Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) will return campaign donations from Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) using $100 bills stuffed in envelopes.
In 2022, Menendez’s PAC donated $5,000 to help Fetterman’s campaign win the most important Senate battle of the midterm election. Now, Fetterman wants to return the money after Menendez was indicted for allegedly “participating in a years-long bribery scheme.”
“We are in process of returning the money in envelopes stuffed with $100 bills,” Joe Calvello, a Fetterman spokesperson, told the Messenger.
The unique method of returning the money is a nod to the accusations made against Menendez.
According to federal prosecutors, Menendez and his wife accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars, a Mercedes, gold bars, and “other things of value” to “protect and enrich” three New Jersey businesspeople and “to benefit the Government of Egypt.”
Last Friday, prosecutors released some evidence against Menendez, including pictures of those gold bars and the cash investigators found stuffed in various areas of Menendez’s New Jersey residence. One picture even showed cash stacked on jackets that bear Menendez’s name.
Amazingly, Menendez tried to explain away the $480,000 in cash that investigators found by citing his Cuban background.
“For 30 years, I have withdrawn thousands of dollars in cash from my personal savings account, which I have kept for emergencies and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba,” he said at a press conference on Monday. “Now, this may seem old fashioned. But these were monies drawn from my personal savings account, based on the income that I have lawfully derived over those 30 years.”
Fetterman, meanwhile, was the first Senate Democrat to demand that Menendez resign.
“Senator Menendez should resign,” Fetterman said on Saturday. “He’s entitled to the presumption of innocence under our system, but he is not entitled to continue to wield influence over national policy, especially given the serious and specific nature of the allegations.”
Now, a growing number of Democratic senators are following suit. But Menendez announced on Monday that he will not resign, promising supporters that he will be “totally exonerated.”
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