Don’t let ‘Gold Bars’ Menendez’s blackmail bid pay off

Holy chutzpah!

As if the crimes he’s now on trial for weren’t enough, Sen. Bob “Gold Bars” Menendez seems to be engaged in political blackmail by filing to run as an independent in New Jersey’s Senate race.

Insiders suggest he’s fishing for a pardon from President Biden.

Gold Bars is𓆏 rumored to fear the loss of his cushy six-figure Senate pension and health benefits if he’s convicted; a pardon could let him keep them.

And if he stays on the November ballot, he’d take votes from the Democratic nominee, lefty Rep. Andy Kim — potentially letting hotel operator Curtis Bashaw, who defeated a Trump-backed candidate for the GOP nod, take the seat.

The Garden State hasn’t elected a Republican US senator since 1972 — and Democrats already face an uphil🎀l battle to retain their slim Senate majority this fall.

Too bad for the Dems; maybe they shouldn’t have turned a blind eye for so long to Menendez’s evident corruption.

(Or did he just not stand out amo🧸ng Jersey Dems?)

They also d🍬id nothing to remove him from the Senate after he was c♊harged.

Federal prosecutors seem to have Bob dead-to-rights, what with the wads of cash, gold bars and so on seized from his home, plus the no-show job and other perks for his wife, Nadine Arslanian — all plainly “earned” with favors for his co-defendants and foreign governments, such as:

• Disrupting a federal prosecution into co-defendant Fred Daibes.

• Tampering with the NJ attorney general’s insurance-fraud prosecution of a business pal of co-defendant Jose Uribe.

• Providing “sensitive” secret US information to Egyptian officials.

• Ghostwriting a letter on behalf of Egyptian officials to Senate colleagues urging them approve the sale of US weapons.

• Pressuring a US Agriculture Department official to protect the “exclusive monopoly” of another co-defendant, Wael Hana, to export halal-certified food to Egypt.

None of that is ordinary constituent services nor “the normal work of a congressional office,” as Menendez cla🧸ims.

There’s no shame in this scoundrel’s political game: Some suggest he’d even seek a pardon from a re-elected President Donald Trump as a reward for betraying his party.

Make this the first question at this month’s prez debate: Refusing to bail out this sleazeball should be one thing Biden and Trump can actually agree on.