Will he resign, or won’t he?

NBC is reporting Wednesday evening that Senator Menendez is telling allies that he will resign from office. From the report: ‘Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., has told allies that he will resign from Congress after being convicted on federal corruption charges, two people directly familiar with those conversations tell NBC News.’

But CBS’ Christine Sloan reported on Wednesday evening that he won’t resign, with the Senator telling her that ‘I can tell you that I have not resigned nor have I spoken to any so called allies … Seems to me that there is an effort to try to force me into a statement. Anyone who knows me knows that’s the worst way to achieve a goal with me’.

Menendez was found guilty on Tuesday by a New York jury, and demands for his resignation grew in the immediate aftermath.  Talk of Senate expulsion, a rare historic move, also began growing, with a dozen Democratic lawmakers in support of removing Menendez from the Senate if he refused to resign, per Politico NJ.

From Insider NJ earlier today: Junior U.S. Senator Cory Booker says he will lead the effort to catapult Senior U.S. Senator Bob Menendez out of the United States Senate. Critically, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also says Menendez should go.

The initial NBC report, which Menendez has refuted, says that Menendez ‘had been defiant for months in the face of calls from dozens of Senate Democrats to resign’ and ‘appears to have finally relented after the guilty verdict and growing threats to expel him if he refused. He is calling allies to them of his intention to resign’, sources told NBC.

Should Menendez resign, Governor Murphy would be empowered to appoint a temporary replacement to the seat.  The last time that happened in the Garden State was in 2013, following the death of Senator Frank Lautenberg; former Governor Christie appointed then-Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa, a Republican, to the seat.  He opted against running in the special election, which was won by then-Newark Mayor Cory Booker.  A Menendez resignation would elevate Booker to the status of the state’s ‘senior Senator’.

Senate Minority Leader Bucco weighed in this evening on the initial report that Menendez was telling allies he was going to resign, and urged Murphy to appoint a placeholder, and not Democratic Senate nominee Rep. Andy Kim: “Appointing candidate Andy Kim to fill this vacancy would put the thumb on the scale – benefiting one candidate before an election, and further eroding what little trust the public still has in its officials after Senator Menendez’s conviction. New Jersey has to end the special insider deals that got us here. I’m urging Governor Murphy to do the right thing, appoint a trusted and respected leader as a placeholder, and let the voters have their say this November without interference. This is the model Governor Christie embraced following the death of Senator Lautenberg, which allowed a fair and honest election to play out for voters.”

Menendez survived his first corruption trial in 2017 with a hung jury – but couldn’t escape the lurid evidence of gold bars accepted for services delivered as he absorbed a damning guilty verdict.