Welcome to the Dark Side

By BRUCE LOWITT

Sen. Bob Menendez, saying he is “going where I fit in better,” quit the Democratic party Wednesday and joined the Republicans who have been supporting his decision to remain in the U.S. Senate despite overwhelming evidence of his corruption.

Menendez, R-Graft, federally indicted for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for his influence, promised that “although I’m moving across the aisle, I’ll still be voting with my former colleagues as long as they promise to get off my back and let me run my business … err, I mean my office … as I see fit.”

The New Jersey senator, who survived similar federal bribery and corruption charges in 2015 when his trial ended in a hung jury, said he expects to be exonerated this time as well “if my contacts can once again identify that one juror who’ll believe anything.”

Menendez said he felt “unwelcome” in his own party after Cory Booker, his state’s junior senator, and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said he should resign “while upstanding Republicans like George Santos and Matt Gaetz have stood firmly behind me and invited me to join their ranks.”

While more than half of the Democratic Party’s Senate caucus has called for Menendez to give up the seat he has held since 2006, Republicans have either remained silent or have expressed support for him, saying he hasn’t been found guilty of anything yet.

“Besides, what Bob Menendez has been accused of is nothing compared to what (Donald) Trump has been accused of,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Tarnished, said, “and we’re backing him all the way, so how could we be expected to demand Bob’s resignation over a what’s really just some good old-fashioned, run-of-the-mill graft?”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Dervish, initially called for Menendez’s resignation, but when a reporter said “Santos,” McCarthy replied, “Oh, shit,” and said Menendez’s case “should be taken up by the Senate Ethics Committee, where I’m sure it will be ignored and buried. Y’know, the way our House Ethics Committee handles things.”

Menendez said he has “perfectly understandable and believable explanations” for the $480,000 in cash, gold bars and a Mercedes Benz found at his home and that the charges he and his wife, Nadine, received them in exchange for using his influence to enrich three New Jersey businessmen and benefit the Egyptian government “are a simple misunderstanding.”

“According to Senate rules, senators may accept any gift worth less than $50, and as thank yous for speeches and appearances I made, like at supermarket openings and Boy Scout Jamborees, I received 9,796 donations of $49,” Menendez said.

“I also had a few thousand gold coins, most of them worth like ten or twenty dollars,” he said. “I’ve been collecting them since I was a child. Well, Nadine was angry because they were messing up the house, spilling out of my cabinets, so I had them all melted down and turned into gold bars.

“And the Mercedes? Funny story. My son, Bob Jr., bought it when he was thinking about becoming an Uber driver,” the senator said, “but then he got elected to the House last year, to the seat I held from 1993 to 2006, so he gave me the car after Nadine blew out the suspension on the Buick. Gold bars are a lot heavier than they look. Who knew?