U.S. Senator Who Called Bitcoin ‘Ideal Choice for Criminals’ Is Convicted of Bribery

U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey and staunch crypto critic, was found guilty of accepting bribes, including gold bars and a luxury car, in exchange for his political clout by a jury on Tuesday.

The development saw the crypto community point out the irony of a crypto critic who once alleged that bitcoin (BTC) “is an ideal choice for criminals” getting convicted as a criminal.

Menendez was also a co-sponsor of a bill titled “Accountability for Cryptocurrency in El Salvador (ACES) Act” which would have required the State Department to report on mitigating risks to the U.S. financial system from El Salvador’s adoption of bitcoin as legal tender.

Stacy Herbert, a member of The National Bitcoin Office (ONBTC) of El Salvador under President Nayib Bukele, wrote on X that while Senator Menendez was “hiding bars of ill-gotten gold… President Bukele was establishing the most transparent government in the world by posting El Salvador’s public bitcoin address for all the world to audit.”

Herbert added that the “malign actor was Bob Menendez” and that The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which Menendez was the chairman of “owes President Bukele and El Salvador an apology.”

“I have never been anything but a patriot of my country and for my country. I have never, ever been a foreign agent,” Menendez said outside the courthouse after the verdict made him the first sitting member of Congress to be convicted of acting as a foreign agent.

“This wasn’t politics as usual; this was politics for profit,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in a statement. “Because Senator Menendez has now been found guilty, his years of selling his office to the highest bidder have finally come to an end.”

Menendez was a congressperson since 1993, entering the Senate in 2006, has so far refused to resign despite numerous calls from senior colleagues to do so, including from Democratic Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer.

Menendez’s sentencing has been scheduled for October 29 and he could face decades in prison.

Read More: Bipartisan Senate Proposal Raises Alarm Over El Salvador’s Bitcoin Adoption