In July, Robert Menendez of New Jersey earned the ignominious distinction of becoming the first sitting U.S. senator to be convicted of having acted as a foreign agent. The federal indictment levied against him alleged that Menendez, then the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and his wife accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, including cash, gold, payments toward a home mortgage, compensation for a low-or-no-show job, a luxury vehicle and “other things of value” in exchange for using his influence to do Egypt’s bidding in Washington.
