Democrats response to Sen Menendez being indicted tells all you need to know about today’s GOP

The GOP welcomes corruption

Politicians are indicted for crimes all the time. The more meaningful question is how do the leaders of the political parties react when one of their own is charged? Do they attack the prosecutors? Do they downplay the crime? Or do they act responsibly to send a message that they respect our institutions and embrace the idea that no one is above the law?

On Friday, we learned that Democratic US Senator Rob Menendez--chair of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee and New Jersey’s senior Senator—had been indicted by federal prosecutors. The three-count indictment accuses Menendez of accepting “hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes” in exchange for the senator’s influence. In response, Menendez has denied any wrongdoing, while criticizing prosecutors for in his words “making false claims against me.”

What happened next though might surprise people given how Republicans responded to the criminal charges against Donald Trump. In those scenarios, Republican officeholders  smeared federal prosecutors as “weaponizing” the justice system, alarmingly made veiled threats of violence and even used the apparatus of government in blind defense of Trump.

Instead, we saw New Jersey’s leading Democratic officials call for Menendez to resign given the detailed and damning allegations in the indictment.  New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy set the tone within hours of the charges being announced with a statement noting that “the alleged facts are so serious that they compromise the ability of Senator Menendez to effectively represent the people of our state.” The second term Democratic governor added, “Therefore, I am calling for his immediate resignation.”  

That sentiment was echoed by numerous New Jersey Democratic members of Congress including Mikie Sherrill, Andy Kim, Josh Gottheimer, Bill Pascrell and Donald Norcross. New Jersey’s General Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin noted in his statement, “The charges laid out against Senator Menendez today go against everything we should believe as public servants,” as he also joined the voices calling for Menendez to resign.

It was not just New Jersey Democrats. Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman on Saturday became the first fellow Senator to publicly call for Menendez to step down. Writing on social media, Fetterman explained: “He’s entitled to the presumption of innocence, but he cannot continue to wield influence over national policy, especially given the serious and specific nature of the allegations.”  And on Sunday, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Menendez should resign in light of the “extremely serious” charges he faces for bribery.

New Jersey Democratic Rep. Andy Kim went further than just call on the Senator to resign. On Saturday, the third term member of Congress announced that given Menendez had rejected calls to resign, he would run against the Senator in the 2024 Democratic primary. Kim wrote on social media, this was “not something I expected to do, but NJ deserves better. We cannot jeopardize the Senate or compromise our integrity.” 

While Menendez is not the leader of the Democratic party on a national level, he is still one of the Democrats most senior and powerful Senators given his role Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee—which he has stepped down from as the legal case plays out—and is a prolific fundraiser.  Yet not one Democratic official responded even in the same galaxy to the way Trump’s GOP allies did to his criminal charges.

In fact, even before Trump was charged with 91 felonies in four different jurisdictions, House Republicans were outraged when the FBI executed a court approved search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 in pursuit of classified documents—which they did find! At the time, people like current House Speaker Kevin McCarthy called the search part of the Justice Department’s “intolerable state of weaponized politicization.”

And after Trump was charged in early April with 34 felonies in New York  for allegedly falsifying business records to cover up “hush money” payments, GOP House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan—a  Trump stalwart—held a taxpayer funded field hearing in New York in an effort to discredit he Manhattan District Attorney who brought the charges.

Worse, after Trump was charged in June with 37 felonies in connection with his alleged wrongful conduct concerning classified documents--including for violations of the Espionage Act—some Trump allies went far beyond calling the matter a “grave injustice” and a “brazen weaponization of power” like McCarthy did.

We saw Trump’s GOP allies make veiled threats that appeared to call for violence. Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs tweeted in response to the indictment of Trump, “We have now reached a war phase,” adding, “Eye for an eye.” (Biggs’ office later claimed his comment was a call for the GOP to “step up and use their procedural tools” to counter “the Left’s weaponization” of the justice system.)

Another one of Trump’s best known allies, Arizona’s Kari Lake who lost her race for Governor in 2022, told a crowd at a GOP event in Georgia shortly after the charges were made known: “If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me and 75 million Americans just like me.”  Lake continued, “And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA,” she said to applause, adding, “That’s not a threat, that’s a public service announcement.”

And after Trump was charged las month in Georgia with 13 crimes for allegedly attempting to overturn the 2020 election results in that state, some Republican state legislators called for defunding the District Attorney who spearheaded the investigation. One Trump loving Georgia GOP State Senator went as far as warning of a possible civil war if the prosecution continues, saying he did not want to have to "draw [his] rifle."

There’s also another glaring difference and that is with Democratic and Republican voters. After Trump was indicted, his poll numbers went up in the race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination as Republican voters rallied to support him. The GOP base either does not care Trump attempted a coup or they love it.

In contrast, a mid-August Monmouth poll found Menendez’s approval among Democrats had dropped from 66 percent in 2022 to 58 percent due to simply media reports he was the subject of a criminal investigation. Being from Jersey, I can tell you now that Menendez is charged, his support among Democrats in the state will drop much further—especially given the strong candidates that could replace him.

It’s clear that when it comes to the idea “no one is above the law,” the GOP rejects that when it comes to their beloved Donald Trump. Thankfully, though, the Democratic party is showing us with their actions that this concept is not an empty cliché, but actually a principle they champion.

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