President Donald Trump is not considering pardoning ex-Senator and convicted felon Bob Menendez, according to a New York Times report published yesterday.
New York Times reporters asked Trump whether he was considering pardoning a number of prominent figures, including Menendez, rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs, ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried. Trump “indicated that he had no intention of pardoning” any of them, the Times wrote.
Menendez, a former power broker in New Jersey politics who has since become a pariah, was convicted of a wide-ranging bribery scheme in the summer of 2024 and sentenced to 11 years in prison; he began serving his sentence in June.
Following his conviction, Menendez made efforts to convince both Trump and, before him, President Joe Biden to issue a pardon, despite never being personally close with either. In several cases, Menendez directly invoked Trump’s name and compared his own conviction to the legal battles that Trump fought in between his presidencies, but to no avail.
“President Trump is right,” Menendez said in a statement after his sentence was handed down. “This process is political, and it’s corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system.”
