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      AOC joins calls for Bob Menendez to resign from Senate over corruption charges

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has joined the calls for Bob Menendez to resign, after the Democratic US senator from New Jersey was charged with accepting gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz and other gifts as bribes.Speaking on Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez said the charges against Menendez were “extremely serious” and he should step down.A growing number of Democrats are calling for Menendez, who has represented New Jersey in the Senate since 2006, to resign.Menendez is accused of using his position to aid Egypt’s authoritarian government and pressuring federal prosecutors to drop a case against a friend.Over the weekend, John Fetterman became the first US Senate Democrat to suggest Menendez should quit, while a Democratic New Jersey congressman announced he would run against Menendez in next year’s primary election.Asked about Menendez on CBS’s Face the Nation, Ocasio-Cortez said:“The situation is quite unfortunate, but I do believe that it is in the best interest for Senator Menendez to resign in this moment.“Consistency matters. It shouldn’t matter if it’s a Republican or a Democrat. The details in this indictment are extremely serious. They involve the nature of not just his but all of our seats in Congress.”Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks on Menendez come after she has previously called for a federal investigation into Clarence Thomas, the conservative supreme court justice, over his acceptance of undeclared gifts from wealthy rightwing donors.In August, ProPublica reported that Thomas had taken “at least 38” undeclared vacations funded by billionaires and accepted gifts including expensive sports tickets.Ocasio-Cortez had also previously called on Republican congressman George Santos to step down after he was indicted earlier this year for fraud, money laundering and other federal charges.Fetterman was another high-profile progressive who had called for Menendez’s resignation.“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,” Fetterman, of Pennsylvania, said in a statement on Saturday.“I hope he chooses an honorable exit and focuses on his trial.”Menendez denies the charges against him. In a statement on Friday he said: “I am not going anywhere.”But that has not stopped a burgeoning movement calling for his departure.Since then, Phil Murphy, the Democratic governor of New Jersey, has joined the calls for Menendez to resign.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMurphy would be in charge of appointing a replacement for Menendez if the senator leaves office. The replacement would be in office until a special election is held.Also on Sunday, Josh Gottheimer, a Democratic New Jersey congressman, repeated his previous call for Menendez to quit.“I called on him, given the gravity of the charges, to step aside,” Gottheimer told CNN.“Given how we’ve got elections coming up, there’s a lot of distractions; obviously giving the senator time to defend himself, I think what’s best is that he step aside and we focus on issues.”Menendez has been charged with accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, in connection with alleged intervention on behalf of Egypt, and in allegedly pressuring federal prosecutors to drop a case against a friend.The indictment against Menendez alleged that he and his wife were paid a series of bribes by three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for corrupt acts. FBI agents investigating Menendez discovered “a lot of gold”, allegedly provided by businessman Fred Daibes, in the senator’s home, as well as about $500,000 in cash.Some of the money was “stuffed into envelopes and closets”, and some was “stuffed in the senator’s jacket pockets”, the FBI said.On Saturday, the Democratic New Jersey congressman Andy Kim said he would run against Menendez in the 2024 primary election.“After calls to resign, Senator Menendez said: ‘I am not going anywhere,’” Kim said in a statement.“As a result, I feel compelled to run against him. This is not something I expected to do, but I believe New Jersey deserves better. We cannot jeopardize the Senate or compromise our country’s integrity.“I believe it’s time we restore faith in our democracy, and that’s why I am stepping up and running for Senate.” More

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      Does Robert Menendez Have Enough Teflon to Survive Again?

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      Senator Menendez, who has defeated prosecutors and political challengers, faces his sternest test yet in his federal indictment in Manhattan.In a state long attuned to the drumbeat of political corruption — salacious charges, furious denials, explosive trials — Senator Robert Menendez has often registered as the quintessential New Jersey politician.He successfully avoided charges in one case, and after federal prosecutors indicted him in another, he got off after a mistrial in 2017. “To those who were digging my political grave,” Mr. Menendez warned then with characteristic bravado, “I know who you are and I won’t forget you.”Six years later, he is once again on the brink, battling for his political life after federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed a jarring new indictment on Friday charging the powerful Democratic senator and his wife in a garish bribery scheme involving a foreign power, piles of cash and gold bars.A defiant Mr. Menendez, 69, immediately vowed to clear his name from what he cast as just more smears by vengeful prosecutors. A top adviser said that he would also continue running for re-election in 2024, when he is trying to secure a fourth full term.But as details of the case quickly spread through Trenton and Washington — including images of an allegedly ill-begotten Mercedes-Benz convertible and cash bribes hidden in closets — it was clear Mr. Menendez may be confronting the gravest political challenge in a career that started 49 years ago in the shadow of New York City.Calls for his resignation mounted from ethics groups, Republicans and even longtime Democratic allies who stood by him last time, including the governor, state party chairman and the leaders of the legislature. And party strategists and elected officials were already openly speculating that one or more of a group of ambitious, young Democrats representing the state in Congress could mount a primary campaign against him.“The alleged facts are so serious that they compromise the ability of Senator Menendez to effectively represent the people of our state,” said Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat. “Therefore, I am calling for his immediate resignation.”Representatives Frank Pallone and Bill Pascrell, two of the state’s longest serving Democrats who have served alongside Mr. Menendez for decades, joined them later. So did Representatives Mikie Sherrill and Andy Kim, two of the younger representatives considered possible primary challengers or replacements should the senator step down.For now, Mr. Menendez appeared to be on firmer footing among his colleagues in the Senate, including party leaders who could force his hand. They accepted his temporary resignation as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, but did not ask him to leave office.In a statement, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, called Mr. Menendez “a dedicated public servant” and said that his colleague had “a right to due process and a fair trial.”The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, right, urged against a rash judgment, saying Mr. Menendez had a “right to due process and a fair trial.”Erin Schaff/The New York TimesCalls for his ouster seemed to only embolden Mr. Menendez, who spent part of Friday afternoon trying to rally allies by phone. “It is not lost on me how quickly some are rushing to judge a Latino and push him out of his seat,” he wrote in a fiery retort to Democrats who broke with him. “I am not going anywhere.”The electoral stakes were high, and not just for Mr. Menendez.Though he had yet to formally answer the charges in court, some party strategists were already gauging the possibility that Mr. Menendez could be scheduled to stand trial in the middle of the campaign — an unwelcome distraction for Democratic candidates across the nation.Republicans were already using the indictment to attack the party. “Democrats covered for Menendez the first time he got indicted for corruption,” said Philip Letsou, a spokesman for the Senate Republican campaign committee. “It would be a shame if they did so again.”Democrats have not lost a Senate race in New Jersey since the 1970s. But allowing Mr. Menendez to stay in office could at the least force the party to spend heavily to defend the seat at a time when it already faces daunting odds of retaining a razor-thin majority.“I understand personal loyalty, and I understand the depths of friendships, but somebody needs to take a stand here,” said Robert Torricelli, the former Democratic senator from New Jersey. “This is not about him — it’s about holding the majority.”Mr. Torricelli speaks from experience. He retired rather than seek re-election in 2002 after his own ethics scandal ended without charges. He was also widely believed to be a target of Mr. Menendez’s ire after the former senator put his hand up to succeed Mr. Menendez had he been convicted in 2017.“In the history of the United States Congress, it is doubtful there has ever been a corruption allegation of this depth and seriousness,” Mr. Torricelli added. “The degree of the evidence. The gold bars and the hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash. It’s incomprehensible.”The details laid out in the 39-page indictment were nothing short of tawdry. Prosecutors said that Mr. Menendez had used his position to provide sensitive government information to Egypt, browbeat the Department of Agriculture and tamper with a criminal investigation. In exchange, associates rewarded him with the gold bullion, car and cash, along with home mortgage payments and other benefits, they said.Prosecutors referred to a text between an Egyptian general and an Egyptian American businessman in which Mr. Menendez was referred to as “our man.” At one point, prosecutors said, the senator searched in a web browser “how much is one kilo of gold worth.”Damien Williams, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, laid out details of a 39-page indictment against Mr. Menendez.Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesMr. Menendez is far from the first elected official in New Jersey to face serious criminal allegations. With a long tradition of one-party rule, a bare-knuckle political culture and an unusual patchwork of governmental fiefs, the state has been a hotbed for corruption that has felled city councilors, mayors, state legislators and members of Congress.The Washington Post tried to quantify the criminality in 2015 and found that New Jersey’s rate of crime per politician easily led any other state. Mr. Menendez already has a Democratic primary opponent, Kyle Jasey, a real estate lender and first-time candidate who called the indictment an “embarrassment for our state.” But political strategists and elected Democrats said Mr. Jasey may not have the lane to himself for long.New Jersey has a glut of ambitious Democratic members of Congress with outsize national profiles; it took barely minutes on Friday for the state’s political class to begin speculating about who might step forward.Among the most prominent were Ms. Sherrill, 51, and Josh Gottheimer, 48, moderates known for their fund-raising prowess who have proven they can win difficult suburban districts and were already said to be looking at statewide campaigns for governor in 2025, when Mr. Murphy cannot run because of term limits. Other names included Mr. Kim and Tom Malinowski, a two-term congressman who lost his seat last year.National Republicans cast their focus on Christine Serrano Glassner, the two-term mayor of a small community roughly 25 miles west of Newark, N.J., who announced this week she would run.Mr. Menendez, the son of Cuban immigrants, was elected to his first local office at age 20. At 28, he donned a bulletproof vest as he testified in a corruption trial against his former mentor. He won the mayoralty of Union City, before moving onto the State Assembly, the Senate, the House of Representatives and, in 2006, an appointment to the Senate.It was only a matter of months before he was in the sights of the U.S. attorney’s office of New Jersey. The senator was never charged, but the investigation became campaign fodder after the U.S. attorney, then Chris Christie, issued a subpoena to a community agency that paid rent to Mr. Menendez while getting lucrative federal grants.Almost a decade later, federal prosecutors went further, making Mr. Menendez the first sitting senator in a generation to face federal bribery charges in 2015. They accused him of exchanging political favors with a wealthy Florida eye surgeon for luxury vacations, expensive flights and campaign donations.A jury heard the case two years later and could not reach a verdict; the Justice Department later dropped the prosecution, but the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee “severely admonished” him for accepting gifts while promoting the surgeon’s interests.Even so, Mr. Menendez handily won his party’s nomination and re-election in 2018.To longtime analysts of the state politics, though, Friday’s case crossed a new threshold.“Even by New Jersey standards, this one stands out — how graphic it is, how raw it is,” said Micah Rasmussen, a seasoned Democratic political hand who now leads Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University.“There is a world of difference between not reporting a plane ride and having half a million in hundreds stashed around your house,” Mr. Rasmussen added. “By all rights, this should be the end of the line.”Tracey Tully More

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      New Jersey senator Menendez rejects calls from fellow Democrats to resign

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      Several Democrats including his own state governor are calling on their fellow party member Robert Menendez to resign after federal authorities charged the New Jersey US senator and his wife with accepting bribes. However, the defiant senator has rejected those claims and is refusing to step down.Authorities on Friday revealed charges alleging that Robert and Nadine Menendez illegally accepted gold bars, cash, a luxurious Mercedes-Benz car and other gifts in exchange for favors benefiting three businessmen as well as influencing the Egyptian government.In response, the Democratic congressman Dean Phillips of Minnesota told CNN he was deeply disappointed in Menendez and that the senator needed to resign. Phillips said that was his position despite his belief that everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty.“Yes, I am a Democrat and so is Senator Menendez, but based on what I have seen, I am disappointed and yes, I think he should resign,” Phillips said.He continued: “I’m appalled. Anybody who pays attention – I don’t care [about] your politics, Democrat or Republican, you should be appalled.“A member of Congress who appears to have broken the law is someone who I should believe should resign.”Phillips went on to invoke the case of George Santos, the Republican congressman who has pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds.“I think George Santos should have resigned already,” he said. “Sadly, our House ethics process, and I would argue the Senate as well, is not as proficient as it needs to be so we have to rely on the judicial system, but I’m really disappointed.”Menendez rejected calls to resign and plans to refute the claims of bribery and corruption, according to NBC News. “Those who believe in justice believe in innocence until proven guilty. I intend to continue to fight for the people of New Jersey with the same success I’ve had for the past five decades,” Menendez said in the statement.“This is the same record of success these very same leaders have lauded all along. It is not lost on me how quickly some are rushing to judge a Latino and push him out of his seat. I am not going anywhere,” he added.In response to a question on whether Democratic leaders in Congress should lean on Menendez to resign and push him out, Phillips replied: “Look, I am trying to restore faith in government.“That’s one of my missions. It’s a lot of my colleagues’ missions, and sometimes we have to walk that talk, even if it’s uncomfortable. And I would argue that this time, yes, the answer is absolutely.”The New Jersey representative Andy Kim, a Democrat, also called on Menendez to resign. The New Jersey Globe quoted Kim as saying: “These allegations are serious and alarming. It doesn’t matter what your job title is or your politics – no one in America is above the law.“The people of New Jersey absolutely need to know the truth of what happened, and I hope the judicial system works thoroughly and quickly to bring this truth to light.”He added: “In the meantime, I don’t have confidence that the senator has the ability to properly focus on our state and its people while addressing such a significant legal matter. He should step down.”Unsurprisingly, New Jersey’s Republican state committee joined Phillips and Kim in calling for Menendez to step down. The statement said Menendez’s “legal woes [were] an embarrassing distraction”.“For the good of the people of this state, who deserve full and devoted representation, we call on … Robert Menendez to resign,” the statement added.In New Jersey, if there is a vacancy in the US Senate, that seat gets filled by a gubernatorial appointment before a special election is held to replace the appointee. Should Menendez leave office, his vacancy would be filled by the state’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, a reality that perhaps makes it less uncomfortable for Phillips and Kim to insist on their fellow party member’s resignation.Murphy himself also called for Menendez to resign in a statement issued on Friday.“The allegations in the indictment … are deeply disturbing,” the statement said. “These are serious charges that implicate national security and the integrity of our criminal justice system.”In recent months, Democrats have not only called on Santos to be removed from Congress – they have also demanded that Donald Trump not run for a second term as president as he grapples with more than 90 criminal charges across four separate indictments.House Democrats introduced a resolution to expel the indicted Santos from Congress in May, but Republicans successfully sidestepped the maneuver.Meanwhile, Virginia’s Democratic US senator Tim Kaine said earlier this month that he believed there was a “powerful argument” to be made that Trump could be disqualified from running in the 2024 presidential election under the 14th amendment of the constitution. That amendment bars anyone who has taken an oath to support the constitution and has “engaged in insurrection” against the US from holding any civil, military or elected office without approval from two-thirds of both the House and Senate.Trump’s charges include ones in connection with the 6 January 2021 attack on Congress staged by his supporters after he lost the previous year’s presidential election to Joe Biden.Other liberals as well as prominent legal scholars across the country have echoed that argument. More

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      US senator Robert Menendez and wife charged with bribery offenses

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      The US senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, and his wife have been charged with bribery offenses in connection with accepting gold bars, cash and a Mercedes-Benz, among other gifts, in exchange for protecting three businessmen and influencing the government of Egypt.FBI special agents discovered “a lot of gold” provided by Fred Daibes – a builder, and one of the three businessmen – during a search of the Menendez couple’s home in New Jersey, according to Damian Williams, US attorney for the southern district of New York.In a press conference on Friday, he said agents discovered approximately $500,000 of cash “stuffed into envelopes and closets”, some of which was “stuffed in the senator’s jacket pockets”.The FBI also found the Mercedes-Benz car that Jose Uribe, another of the three businessmen and a former insurance agent, had provided the couple, he said.“We are not done,” said Williams. “And I want to encourage anyone with information to come forward and to come forward quickly.”Menendez, who has been in the Senate since 2006, and his wife face three criminal counts each, including: conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud and conspiracy to commit extortion under color of official right. The senator’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Menendez, the chair of the US Senate committee on foreign relations, had previously been charged in New Jersey with accepting private flights, campaign contributions and other bribes from a wealthy patron in exchange for official favors, but a 2017 trial ended in a jury deadlock.The federal government now seeks the forfeiture of assets including the Menendezes’ New Jersey home, a 2019 Mercedez-Benz vehicle, about $566,000 in cash, gold bars and funds from a bank account.The businessmen in the case – Wael Hana, Uribe and Daibes – were also charged in the scheme.Prosecutors said Hana, who is originally from Egypt, arranged dinners and meetings between Menendez and Egyptian officials in 2018 at which the officials pressed Menendez on the status of US military aid. In exchange, Hana put Nadine Menendez on his company’s payroll, prosecutors said.The New Jersey senator is also alleged to have “improperly pressured” a senior official at the Department of Agriculture to “protect a lucrative monopoly that the government of Egypt had awarded to [Wael] Hana” and that Hana used to “fund certain bribe payments”, Williams said.The indictment also alleges that Menendez used his power and influence to try to disrupt a criminal investigation and prosecution undertaken by the New Jersey attorney general’s office related to “an associate and relative of [Jose] Uribe”.Egypt at the time was one of the largest recipients of US military aid, but the state department had withheld $195m in 2017 and canceled an additional $65.7m until the country could demonstrate improvements on human rights and democracy.Menendez at a meeting in 2018 told Hana non-public information about the status of the aid, prosecutors said. Hana then texted an Egyptian official: “The ban on small arms and ammunition to Egypt has been lifted,” according to an indictment made public on Friday.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      in Elections

      Menendez Accused of Brazen Bribery Plot, Taking Cash and Gold

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      Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, was charged six years after his trial in a different corruption case ended in a hung jury.The indictment against Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, comes after a lengthy investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesSenator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, has been charged in a sweeping federal corruption indictment, the authorities said on Friday.The three-count indictment, which also charges the senator’s wife and three New Jersey businessmen, accuses him of using his official position in a wide range of corrupt schemes at home and abroad. In one, he sought to benefit the government of Egypt, including secretly providing it with sensitive U.S. government information, while in two others, he aimed to influence criminal investigations of two New Jersey businessmen, one of whom was a longtime fund-raiser for Mr. Menendez.Toward that end, the senator, a Democrat, recommended that President Biden nominate a lawyer, Philip R. Sellinger, for the post of U.S. attorney for New Jersey because Mr. Menendez believed he could influence Mr. Sellinger’s prosecution of the fund-raiser. Mr. Sellinger, who was ultimately confirmed for the post, was not accused of any wrongdoing.In another scheme, Mr. Menendez used his position to try to disrupt the investigation and prosecution of a businessman by the New Jersey State attorney general’s office, according to the indictment.In exchange for all those actions, the indictment said, the senator and his wife, Nadine Menendez, accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bribes, including cash, gold bars, payments toward a home mortgage, a luxury vehicle and other valuable things.Ms. Menendez’s lawyer, David Schertler, said that his client denied criminal wrongdoing.“Mrs. Menendez denies any criminal conduct and will vigorously contest these charges in court,” Mr. Schertler said.Representatives for the senator and the two businessmen could not immediately be reached for comment on the charges.A spokesperson for Mr. Hana said in a statement: “We are still reviewing the charges but based upon our initial review, they have absolutely no merit.”The charges against Mr. Menendez, 69, follow a lengthy investigation by the F.B.I. and federal prosecutors in Manhattan and comes nearly six years after his trial on unrelated claims of corruption ended with a hung jury.Read the IndictmentRead Document 39 pagesThe businessmen named in the indictment, which was unsealed in Manhattan federal court, are Fred Daibes, a prominent New Jersey real estate developer and fund-raiser for Mr. Menendez; Wael Hana, a longtime friend of Ms. Menendez’s who founded a halal meat certification business and Jose Uribe, who works in the trucking and insurance business.It has been known for some time that Mr. Menendez was under federal scrutiny, and he has said he was willing to assist investigators and was confident the matter would be “successfully closed.”The 39-page indictment charges the senator, his wife and the businessmen with conspiracy to commit bribery and conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud. It also charges Mr. Menendez and his wife with conspiracy to commit extortion under the color of official right, meaning using his official position to force someone to give them something of value.Federal agents executed search warrants on the New Jersey home of Robert and Nadine Menendez last year. They found $480,000 in cash, some of it hidden in clothing, and over $100,000 worth of gold bars.U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New YorkThe indictment will quickly resound in Washington and in New Jersey.Mr. Menendez is already facing at least one Democratic challenger in his planned run for re-election to a fourth term in the Senate, and the Republican mayor of Mendham Borough, N.J., has also announced that she will compete for the seat.If Mr. Menendez were to step down before the end of his term, New Jersey’s Democratic governor, Philip D. Murphy, would be responsible for appointing a successor.Mr. Daibes, who pleaded guilty last year to a financial crime and is awaiting sentencing, is among a small group of builders responsible for converting parts of the polluted Hudson River waterfront into a bustling hive of residential and commercial activity.Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and James Smith, the assistant director in charge of the F.B.I.’s New York office, are to announce the charges at a news conference Friday morning.Mr. Menendez, his wife and their three co-defendants are expected to appear in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday, according to Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for the Southern District.The charges are not the senator’s first encounter with the law. In 2015, Mr. Menendez was indicted in New Jersey on bribery charges in what federal prosecutors called a scheme between the senator and a wealthy eye doctor to trade political favors for gifts worth close to $1 million, including luxury vacations in the Caribbean and campaign contributions. Mr. Menendez’s corruption trial ended in a mistrial in November 2017, after the jury said it was unable to reach a verdict.The judge later acquitted Mr. Menendez of several charges and the Justice Department dismissed the others.As chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Menendez is one of Washington’s most influential Democrats.He climbed there rung by rung, quickly, a consummate survivor.The son of Cuban immigrants, he rose to power in Hudson County, a famously rough political proving ground in northern New Jersey, where he began serving on the school board in Union City as a 20-year-old college student. By 32, he was mayor. Mr. Menendez won the post after wearing a bulletproof vest to testify against Mafia members and a mentor, William V. Musto, the city’s mayor who was convicted of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks from a contractor hired to build schools.Mr. Menendez served in the State Assembly and Senate before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives; he was appointed to the U.S. Senate in 2005 to fill the vacancy created when Jon Corzine left the body to become governor.Soon after being sworn in to the Senate, Mr. Menendez faced a federal inquiry led by Chris Christie, then the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, over payments by a nonprofit group that rented a house he owned. It went nowhere, but shadowed him for nearly six years.This is a developing story and will be updated.Kirsten Noyes More

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      Chris Christie Says He and Bruce Springsteen Are on Better Terms

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      The former New Jersey governor idolizes Bruce Springsteen, but their political differences have led to frostiness. Now, according to Chris Christie, their relationship is “a good one.”Chris Christie has been to more than 150 Bruce Springsteen concerts, knows the words to every song and treasures the ticket stubs he has collected.But despite his unrequited love and near-obsessive fandom for his fellow New Jerseyan, Mr. Christie has found that his Republican politics have led to an often frosty relationship with Mr. Springsteen, who has supported Democrats in the past and hosted a podcast with former President Barack Obama.Now, though, Mr. Christie says he and his idol are on better terms.“It’s been a variable relationship over the years because we both have very passionate feelings about politics and we’re on different sides of the spectrum,” Mr. Christie said in an interview on Tuesday. “But of late, I think what we both recognized is that we’re both good husbands, good fathers and love our state, and as people, care a lot about what we do. So I’d say our relationship right now is a good one.”“Thunder Road”? Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey spoke with The New York Times about his favorite Bruce Springsteen tune.Emily Rhyne for The New York TimesMr. Christie did not elaborate on their interactions. Representatives for Mr. Springsteen, who recently announced that he was postponing performances while he is treated for symptoms of peptic ulcer disease, declined to comment.Mr. Christie was spotted at multiple stops on Mr. Springsteen’s tour this summer, including on the side of the stage during his band’s three-show run at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey two weeks ago.Mr. Springsteen seems to be working on the relationship, too, according to Mr. Christie. The former governor also spoke Tuesday about a phone call he received from the musician after a concert in Brooklyn this year, after Mr. Springsteen spotted him in the pit during the concert.“I thought Bruce saw me during the show,” Mr. Christie told Steve Scully at a SiriusXM town hall event in New Hampshire. “And my wife thought I was crazy: ‘Oh yeah sure, Bruce smiled and waved to you.’”Mr. Christie went on, “We get in the car, we’re driving back to New Jersey, my cellphone rings at 11:45 at night.” He added: “So I answered the phone and I said, ‘Chris Christie,’ and he said, ‘Gov., it’s Bruce.’ And he said, ‘I saw you in the pit tonight.’”“And I went to my wife, I go: ‘I told you. I told you he saw me!’” Mr. Christie said at the town hall.Mr. Christie keeps the ticket stubs for Springsteen concerts he has attended.Juan Arredondo for The New York TimesEven though Mr. Christie has followed the rock star across their home state and the country — and can often identify a Springsteen song after hearing just a few opening bars — his political positions have kept him far from Mr. Springsteen’s inner circle.In 2011, when Mr. Christie was governor of New Jersey, Mr. Springsteen wrote an letter to the editor in The Asbury Park Press criticizing Mr. Christie’s proposed budget cuts. In 2012, Mr. Christie told The Atlantic that he had regularly been given the cold shoulder by Mr. Springsteen’s world.Yet Mr. Christie’s stewardship of the state after Hurricane Sandy led to a thaw, which Mr. Christie said at the time brought him to tears. At a later event, Mr. Christie seemed to make it official: “We’re friends.”That bond soon frayed. As Mr. Christie faced blistering national headlines in 2013 and 2014 over the scandal involving the closing of access lanes to the George Washington Bridge, Mr. Springsteen joined Jimmy Fallon on his late-night NBC talk show to perform a revised version of “Born to Run,” with some adjusted lyrics.“Someday, governor, I don’t know when, this will all end, but till then you’re killing the working man, who’s stuck in Gov. Chris Christie’s Fort Lee, New Jersey, traffic jam,” Mr. Springsteen and Mr. Fallon sang.Mr. Springsteen, left, and Jimmy Fallon spoofed Mr. Christie during a performance on Mr. Fallon’s late-night NBC talk show.Lloyd Bishop/NBCUniversal, via Getty ImagesStill, Mr. Christie remained a devoted Springsteen fan. After eight years as governor, he spent his first night as a regular citizen at Mr. Springsteen’s Broadway show, sitting in the second row, a treat from Mr. Christie’s wife.Though he has been careful not to overuse Mr. Springsteen’s music in his political campaigns, lest he invite more public criticism from the Boss, Mr. Christie recently put “Thunder Road” at the top of his campaign playlist, after Politico asked 2024 presidential candidates to provide their favorite songs.Mr. Christie noted in the interview on Tuesday that Politico had asked the candidates — with varying success — to list only one song per artist. Otherwise he would have chosen “a lot more” Springsteen songs, he said. “And unlike others, I followed the rules.”He spoke at some length about his relationship with “Thunder Road,” one of Mr. Springsteen’s biggest hits and the first song on his famed album “Born to Run,” revealing an optimistic side of the former New Jersey governor not often seen on the campaign trail, where he lays into the Republican front-runner, Donald J. Trump.“I think ‘Thunder Road’ is a song that is both realistic and hopeful,” Mr. Christie said. “The beginning of it, the piano intro, is so welcoming, and I smile every time I hear it. And so to me, any song that makes me smile every time I hear it, no matter what my mood is, it’s going to be one of my favorite songs.”He went on: “And I love the way he sings it. I love the lyrics and I love the way it makes me feel. It makes me feel like the world’s open to be welcomed for possibilities, for aspirations, for ambition. And I think that’s what Bruce was saying in 1975. Remember, that was a 25-year-old Bruce Springsteen writing that song. And it has that sense, hopefulness, in it.”Mr. Christie paid homage to Mr. Springsteen’s debut album, “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.” with a banner at an election night party in 2013.Brooks Kraft LLC/Corbis, via Getty ImagesWhen asked about the climactic lyric in the song — “It’s a town full of losers, I’m pulling out of here to win” — Mr. Christie said he found another connection with Mr. Springsteen.“It’s part of what everybody at that age feels,” Mr. Christie said. “I’m going to get away from the things that are holding me down, and I’m going to go out there and make my place in the world. And I’ve heard Bruce joke from time to time that he wrote ‘Born to Run’ when he was 25 years old, and the guy who was ‘born to run’ is now raising his family and living out his adult life 15 minutes from where he grew up, so he wasn’t born to run too far. And I think it’s the same thing with me and New Jersey, too. No matter where else I go, that will always be home.”Even if the two men are friendlier now, Mr. Christie has acknowledged that there are limits.Asked at a recent event in New Hampshire if Mr. Springsteen would sing at his hypothetical inauguration, Mr. Christie demurred, saying: “Oh, that’s a lot to ask. I don’t know.”“He’s still a Democrat,” he said. More

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      Why was Trump hoarding classified government documents? | Moira Donegan

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      There are many surreal revelations in Jack Smith’s federal indictment of Donald Trump. There are the texts between various Trump underlings and Walt Nauta, the Trump body man who has also been indicted, showing the president directing his employees to move the boxes containing classified information back and forth to various locations around his properties in Palm Beach and Bedminster, New Jersey. There is the annoyed missive from Trump’s wife Melania, trying to make sure the boxes don’t crowd out room for her luggage on a private plane. There is the claim from Trump’s former attorney, compelled to testify against him in an unusual arrangement, that the former president suggested, with a Grinch-like pinching gesture, that the lawyer destroy confidential documents to prevent them from being produced in a subpoena. There is a text message Nauta sent to another Trump underling, showing a box having fallen over in a storage room at Mar-a-Lago, secret documents spilling on to the floor – whoops.What there is not, conspicuously, is a motive. Over the course of more than a year following his departure from office, it appears that Trump spent considerable effort and resources in transporting the documents with him and keeping them near at hand – and that later, as the federal government began to demand the boxes back, that he then went out of his way to keep and conceal them, going to great length, sparing no expense, and ultimately breaking the law so much that he incurred himself a series of felony charges. Anyone can tell you how this behavior is typical of Trump: how it reflects his pettiness, his contempt for the law, his willingness to sacrifice and endanger others. What no one can tell you is why he did it.It would be more convenient – legally, for Jack Smith and his prosecutors, and politically, for Joe Biden, for the Democrats, and for the growing number of Republicans who are looking to challenge Trump in the 2024 Republican primary – if we could say precisely why Trump wanted to keep the documents so badly, exactly what he wanted them for. It would be very easy to make a case to a skeptical jury – or to a divided American people – that Trump was a danger and could not be trusted with national secrets again if it could be said that he wanted to keep the documents for any of the straightforwardly dangerous and nefarious reasons that have been speculated: if he was seeking to sell national security secrets to the Saudis, say, or to Israel; if he was hoping, as some have suggested, that he one day might be able to blackmail someone powerful, like the president of France.It’s very possible that Trump had concocted such a plan. There is much that we do not know about the investigations into Trump, including about the special counsel’s query into his illegal document retention. But we do know that in the past, we know that he has gone further, and risked more, in the pursuit of even more harebrained schemes.But what seems the most likely explanation is the simplest, stupidest, and most aggravating one: that Trump had no plan for the documents, except perhaps for use as souvenirs, trophies to be shown off, maybe as evidence for petty score-settling. That the documents that Trump smuggled out of the White House and squirreled away around Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster were not instruments in a coherent, well-formed plan, but instead mere ornaments to Trump’s ego. In transcripts of Trump’s statements about the documents that were included in the indictment, and in audio of Trump showing some of the secret papers off to a writer that was recently released by CNN, Trump uses the documents to contradict a former national security official he was then in a spat with in the press; he tells one interlocutor not to get too close to one of the secret papers, seeming to want to create a hush of reverence for the documents in place of respecting their confidentiality in the first place. At these moments, Trump does not sound as if he has a plan. He sounds as if he wants to impress the people in the room with him, and like he can think no further ahead than to how good it will feel to get their praise.Why did Trump want the secret documents? Why did he refuse to return them? The answer may be the one truest to Trump’s piddling, puerile character: because they looked cool; because they reminded him of his own importance; because the government had asked for them back, and Trump has never missed an opportunity to throw a petulant little tantrum.It is this smallness of Trump’s character, and the possible triviality of his motives, that poses a peculiar risk to both of the cases being made against Trump – the one being pursued in a Miami courthouse, and the one being pursued in public. Because there has always been an uncanny mismatch with Trump, an incongruence: between the awesome and vast powers he had in office, the historical forces he unleashed on America, and the horrible ways his presidency warped millions of lives, on the one hand; and on the other, his pettiness, his vanity, his short-sightedness, his piddling personal grievances and constant need to be flattered and reassured.The gap between the seriousness of Trump’s role in history and his unseriousness as a person is the strange place where the documents case – and, now, much of American political thought – risks getting stuck. The very silliness of Trump’s use of the documents undercuts the grave risks posed by his hoarding of them. How can such a powerful country have been made so vulnerable by someone so stupid?
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More