Bob Menendez set to report to prison in gold bar bribery case

Former Sen. Bob Menendez turned himself in Tuesday at a federal prison in Pennsylvania to begin serving an 11-year sentence on bribery charges

Former Sen. Bob Menendez turned himself in Tuesday at a federal prison in Pennsylvania to begin serving an 11-year sentence on bribery charges.

An attorney for Menendez, 71, has called the punishment a "life and death sentence" given his age, and the senator has tried unsuccessfully to get a pardon or commutation from then-President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump.

The Democrat, once the senior senator from New Jersey and the chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was found guilty in July of taking part in a bribery scheme that rewarded him and his wife Nadine Menendez with hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold bars and stacks of cash.

Prosecutors alleged Menendez took the payoffs from some New Jersey businessmen in exchange for the senator's taking actions to benefit them and the governments of Egypt and Qatar.

The bribes included gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz given to Nadine Menendez and more than $480,000 in cash, which the FBI found stuffed into closets, jackets bearing Menendez’s name and other clothing when it searched his New Jersey home in 2022.