Menendez and the GOP: In-Dependent

By BRUCE LOWITT

The National Republican Congressional Committee announced Thursday that the $14.3-million it raised in June will be devoted to the campaign of soon-to-be-former Democratic New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez – running as an independent in Delaware.

“When Dr. (Mehmet) Oz lived in New Jersey and ran for the Senate in Pennsylvania, even though it was a really dumb idea and he lost, we thought, ‘Hey, maybe we can work with this’,” NRCC Chairman Richard Hudson said.

“We had Bob swear on a stack of Donald Trump-endorsed MAGA Patriot bibles that he and Nadine have been living most of the past year in a bungalow in Bethany Beach, which he swore his parents bought shortly after they left Cuba and wound up in Delaware in 1953, the year before he was born,” Hudson said.

“And he swore that he and Nadine just used their house in Englewood Cliffs (N.J.) for … um … storage, right? And he showed us a copy of the papers he swore he filed … um … just before the July 9 deadline to run as an independent in Delaware,” Hudson said. “I swear. Uh, got all that?”

Menendez has submitted a letter resigning from the New Jersey senatorial seat he has held for almost 18 years, “but maybe he’ll split the Delaware Democrat vote with Lisa Blunt Rochester,” Hudson said. “And if he does, our guy, Eric Hansen, will win. I mean, you never know, right?”

Menendez, D-Bullion, may be changing his formal residential address to a federal prison following his July 16 conviction on charges of corruption, bribery, obstruction of justice, wire fraud, extortion and jaywalking outside Manhattan federal court.

“That’s just plain bullshit,” said the 70-year-old senator, whose six-year term ends Jan. 6. “The light was still green when I stepped off the curb – and the gold bars and cash I was carrying are Nadine’s. She got them as gifts from a couple of Egyptian friends and I was going to put the stuff in her Mercedes-Benz, which I might add was legally in a no-parking zone because the engine was running.”

Menendez faced different corruption charges when he was indicted in 2015, a case which ended in a mistrial three years later, the jury voting 10-2 to acquit him after two jurors complained they had not received their share of his illegal campaign donations.

He resigned as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee when he was indicted again last September, “but let me tell you, my foreign relations were as rewarding as any foreign relations I’ve ever experienced, especially the relations I had with Nadine in Luxor – the foreign city, the one in Egypt, not the hotel in Las Vegas. Get it?”