars of gold and many other gifts came from an international network of businessmen, many of them Egyptians, who benefited from favors Menendez did for them in his capacity as chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

While Menendez's defense argued that it was his wife who was behind the bribery scheme, the prosecution succeeded in proving that it was the senator who called the shots and used his wife as an intermediary. His sentence, which will be announced on October 29, could lead him to spend the rest of his life in prison.

According to National Review, Menendez has $3.3 million in campaign funds that he can continue to use to pay for his and his wife's legal defense. The former senator is scheduled to appeal to the Justice and Arslanian will have her own trial this August.