Gold bars, guns, cash stuffed into a coat, and favors for a foreign government — the new indictment of US senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat representing New Jersey, reads like the plot of a cheap pulp novel satirizing political graft. But the allegations against the longtime lawmaker are all too real — and the purported scheme all too predictable — in a country whose judiciary has been effectively telling politicians that corruption is perfectly legal.

The cartoonish details of the Menendez indictment evoke memories of the Abscam and Keating Five scandals. Indeed, this affair goes way beyond the donation-for-legislation culture that has been normalized in Washington. Federal prosecutors allege an elaborate plot in which Menendez and his wife accepted “hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes in exchange for using Menendez’s power and influence as a senator to seek to protect and enrich” a trio of businessmen “and to benefit the Arab Republic of Egypt.”

In specific, Menendez and his wife stand accused of accepting “cash, gold, payments toward a home mortgage, compensation for a low-or-no-show job, a luxury vehicle, and other things of value.” The indictment alleges that, in exchange, Menendez passed nonpublic US government information to Egyptian officials; used his position as Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman to facilitate and “sign off on” weapons sales to that country; plotted to disrupt a criminal investigation into one of the businessmen; and persuaded the Biden administration to install a new prosecutor whom he believed he could influence on behalf of another businessman.