New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez was found guilty on 16 counts of accepting bribes, including gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz, in exchange for assisting foreign governments.
The jury convicted Menendez after more than 12 hours of deliberation over three days during the nine-week trial.
Menendez, formerly the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, now faces decades in prison.
Democratic senators have called on him to step down from Congress in light of his conviction.
“Senator Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our country and resign,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, Democratic Senate Majority Leader, in a statement.
Addressing reporters after his conviction, Menendez maintained that he was innocent.
“I never violated my public oath,” he said outside the New York City courthouse on Tuesday. “I have never been but a patriot of my country and for my country.”
His lawyer, Adam Fee, said he was “surprised and disappointed” by the jury’s guilty finding and promised to fight “aggressively.”
Prosecutors claimed the case involved “shocking levels of corruption.”
“This wasn’t politics as usual; this was politics for profit,” said Damian Williams, an attorney with the Southern District of New York.
“Now that the jury has convicted Bob Menendez, his years of selling his office to the highest bidder have finally come to an end,” Mr. Williams claimed.
Menendez pleaded not guilty during the trial. His defenders contended that the gifts he accepted did not constitute bribes since prosecutors had failed to demonstrate that he took any specific action as a result of receiving them.
Nadine Arslanian Menendez, his wife, also faces charges in the bribery case, but her trial was delayed so she could undergo breast cancer treatment. She, however, has pleaded not guilty.
His lawyers had attempted to shift blame to Mrs. Menendez, making her appear as a financially troubled individual who hoped to “get cash and assets any way she could.”.
However, prosecutors relied on expert testimony, emails, and Menendez’s text messages to show that the senator accepted lavish rewards from foreign governments.
The prosecutors said the gifts included gold bars worth over $100,000 (£79,000). Some of the bars were handed to jurors as evidence in the trial.
The jurors also heard that FBI agents had found more than $480,000 (£370,452) in cash inside Menendez’s home, some of which was stuffed in envelopes and coats.
Two businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, are also being tried for allegedly seeking out the senator to illegally aid the Egyptian government and secure millions of dollars from a Qatari investment fund.
Another businessman, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty and testified against Mr. Menendez in the trial.
Prosecutors said that in exchange for the bribes, Menendez helped secure millions of dollars in US aid for Egypt, where Hana had ties to government officials.
He was also accused of attempting to influence criminal investigations into Daibes and Uribe.
Both businessmen were co-defendants in Menendez’s case and were convicted of the charges they faced.
Menendez is now campaigning as an independent to keep his seat in the November election.
Most Democrats in the state abandoned him last year after the indictment revealed gold bars kept in his home.
Andy Kim, a Democratic congressman from New Jersey, described the verdict as “a sad and sombre day” for the state.
“I called on Senator Menendez to step down when these charges were first made public, and now that he has been found guilty, I believe the only course of action for him is to resign his seat immediately,” Mr. Kim said in a statement.
“The people of New Jersey deserve better,” he said.
The senator already faced federal corruption allegations. He was tried in 2017, with the Justice Department saying that he performed political favours for a wealthy Florida eye specialist in exchange for luxury vacations and other extravagant gifts.
However, the case ended in a mistrial because he was cleared of some charges and jurors were unable to reach a unanimous decision.
