IIRC Menendez was accused and found guilty of accepting around $30,000 per year from foreign governments?

That's probably only the part they had the hard proof for.

Also, the press release[1] says:

> between 2018 and 2022, Senator Menendez and his wife engaged in a corrupt relationship with Wael Hana, Jose Uribe, and Fred Daibes – three New Jersey businessmen who collectively paid hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes, including cash, gold, a Mercedes Benz, and other things of value

and later:

> Over $480,000 in cash — much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe — was discovered in the home, as well as over $70,000 in cash in NADINE MENENDEZ’s safe deposit box, which was also searched pursuant to a separate search warrant

This seems to be more than $120K over 4 years. Of course, not all of the cash found may be result of those bribes, but likely at least some of it is.

[1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/us-senator-robert-menen...

I always half-jokingly think "should I buy a politician?"

I feel like a few friends could go in on it.

It could be like an "insurance" where people pay for politician lobbying. Pool our resources and put it in the right spots.

Ok but that point still defeats the premise that Crowdstrike are spending a large enough amount on lobbying that it is hampering their engineering dept.

I believe the OP was using figurative language. The point seems to be that _something_ is hampering their engineering department and they shouldn't be lobbying the government to have their software so deeply embedded into so many systems until they fix that.

In the UK, a housing minister was bribed with £12,000 in return for a £45m tax break.

3750:1 return on investment, you don't get many investments that lucrative!