On Monday, Sen. Bob Menendez appeared before the media, responded to the criminal indictment announced by the Justice Department late last week, professed his innocence, and took some initial steps toward explaining the damaging allegations. It didn’t go especially well.
Not only did the New Jersey Democrat’s explanation strike many as unpersuasive, it also failed to put his colleagues’ minds at ease: A barn door effectively opened the day after Menendez’s press conference, and it became difficult to keep up with the number of Senate Democrats calling for his resignation.
To date, however, a grand total of zero Senate Republicans have done the same thing.
At face value, this might seem counter-intuitive. Menendez is a longtime Democratic lawmaker, so common sense might suggest that his Democratic colleagues would try to defend him, while his Republican critics would go on the attack. For now, the opposite is happening: Democrats who want to take a hard line against alleged corruption, and who don’t want to be tarnished by Menendez’ scandal, are eager to show him the door.
As for the GOP line, it’s not as straightforward as it probably should be.
Sen. Marco Rubio, for example, conceded that Menendez is facing “nasty” allegations, but, the Florida Republican added, “in America guilt is decided by a jury, not politicians in fear of their party losing a Senate seat.” This is the same Rubio who suggested six years ago that then-Sen. Al Franken should resign in response to sexual harassment allegations.
But Sen. Tom Cotton went into even more detail on the idea that Menendez should stay where he is. In a pair of items published to social media, the Arkansas Republican wrote:
“The charges against Senator Menendez are serious and troubling. At the same time, the Department of Justice has a troubling record of failure and corruption in cases against public figures, from Ted Stevens to Bob McDonnell to Donald Trump to Bob Menendez the last time around. Senator Menendez has a right to test the government’s evidence in court, just like any other citizen. He should be judged by jurors and New Jersey’s voters, not by Democratic politicians who now view him as inconvenient to their hold on power.”
Part of the problem with this is that Cotton is of the opinion that federal prosecutors have a poor track record when it comes to politicians and corruption. There’s ample evidence to the contrary.
In Bob McDonnell’s case, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately issued a controversial ruling on bribery standards, but the fact remains that the Virginia Republican, during his tenure as governor, accepted lavish gifts from a dietary supplement executive, and after benefiting from the generosity, McDonnell used his office to intervene on behalf of his wealthy benefactor.
Cotton apparently sees this as an example of prosecutorial overreach, but there’s a fact pattern — and a jury verdict — that offers another way to look at that case.
Similarly, the GOP senator would apparently have people believe that the cases against Donald Trump are part of “a troubling record of failure and corruption” on the part of the Justice Department, but given the evidence against the former president, this is a difficult contention to take seriously.
But stepping back, what we’re also seeing is that the parties simply seem to be operating with different standards. A Washington Post analysis summarized:
Because Republicans believe standing by Trump is politically necessary, because they really wanted Roy Moore to hold a key Senate seat, and because they need the vote of Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) in a tightly divided House, they are going to hold off as long as possible in passing judgment on these or any similar allegations, regardless of whether they have resulted in indictments. Democrats, meanwhile, are going to try to lead by example in policing their own, as they ultimately did when Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) resigned.
At this point, some readers might be asking, “But what about House Speaker Kevin McCarthy? Didn’t he call for Menendez’s resignation late last week?”
The answer is yes — though McCarthy walked it back yesterday.