EDITORIAL: The suspicious Robert Menendez indictment

OPINION:

The Justice Department surprised nobody with the announcement that it will seek an indictment of Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a Democrat. A criminal investigation of the senator has been going on for many months. A jury may ultimately sort it out, and that’s the way it should be. But Ted Cruz, his colleague in the U.S. Senate, put in words what a lot of people in Washington have been thinking: Does this indictment have more to do with politics than corruption or law?

President Obama’s faithful attorney general arranged the indictment of the only Democrat with the grit and gumption to say out loud what some of his partisan colleagues think, that the president is about to make a bad deal with Iran. Mr. Menendez is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where his opposition can embarrass and abash the president. The president’s thin skin is easily pierced and critiques from within his ranks is particularly unacceptable as he moves toward an agreement with the mullahs in Tehran.

The president used a Senate Democratic Issues Conference in January to urge Democrats to resist passage of legislation written by Mr. Menendez and Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, a Republican, to authorize tighter sanctions against Iran if it continues to pursue a nuclear weapon. Mr. Menendez further opposes the president’s romance with the Castro brothers in Cuba, and has hinted that without his support and approval the president will have difficulty getting a nominee for ambassador to Havana confirmed.

With Mr. Menendez sitting prominently before him, Mr. Obama once accused his critics of yielding to domestic political contributors and lobbyists by standing up to the White House. The president could not imagine that they might be acting from a genuine concern for the national interests. Mr. Menendez was described as rising to his feet, outraged, to object to what he called a personal affront. Aides called the exchange “respectful,” rather than “angry.” But Mr. Obama did not appear to be amused.

The suspicions of politics in the Menendez indictment may be unwarranted, but Eric Holder seems to us capable of just about anything to grease the path for whatever the president wants. His signature domestic initiative, Obamacare, passed Congress only after federal prosecutors persecuted the late Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, a harsh critic of the health care scheme, on charges that were later dismissed by a federal appeals court that held the Justice Department guilty of prosecutorial misconduct.

Mr. Holder’s conclusion of the investigation that exonerated the police officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, was given reluctantly and grudgingly, and he suggested that even though the officer was innocent of evil intent the public was entitled to think ill of Ferguson and the people who live there. The Justice Department may not have targeted Mr. Menendez for his politics, but the poisoned atmosphere in President Obama’s Washington explains why many people think he was.

Many lawyers and legal scholars say the charges against Mr. Menendez will be particularly difficult to prove in court. Mr. Menendez told The New York Times several weeks ago that despite his prominent position in Congress, “I don’t get calls from the White House.” Just from Mr. Holder and the Justice Department.