An attorney for Sen. Robert Menendez on Wednesday laid the blame for the bribery charges facing the senator squarely on his wife — a woman he found “dazzling” but who, his attorney said, had her troubled past financial situation and hid the source of her new income from her. powerful husband.
She had kept him in the dark about “what she was asking others to give her,” attorney Avi Weitzman told a jury in opening statements at the start of the Manhattan senator's federal corruption trial.
The gold and some of the cash the FBI found in a search of the senator's New Jersey home — items that prosecutors say were bribes — were kept in a locked closet where his wife, Nadine Menendez, kept her clothes kept, Mr. Weitzman said.
“He did not know about the gold bars that were in that closet,” Mr. Weitzman added, describing Mr. Menendez as an American patriot and “lifelong public servant” who “did not take bribes.”
Prosecutors have charged Mr. Menendez, 70, and his wife with accepting gifts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, including cash, gold, home furnishings and a $60,000 Mercedes, in exchange for political favors for friends back home and the governments of Egypt and Qatar. .
It is the second bribery trial against Mr. Menendez, a Democrat who has long been dogged by corruption allegations. He walked away largely unscathed from the first, which ended in a hung jury in New Jersey in 2017. But the new indictment, handed down in September by a federal grand jury in Manhattan, will likely end the senator's 30-year career in Congress.
On Wednesday, federal prosecutor Lara Pomerantz presented Mr. Menendez as a high-ranking elected official who constantly rolls up his sleeves, a senator “who is putting his power up for sale.”
“This was not the usual politics,” Ms. Pomerantz said as she mapped out a complex web of accusations, using short sentences and colloquialisms. “This was politics for profit. This was a United States Senator coming up.”
The trial and Mr. Menendez's wildly clashing portraits promised to provide a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the government and the private life of one of the nation's most powerful elected officials.
More than once, Ms. Pomerantz turned and gestured to Mr. Menendez, who sat behind her, flanked by his lawyers. The senator leaned forward intently, but showed no apparent emotion; his hand sometimes rested on his chin and over his mouth.
The indictment accuses Ms. Menendez of being a middleman who acted as a conduit for bribes and messages. And the Senator's defense, if not brave, must not injure her own defense; it is unlikely it will be admitted as evidence at her trial, which is set to begin in July.
Ms. Menendez, 57, was not in court Wednesday.
She was initially scheduled to be tried alongside her husband, but the judge, Sidney H. Stein, postponed her trial after her lawyers said she had a “serious medical condition” that would require surgery and a potentially long recovery period. Her lawyers had no comment on Mr. Weitzman's claims.
Because she herself is under indictment and cannot legally be forced to testify against her husband, she is unlikely to testify at Mr. Menendez's trial.
Mr. Weitzman told the jury in hour-long testimony that the senator was aware of gold that Ms. Menendez said she inherited from her family — carpet merchants, originally from Armenia, who emigrated to the United States from Lebanon when Ms. Menendez was a child. But he said she hid other gold bars that prosecutors say were given to her by a co-defendant, Fred Daibes.
The couple began dating in early 2018 and married in 2020, about six months after Mr. Menendez moved into his fiancée's modest, split-level home in Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
The senator, Mr. Weitzman said, was enchanted by Ms. Menendez, who has a master's degree in French and speaks four languages.
“Bob fell for her,” he said.
But they never shared a bank account or even a cellphone plan, he said, and spent much of the week apart while the senator was in Washington.
Mr. Menendez is being tried along with two New Jersey businessmen — Mr. Daibes and Wael Hana — who prosecutors say profited from the scheme and helped funnel bribes to the couple. The senator, his wife, Mr Hana and Mr Daibes have all pleaded not guilty.
The charges against Mr. Menendez, when first announced by Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, roiled Washington and led to calls for the senator's resignation, even from previously staunch supporters like the junior senator from New Jersey. Cory Booker and state Governor Philip D. Murphy.
Judge Stein told potential jurors that the trial could last nearly two months. Much of the prosecution's case will be presented through the testimony of witnesses, including a New Jersey businessman, Jose Uribe, who was indicted and later pleaded guilty and is cooperating with the government.
The prosecutor, Ms. Pomerantz, indicated that the government would also show the jury what the indictment described as “fruits” of the alleged bribery scheme.
This includes some of the more than $480,000 in cash and 13 bars of gold bullion, worth more than $100,000, that prosecutors say were found during the search of the Menendezes' home in June 2022. much of the money was in envelopes and hidden. in clothing, closets and a safe, the complaint said.
Mr. Menendez has consistently maintained his innocence in press conferences and interviews, saying he would be acquitted and leaving open the possibility to run for re-election as an independent in November. But he declined to seek the Democratic nomination for the seat, and a primary election will take place on June 4 without his name on the ballot.
On the Senate floor in January, he said the Southern District Prosecutors had based the charges on “unfounded suspicions, not facts,” and that they were “not engaged in a prosecution but in a persecution.”
The indictment covers a daring range of schemes. Mr. Menendez is accused of sending weapons and aid to Egypt at a time when there were questions in Congress about that country's human rights record. He tried to interfere with several state and federal criminal investigations involving Mr. Uribe and Mr. Daibes, prosecutors say. He is also accused of using his influence to help Hana's halal meat certification company gain a lucrative monopoly in Egypt.
“Robert Menendez was a United States Senator motivated by greed and focused on how much money he could put in his own pocket and his wife's,” Ms. Pomerantz told the jury.
Shortly after he was charged, Mr. Menendez issued a public explanation for at least some of the money investigators discovered in his home. He said he routinely withdrew large sums of money from his savings account, a habit he said he learned from his Cuban immigrant parents.
Mr. Menendez's lawyers have since said in court papers that they wanted a psychiatrist to testify about the senator's habit of hoarding money. The doctor, they wrote, would tell the jury that the practice was rooted in deep psychological trauma related to the death by suicide of Mr. Menendez's father nearly half a century ago, and a family history of confiscated property in Cuba .
The government objected to the potential testimony and on Tuesday Judge Stein said he would not allow it.
The jury of six men and six women – as well as six alternate jurors – was selected and sworn in by Judge Stein just before 1pm on Wednesday, after two and a half days of questioning. The judges come from New York City and Westchester County, and several of them have advanced degrees. The group consists of a retired economist, an entertainment consultant and an occupational therapist.
Lawyers for Mr Hana and Mr Daibes were expected to make opening statements on Thursday.
Nicholas Fandos, Maria Kramer And Maia Coleman reporting contributed.