Hypocrisy of Accountability

Just last week, New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez was indicted on charges of corruption by the Department of Justice for the second time in 10 years. In pure Looney Tunes fashion, it was found that Menendez was stuffing his jacket full of cash to the tune of $500,000, as well as being in possession of luxury home furnishings and gold bars. He has since held a press conference and said that he will not be resigning despite the charges against him. This was in defiance of many Democratic leaders and members who have called for his resignation. Although, he has stepped down from his position as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. New Jersey Rep. Andy Kim has since announced that he will be running against Menendez in the 2024 election.   

What is even funnier than Menendez’s actions are the responses to such actions. As I mentioned earlier, many Democrats in Congress — and even New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy — are calling for Menendez’s resignation. More than one-third of Democrats in the Senate have advocated for Menendez to resign, too. What I don’t quite understand is the response from the other side of the aisle or the lack thereof. From what I have seen, there have been few or even no Republicans of either house of Congress to demand Menendez’s resignation. This may seem odd, as it would be easy to understand that in our polarized Congress, any member of either party would be quick to jump on the opportunity to condemn actions such as these, especially because this is the second time this has happened, but we have had nothing but crickets from Republican leaders. This is not to say that conservative voters are not condemning Menendez, which they, in fact, are right next to Democratic voters, but the leaders that said voters have elected have been so far tight-lipped.   

My main theory for this is pure hypocrisy. When your party constantly criticizes the DOJ for “witch-hunts” and being biased towards conservatives, it becomes difficult to suddenly turn around and support both the indictment and the calls for resignation. When a party becomes a shell of its former self because of one man with both orange hair and orange skin, you tend to only do as he says and as he does. Speaking of the orange man, Trump is under a DOJ investigation and indictment himself for 37 charges, ranging from making false statements all the way up to willful retention of national defense information. So, you could say he and the DOJ are not on the best terms right now. He lets his opinions be known — of course not on Twitter or any other well-known social media sites, as he has been banned from all of them — but on Truth Social, his own social media platform that is basically just Facebook. He has made many bold claims on Truth Social and through his campaign emails, most recently blaming “liberal jews” for “destroying America” and saying that Mark Milley should be tried and executed for treason. But even Trump himself has not come out with a rambling statement about Menendez, so it makes sense that any of his defenders in Congress would do so either. Doing so would show some speck of impartiality on the part of the DOJ, which cannot exist within the narrative that many Republican leaders hold.   

Another issue with Republican members is their own inability to call out corruption, legal or not when it happens within their own party. Democrats seemingly have no issue with this, as is seen in the case of Menendez. Before I go into this, I must acknowledge that the United States Congress and the Supreme Court are two different entities entirely and are held to different standards. Conservatives within Congress have said nothing about the large payments and gifts given to both Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito from Harlan Crow. It appears when there is corruption from their own side in the most influential court in America, Republicans see no issue or feign ignorance. The Supreme Court holds the most power in the U.S. and has the least amount of accountability to the people, as they are not elected by the people but nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, so corruption within it should be held to the highest level of scrutiny. If you don’t like your representative or senator, or they commit a crime, you can simply vote them out in the next election cycle if they don’t resign or are indicted, but the people who make some of the biggest decisions in the country are not so easy to remove. They must be held under a microscope. Call it what it is. Corruption. Call it when you see it. Democrat or Republican, it is up to the people we elect to represent us, even if it goes against your own party’s interest or your own personal beliefs.