With lower than a month to go earlier than Robert Menendez, New Jersey’s disgraced former U.S. senator, is scheduled to be sentenced for corruption, his legal professionals submitted an emotion-laden enchantment for leniency based mostly on what they depicted as Mr. Menendez’s hardscrabble upbringing, lifetime of service and devotion to household.
In a authorized transient filed minutes earlier than midnight on Thursday, the legal professionals, Avi Weitzman and Adam Payment, laid out Mr. Menendez’s rise to political prominence in Hudson County, N.J., and a catalog of fine deeds carried out for constituents throughout three many years in Congress.
As they did throughout Mr. Menendez’s two-month bribery trial in Manhattan, Mr. Weitzman and Mr. Payment urged that their consumer’s biggest failing was being led astray by a conniving spouse.
Nadine Menendez, the previous senator’s spouse, was charged along with her husband with conspiring to commerce his political affect for bribes of money, gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz convertible. Her trial is anticipated to start out subsequent month.
“The proof confirmed that Senator Menendez was unaware of actions that Nadine was enterprise, together with the receipt and sale of gold bars by Nadine, and money she saved in her locked closet and her secure deposit field,” the legal professionals wrote of their submitting.
And in a letter of assist additionally filed on Thursday, Mr. Menendez’s daughter, Alicia Menendez, a high-profile anchor on the cable information community MSNBC, hinted on the sacrifices her father continued to make for his spouse, who was being handled for breast most cancers.
“Throughout the darkest days of his personal life, he has navigated his spouse’s breast most cancers prognosis with a sort of grace and forgiveness I actually don’t perceive however admire,” Ms. Menendez wrote.
Her letter is amongst greater than 120 filed on behalf of Mr. Menendez, a part of an try and justify a jail time period far shorter than the 12 years beneficial by the courtroom’s probation division. The U.S. legal professional’s workplace for the Southern District of New York, which prosecuted Mr. Menendez, is anticipated to reveal the federal government’s sentencing suggestion within the coming weeks.
A spokesman for the Southern District declined to touch upon the submitting, as did Ms. Menendez’s lawyer, Barry Coburn.
Mr. Menendez and two New Jersey businessmen, Fred Daibes and Wael Hana, had been convicted in July of being on the heart of an unlimited worldwide bribery conspiracy. A onetime highly effective Democrat who led the Senate Overseas Relations Committee, Mr. Menendez was discovered responsible of every of the 16 counts he confronted, together with appearing as an agent of a international authorities.
Mr. Menendez, 71, has maintained his innocence and plans to enchantment the jury verdict.
However the federal choose dealing with the case, Sidney H. Stein, has denied Mr. Menendez’s request to delay his Jan. 29 sentencing till after his spouse’s trial.
In Thursday’s submitting, the previous senator’s legal professionals argued that the probation division’s suggestion of a 12-year jail time period was “draconian — doubtless a life and loss of life sentence for somebody of Bob’s age and situation.”
Mr. Weitzman and Mr. Payment urged that the rules as a substitute merited a sentence of not more than 27 months — and even that, they wrote, was too lengthy.
They urged Decide Stein to contemplate a interval of imprisonment of lower than 27 months paired with “at the very least two years’ rigorous group service.”
“He’s sure by no means to commit future offenses,” the legal professionals wrote about Mr. Menendez. “And his present state — stripped of workplace and residing below a everlasting shadow of shame and mockery — are greater than adequate to replicate the seriousness of the offenses and to advertise respect for the regulation.”
The letters of assist got here from former constituents, pals, relations and a small handful of elected group leaders in New Jersey.
Mr. Menendez’s son, Consultant Robert Menendez, mentioned that he hoped his father would have a possibility to be a presence in his grandchildren’s lives, offsetting the many years of “valuable moments that he missed” away from his personal younger household whereas serving in Congress.
Hector C. Lora, the mayor of Passaic, N.J., described Mr. Menendez as “a person who remembers the place he got here from and who carries a deep-rooted sense of duty towards these much less lucky.”
Danny O’Brien, a former chief of employees for Mr. Menendez, recommended the previous senator’s willingness to satisfy with college students and to encourage them to “take into account public service as a method of combating for change and giving again.”
“I by no means noticed any of the issues like these charged on this matter,” wrote Mr. O’Brien, who labored intently with Mr. Menendez in Washington for at the very least six years. “What Bob Menendez did present me was an abiding love of nation and humanity.”
The previous senator’s legal professionals argued that his exceedingly public fall from grace was partially punishment sufficient, and that it had rendered him a “nationwide punchline” and left him in monetary break.
“Of the numerous minor indignities he now faces, his identify has been stripped from an elementary college in New Jersey,” they wrote. “His as soon as broad circle of pals and political allies have largely disappeared.”
The submitting additionally included a statistical evaluation of different current sentences for public corruption and concluded that there was “no motive in anyway to presume that the rules present helpful steerage in bribery circumstances.”
The submitting cited the sentences of a half-dozen disgraced former New York political luminaries, together with Joseph Bruno and Dean Skelos, each former leaders of the State Legislature.
A assessment of those circumstances, Mr. Menendez’s legal professionals wrote, suggests {that a} sentence of simply half of what has been proposed “could be one of many harshest ever imposed.”
Benjamin Weiser contributed reporting.