And thus, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) was accused in 2015 of taking bribes from Salomon Melgen, a Florida ophthalmologist — nearly $1 million in lavish trips and campaign contributions in return for helping Melgen fight accusations of Medicare fraud — only to have a mistrial declared when the jury hearing the case in 2017 was unable to reach a verdict.

Then there is the latest set of allegations against Menendez, his wife, Nadine, and three business associates. This time, they involve corruption in its starkest, most stomach-churning form. As outlined in the indictment released Friday, Menendez sold his office — for stacks of gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash stuffed in jacket pockets, for a Mercedes-Benz convertible and a no-show job for his wife.

In return, according to the indictment, Menendez sought to interfere in two criminal cases; pressured an Agriculture Department official to help protect a cushy deal; and, most horrifying given his perch as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to provide secret help and sensitive information to the Egyptian government.

This time is different. This case is different, from all appearances. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and at least four Democratic members of the New Jersey congressional delegation have correctly called on Menendez to resign.

“The alleged facts are so serious that they compromise the ability of Senator Menendez to effectively represent the people of our state,” Murphy said.

Others, including Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), are contenting themselves with Senate precedents (Menendez didn’t resign after his first indictment, nor did Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), whose conviction was vacated in 2009 for prosecutorial misconduct) and the requirement, entirely inadequate under these circumstances, that Menendez step aside from his chairmanship.

Menendez, Schumer said, is a “dedicated public servant” who “has a right to due process and a fair trial.” Yes, he does — before being convicted of a criminal offense. But Menendez doesn’t have a right to a Senate seat, not given the gravity of the accusations and the granularity of the evidence. The presumption of innocence does not mandate the willing suspension of disbelief.

And perhaps Schumer has forgotten: After Menendez’s hung jury in 2017, the Senate Ethics Committee “severely admonished” Menendez for taking unapproved and undisclosed gifts from the Florida eye doctor while using his Senate position “to advance Dr. Melgen’s personal and business interests.” Menendez’s behavior, the committee concluded, “demonstrated poor judgment, and it risked undermining the public’s confidence in the Senate. As such, your actions reflected discredit upon the Senate.”

This man no longer enjoys the benefit of the doubt; the institution of the Senate and the voters of New Jersey deserve more. Just take a look at the indictment, which features photos of the cash and gold bars, and ask yourself: Is this befitting of the world’s greatest deliberative body? Schumer and his fellow Democrats know better — or ought to. Hello, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). What say you?

Menendez, for his part, is resorting, once again, to baseless accusations of bias. “Certain elements of the FBI and of our state cannot stand, or even worse, accept that the Latino kid from Union City and Hudson County could grow up to be a United States senator and be honest,” he said after the jury failed to reach a verdict in his case.

Jennifer Rubin: Democrats need to shove Menendez off the stage

Menendez went there again Friday. “Those behind this campaign simply cannot accept that a first-generation Latino American from humble beginnings could rise to be a U.S. Senator and serve with honor and distinction,” he said in a statement.

Honor and distinction. Really? Maybe the distinction of being the only sitting U.S. senator ever to be indicted twice.

I grew up in New Jersey, and I’ve spent my career covering political corruption cases, which is to say: I’m not naive, and I don’t shock easily. The Menendez indictment, though, is jaw-dropping. It tells a story of corruption of the quid pro quo-iest sort — of seemingly boundless greed (Menendez searching the internet for “how much is one kilo of gold worth”) and corrupt conduct so heavy-handed it reads straight out of a John Grisham novel.

Take the example of Fred Daibes, a New Jersey real estate developer and longtime Menendez fundraiser among those indicted with Menendez. As the indictment relates, when Menendez met in 2020 with a candidate to become the top federal prosecutor for New Jersey, the senator raised Daibes’s pending indictment on bank fraud charges. Nothing could be more improper in this sort of session. That didn’t seem to stop Menendez.

Menendez “said that he hoped that the Candidate would look into DAIBES’s case if the Candidate became the U.S. Attorney,” the indictment states. He “did not mention any other case in the meeting.”

When the U.S. attorney candidate, Philip Sellinger, later told Menendez he might have to recuse himself from the Daibes case, Menendez decided not to back Sellinger’s nomination, according to the indictment, and recommended someone Daibes believed “would likely be sympathetic to him.”

And when Sellinger eventually became a U.S. attorney and was instructed to recuse himself from Daibes’s case, Menendez called Sellinger to ask the name of the senior assistant who would assume the supervision — whom Menendez then proceeded to call twice, according to the indictment.

All while Daibes was lavishing the Menendezes with cash and gifts: a recliner for the senator, who had injured his shoulder; envelopes, some with Daibes’s fingerprints, containing thousands in cash (“Christmas in January,” Nadine Menendez wrote in a thank-you text to Daibes); and gold bars whose serial numbers linked them to Daibes.

This is Schumer’s “dedicated public servant”? Dedicated, one wonders, to what?