Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) renewed his call Friday for the Senate to vote to expel Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), calling the criminal allegations against the New Jersey lawmaker “more sinister” than the charges facing Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), who was just expelled from the House.
Fetterman called on Senate colleagues to oust Menendez after host Joy Behar asked him about Santos’s expulsion during an interview on ABC’s “The View.”
“We have a colleague in the Senate that actually does much more sinister and serious kinds of things: Sen. Menendez. He needs to go. And if you are going to expel Santos, how can you allow somebody like Menendez to remain in the Senate?” Fetterman said.
Federal prosecutors for the Southern District of Manhattan have charged Menendez with conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud, conspiracy to commit extortion and conspiracy for a public official to act as a foreign agent. Menendez has denied any wrongdoing.
Fetterman said Santos’s “lies were almost, you know, funny” like he “landed on the moon and that kind of stuff.”
“Whereas, I think Menendez, I think is really a senator for Egypt, not New Jersey. So, I really think he needs to go,” he added.
Fetterman made his comments after the House voted 311-114 to expel Santos.
More than half of the Senate Democratic caucus has called on Menendez to resign, but senators aside from Fetterman have shown little-to-no appetite for holding a vote to expel their New Jersey colleague.
Some senators, such as Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), say there would need to be “due process,” like a criminal trial or Senate Ethics Committee investigation, before an expulsion vote. And the Ethics Committee has traditionally not conducted investigations of a senator during an ongoing criminal prosecution.
Menendez has defied colleagues’ calls for him to resign, proclaiming his innocence.
“The government is engaged in primitive hunting by which the predator chases its prey until it’s exhausted and then kills it. This tactic won’t work,” he said after federal prosecutors added the fourth count of conspiracy to act as a foreign agent.
“I have done nothing wrong and once all the facts are presented will be found innocent,” he declared.