Final September, a distinguished white-collar protection lawyer met with federal prosecutors in Manhattan in a last-ditch effort to stave off an indictment in opposition to his consumer.
The consumer was Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, one in all Congress’s strongest members and the topic of a corruption investigation by the U.S. legal professional’s workplace for the Southern District of New York. Within the assembly, the lawyer, Abbe D. Lowell, used a PowerPoint presentation to convey explanations for sure monetary funds that have been underneath scrutiny by the federal government.
It was a second of nice threat and potential peril for Mr. Menendez — and the trouble failed.
Lower than two weeks later, prosecutors introduced an indictment charging the senator and his spouse, Nadine Menendez, with conspiring to simply accept hundreds of {dollars} in bribes in change for political favors. The federal government later added counts of obstructing justice, saying the senator, amongst different issues, “induced” his lawyer to satisfy with prosecutors and to make false and deceptive statements in an effort to cowl up the scheme.
The federal government has made it clear that Mr. Lowell, who represented Mr. Menendez solely through the investigation and never afterward, engaged in no wrongdoing. However the episode, an untold chapter within the story of the Menendez investigation that was lately disclosed in paperwork and testimony filed within the senator’s case, illuminates the usually confidential displays attorneys make as they search to steer prosecutors to not cost a consumer, significantly one as high-profile because the senator.
“Lowell could have believed he knew all the info,” stated Benjamin Brafman, a number one protection lawyer in New York who isn’t concerned within the case. “However clearly, if the federal government is correct, Menendez misled him.”
“That is high-stakes poker, and the federal government clearly known as his bluff,” Mr. Brafman added.
Tatiana R. Martins, a former chief of the Southern District’s public corruption unit and now in personal observe, stated the choice to cost Mr. Menendez, 70, with obstruction primarily based partially on Mr. Lowell’s presentation was uncommon and aggressive — “type of a warning shot to the white-collar bar to weigh fastidiously the choice to make any factual illustration to the federal government when they’re near indicting.”
Mr. Menendez, a Democrat, has vigorously maintained his innocence since being charged final yr. “From my perspective, the federal government has didn’t show each side of its case,” the senator stated on Wednesday, after his attorneys known as their final witness in his almost two-month trial on bribery and different fees.
Particulars of Mr. Lowell’s September assembly with the federal government (and an earlier session in June 2023) surfaced throughout a courtroom dispute over whether or not prosecutors might introduce copies of a number of slides from Mr. Lowell’s PowerPoint presentation. The jury was not current.
As a part of that debate, prosecutors filed a proposed abstract of testimony the federal government stated Mr. Lowell would supply about his illustration of Mr. Menendez if he have been known as to testify. Prosecutors advised the choose, Sidney H. Stein, that they offered the doc weeks in the past to Mr. Menendez and that he declined to signal it, “with out disputing its substantive accuracy.”
Mr. Menendez’s protection workforce declined to remark for this text aside from to say they disputed the accuracy of the federal government’s proposed abstract of Mr. Lowell’s anticipated testimony.
The six-page doc was not launched as proof on the trial, and won’t be seen by the jury. Mr. Lowell declined to remark as did a Southern District spokesman.
In response to the federal government’s doc, Mr. Menendez employed Mr. Lowell and his legislation agency, Winston & Strawn, in June 2022, just a few days after federal search warrants have been executed on the Menendezes’ houses in New Jersey and Washington and after the senator obtained a grand jury subpoena.
Mr. Lowell, a veteran Washington lawyer whose purchasers have included Hunter Biden and Jared Kushner, had a profitable observe report with Mr. Menendez. In 2017, he represented the senator in an unrelated federal bribery trial in New Jersey, which led to a hung jury. One juror advised reporters that 10 of the 12 jurors supported discovering Mr. Menendez not responsible. Mr. Menendez was not retried and fees have been dismissed.
After retaining Mr. Lowell within the present case, the doc says, Mr. Menendez advised him {that a} businessman in 2019 made a $23,000 fee to a mortgage firm on behalf of Ms. Menendez, who on the time was dealing with foreclosures. Mr. Menendez additionally advised Mr. Lowell that one other businessman had made automobile funds for Ms. Menendez, the proposed abstract says.
Mr. Menendez advised Mr. Lowell that the mortgage and automobile funds represented loans and that he solely turned conscious of the funds in 2022 after he realized of the federal investigation, the doc says.
In distinction, the indictment says Mr. Menendez “properly knew” the funds have been bribes and that he had realized of them earlier than 2022.
Ms. Menendez, 57, was additionally indicted within the alleged bribery conspiracy and she or he, too, was later charged with obstruction of justice after she “induced” her attorneys to make false statements to prosecutors, the indictment says. The main points of her attorneys’ discussions with the federal government haven’t been made public, and her trial has been postponed as a result of she is being handled for breast most cancers. She has pleaded not responsible.
Mr. Lowell made an preliminary presentation to federal prosecutors in June 2023, in accordance with the proposed abstract. Earlier than the assembly, he mentioned with Mr. Menendez the subjects that will be lined, what Mr. Lowell would say about every and that the aim of the presentation was to supply info to the prosecutors “to hunt to discourage them from bringing legal fees in opposition to Mr. Menendez.”
On the assembly, Mr. Lowell made his presentation “primarily based on what he was advised by Menendez,” the doc says.
Earlier than the September 2023 assembly, Mr. Lowell once more mentioned with Mr. Menendez what the lawyer would say, incorporating suggestions from Mr. Menendez, the proposed abstract says.
Mr. Lowell additionally made the PowerPoint presentation, titled “Senator Robert Menendez, Presentation to U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace, Southern District of New York, Sept. 11, 2023.”
On the assembly, the U.S. legal professional, Damian Williams, who greeted the members and made introductions, was joined by his prime deputies and the prosecutors investigating the senator, in accordance with testimony by a former workplace paralegal, Geoffrey Mearns.
Mr. Mearns stated Mr. Lowell was accompanied by a small variety of attorneys from his agency. Mr. Mearns’s testimony was supplemented by a colleague’s memo summarizing Mr. Mearns’s recollections that was not proven to the jury.
Mr. Lowell stated “one thing alongside strains should you can inform us extra about what you might be considering/the place your heads are at, we are able to do a greater job explaining the place we (protection) are at,” the memo exhibits.
The start of the assembly, which ran 90 minutes, was cordial and pleasant, in accordance with the memo, however towards the tip, particularly after Mr. Lowell appeared to grasp the workplace “was not going to be asking many questions or present its hand,” the tone shifted. Mr. Lowell appeared sad and was “making an attempt to persuade” the prosecutors “to speak to him extra.”
“In sum, Abbe appeared to wish to be taught extra about whether or not there have been issues that he had not given an evidence for, which may bear on fees,” the memo says.
Within the dispute over whether or not the slides from the PowerPoint presentation ought to be admitted at trial, prosecutors argued that they contained false statements, supporting the obstruction depend.
“The jury’s entitled to conclude that falsity was intentional,” a prosecutor, Daniel C. Richenthal, stated.
The senator’s attorneys, Avi Weitzman and Adam Price, argued that the choice of slides was cherry-picked. With out testimony from Mr. Lowell, they stated, the slides would offer jurors a “distorted and unfairly pro-government view of what truly occurred through the presentation.”
The protection argued that sometimes, attorneys make statements in such conferences with {qualifications} and that misstatements can happen.
“You at all times current it in a hypothetical: ‘If the consumer was to come back in, he would possible say one thing like X,’” Mr. Weitzman advised the choose. “You at all times say, in each legal professional proffer, ‘That is primarily based on our information at current.’”
The attorneys steered that Mr. Lowell possible delivered his presentation with such disclaimers, writing, “Senator Menendez understood that his legal professional would offer the prosecutors solely along with his greatest understanding of the proof on the time.” That, they stated, would present Mr. Menendez had no intent to hinder justice.
Decide Stein dominated that the slides may very well be launched at trial; neither facet known as Mr. Lowell to testify.
