Senator Bob Menendez. Photo: EFE.
A federal jury in New York City will begin deliberating on criminal charges against Sen. Bob Menendez in his bribery trial on Friday.
Yesterday, Judge Sidney Stein read instructions to jurors who have been listening and watching evidence for two months in federal court in Manhattan.
Prosecutors say Menendez accepted about $150,000 in gold bullion and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from three New Jersey businessmen between 2018 and 2022 to corruptly abuse his power as a senator to benefit the defendants.
The New Jersey senator is on trial with two businessmen: Farid Daibes and Wael Hanna, who have also pleaded not guilty. A third, Jose Uribe, has pleaded guilty and testified against the others.
Menendez’s wife, Nadine, pleaded not guilty, but her trial was postponed after she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery.
Federal Trial Begins Against Senator Bob Menendez
During the four-day closing, prosecutors turned to testimony and hundreds of pieces of evidence, including photos of gold bars and stacks of $100 bills found in a 2022 FBI raid of Menendez’s residence.
Prosecutors say the gold and cash, along with the Mercedes-Benz convertible, were proceeds of bribes.
Defense attorneys argued that the gold was among the valuables Nadine Menendez inherited from her family, while the cash was largely the result of Menendez’s habit of storing cash in the house after her family fled Cuba in 1951, before he was born, with the only money they had hidden in his grandfather’s watch.
Menendez’s attorney, Adam Fee, said Nadine Menendez kept the cash in her home because she “largely lived her life outside the banking system” after her family fled a country where their bank accounts and assets were seized. He said jurors could conclude that Nadine Menendez sold family jewelry or gold and kept the money she received in bags at home.
During the appeal, Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Reichenthal scoffed at Menendez’s attorney’s attempt to suggest that the $95,000 in cash found in a plastic bag inches from the senator’s coat rack belonged to his wife, calling the statement “really unbelievable.” The cash was found stuffed into some of the jackets.
He also said that Menendez helped Egyptian officials obtain classified information about the number of Americans and Egyptians working at the U.S. Embassy in Egypt — “hard evidence that Menendez put Egypt’s interests ahead of those of the United States.”
Menendez, 70, pleaded not guilty to all charges against him, including acting as a foreign agent for the Egyptian government.
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