Pro-Armenian US Senator Bob Menendez set to resign after bribery conviction

Pro-Armenian US Senator Bob Menendez told allies that he would step down from Congress after he was convicted on federal bribery charges, two people directly familiar with the conversations told NBC News.

Menendez, who had been defiant for months in the face of calls from dozens of Senate Democrats to resign, appears to have finally relented after the guilty verdict and growing threats to expel him if he refused. He is calling allies to notify them of his intention to resign, these sources said, which would end a three-decade career in Congress that included a powerful committee chairmanship, writing major legislation and two criminal trials over allegations of corruption.

On July 16, a federal jury in New York found Menendez guilty of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and acting as an unregistered foreign agent.

The jury reportedly deliberated for three days following the senior senator's nine-week trial, ultimately finding him guilty on all 16 counts against him.

Prosecutors alleged that Menendez, 70, accepted bribes from a trio of New Jersey businessmen -- Fred Daibes, Wael Hana and Jose Uribe -- that included gold bars, mortgage payments, a luxury car and more than $480,000 in cash. The payments were made in exchange for Menendez carrying out a series of favors that included shielding individuals from prosecution and illicitly using his office to benefit the Egyptian and Qatari governments.

Menendez's wife, Nadine Arslanian, was charged with crimes in a separate case, but her trial has been indefinitely delayed to allow her to recover from breast cancer surgery.

Investigators found more than $486,000 in cash when they searched Menendez's home in 2022, "much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets and a safe," in addition to gold bars, according to the indictment that was unsealed in December.

Two of the 1 kilogram and nine one-ounce gold bars that were recovered bore serial numbers indicating they were once owned by Daibes, according to prosecutors.

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