WASHINGTON _ Sen. Robert Menendez is set to resume his duties as the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, with the Senate Democratic caucus reaffirming his position now that he has been cleared of federal corruption charges.
According to multiple Democratic senators, the caucus acted during Tuesday's policy lunch.
The New Jersey Democrat stepped aside temporarily from the ranking member slot in 2015 after being indicted on federal corruption charges.
The government moved to drop remaining charges against Menendez last week, after the federal judge overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge William H. Walls, entered acquittals on seven of the 18 charges in the indictment against Menendez and his co-defendant, South Florida ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen.
That appeared to be a turning point for federal prosecutors, even though Walls left the rest of the government's case intact. "Given the impact of the Court's Jan. 24 Order on the charges and the evidence admissible in a retrial, the United States has determined that it will not retry the defendants on the remaining charges," DOJ spokeswoman Nicole Navas Oxman said in a statement.
Walls declared a mistrial in November after individually interviewing members of the jury after it deadlocked.
