It had been a busy Thursday for Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey.
He was in Washington presiding over the Senate International Relations Committee because it heard testimony concerning the want for sustained assist to Ukraine, after which getting ready to journey to Philadelphia together with his spouse, Nadine Menendez, to simply accept an award from an Armenian-American group.
Again at dwelling, the F.B.I. was watching.
An agent, conducting surveillance close to the couple’s modest, split-level home in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., snapped a photograph of a Mercedes-Benz convertible parked out entrance, a courtroom submitting exhibits. A number of weeks later, investigators looking out the house would discover 13 bars of gold bullion and greater than $480,000 in money, a lot of it stashed in coat jackets, boots and a secure.
On Monday, nearly two years to the day after that agent was watching the senator’s home, Mr. Menendez, a Democrat, is to go on trial in Federal District Court docket in Manhattan, charged with participating in an elaborate, yearslong bribery scheme.
Will probably be his second corruption trial in seven years, however in contrast to the primary, which led to a hung jury, there’s a risky and stunning new factor: fees towards Mr. Menendez’s spouse.
The case, prosecutors have indicated, is as a lot about Ms. Menendez as it’s about her husband. The U.S. legal professional’s workplace for the Southern District of New York has depicted Mr. Menendez and his spouse as collaborators who took bribes in alternate for the senator’s willingness to steer weapons and authorities assist to Egypt, prop up a buddy’s halal meat monopoly and meddle in felony investigations involving allies.
“What else can the love of my life do for you?” Ms. Menendez requested at a Washington steakhouse dinner throughout one of many many conferences that prosecutors say she organized between her husband and Egyptian officers.
Collectively, prosecutors contend, the couple had been entangled in corrupt schemes that started even earlier than their marriage in October 2020. The bribes, which additionally included a diamond ring and residential furnishings, helped Mr. and Ms. Menendez reside above their lawful means, prosecutors say.
However that partnership could now be fracturing, because the senator’s legal professionals seem like getting ready a protection that pins a lot of the blame on his spouse.
Ms. Menendez was to have been on trial along with her husband this week, however a decide postponed her trial till July after her legal professionals stated she had a “critical medical situation” that required surgical procedure and a doubtlessly extended interval of restoration.
Though she won’t be on the protection desk, she is predicted to loom uncomfortably over the proceedings. By the federal government’s telling, Ms. Menendez, 57, was a necessary cog in a wheel of corruption. She served as a conduit for bribes and as a go-between who relayed messages in emails and texts, typically utilizing what she and her husband known as her “007” telephone.
The senator’s legal professionals have stated in authorized papers that Mr. Menendez could, if he testifies, say he was duped by the girl he married lower than 4 years in the past, that she “withheld info” and that she “led him to imagine that nothing illegal was happening.”
Such a tactic presents challenges, given the couple’s public persona as loyal companions who traveled and attended occasions collectively, stated Tatiana R. Martins, a former chief of the Southern District’s public corruption unit who’s now in non-public observe.
Ms. Martins stated the senator’s legal professionals may argue that his spouse “did this all on her personal; he had no thought; she stored it from him,” however prosecutors may search to rebut that by introducing proof of how shut the 2 had been and the way they shared all the pieces.
“They’ve this nice relationship, but she’s conserving all this from him?” Ms. Martins stated.
As for Ms. Menendez, even when her husband’s technique is to attempt to shift blame, such testimony would nearly definitely be inadmissible at her trial, stated Jonathan Kravis, a protection lawyer in Washington and former trial legal professional with the Justice Division’s public integrity part.
The postponement of Ms. Menendez’s trial may also give her and her legal professionals a preview of the total scope of the federal government’s case and allow them to make strategic changes as wanted, he stated.
“That is clearly not how the federal government desires to do it,” Mr. Kravis stated. However, he added, the separate trials had been “not a loss of life blow, for both case, by any means.”
Mr. Menendez might be tried alongside two New Jersey businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, who had been additionally charged within the bribery conspiracy. All three have pleaded not responsible, as has Ms. Menendez.
Mr. Menendez, who’s close to the tip of his third full time period, has persistently maintained his innocence and has left open the potential for working for re-election in November. On the Senate flooring in January, he attacked the Southern District prosecutors, saying they had been engaged “not in a prosecution however a persecution” and had been searching for “victory, not justice.”
The fees, disclosed in a September indictment, shook Washington and prompted even Mr. Menendez’s most stalwart Democratic allies to name for his resignation. The brazen nature of the fees has additionally fueled a backlash towards so-called machine politics in New Jersey, which has, in flip, considerably elevated the challenges his son, Consultant Robert Menendez, faces as he seeks a second Home time period.
The trial is predicted to delve into problems with political intrigue at dwelling and overseas at a second of heightened scrutiny over legislative self-dealing. Two weeks in the past, Consultant Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas, and his spouse had been charged with taking bribes from corporations managed by the federal government of Azerbaijan, intensifying curiosity within the position performed by international brokers.
Mr. Menendez’s legal professionals have argued in courtroom that by charging the senator, who has represented New Jersey in Congress since 1993, prosecutors are searching for to criminalize routine legislative actions. In a single submitting, the legal professionals stated “the federal government’s obvious zeal to ‘get again’ at Senator Menendez for defeating its prior prosecution has overwhelmed its sound judgment.”
The senator’s legal professionals have additionally requested the decide, Sidney H. Stein, to permit them to current the jury with the testimony of a psychiatrist, Karen B. Rosenbaum, who has examined the senator. She has concluded, they stated, that “concern of shortage” stemming from Mr. Menendez’s father’s loss of life by suicide and his dad and mom’ historical past as Cuban refugees led to a “longstanding coping mechanism of routinely withdrawing and storing money in his dwelling” — a principle that protection legal professionals will presumably use to elucidate the cash seized by investigators.
In summarizing the psychiatrist’s findings, the senator’s legal professionals additionally disclosed that Mr. Menendez’s father, a compulsive gambler, died after Mr. Menendez stopped paying off his playing money owed, contributing to what they known as “intergenerational trauma.”
Federal prosecutors oppose permitting Dr. Rosenbaum’s testimony, questioning the scientific foundation for her conclusions and arguing that the protection is making an attempt to “engender sympathy” from the jury improperly.
Gin and cigars
The senator’s trial may also pull again the curtain on the spending habits of a pair who hopscotched world wide with congressional delegations, attended state dinners on the White Home and entertained usually.
In a single authorized submitting, prosecutors famous Mr. Menendez’s desire for “luxurious gadgets similar to Bombay Sapphire gin, cigars and upscale meals.”
The element prompted a tart response from the senator’s legal professionals, who famous that Bombay sells for $23.99 at Goal.
“Hardly a top-shelf liquor, nothing about Bombay Sapphire gin smells of extra or is past Senator Menendez’s monetary skills as a lifetime public servant,” they wrote.
Decide Stein dominated this month that he would allow the introduction of the proof, saying it was “inextricably intertwined with the proof of the charged crimes.”
The indictment is crammed with references to cash, and to its absence.
Ms. Menendez, who divorced her first husband in 2005, was unemployed when she started relationship Mr. Menendez in early 2018. Ten months later, she was concerned in a deadly pedestrian motorized vehicle accident that left her with out a automobile, a necessity that prosecutors say led to one of many first bribes, the Mercedes-Benz convertible.
Jose Uribe, a former insurance coverage dealer charged with the senator within the alleged conspiracy, has pleaded responsible. He admitted in courtroom in March that he had given Ms. Menendez the $60,000 convertible in return for the senator’s assist in making an attempt to disrupt an insurance coverage fraud investigation in New Jersey.
“I knew that giving a automobile in return for influencing a United States senator to cease a felony investigation was mistaken, and I deeply remorse my actions,” Mr. Uribe informed Decide Stein.
When Ms. Menendez almost misplaced her dwelling to foreclosures in 2019, Mr. Hana used his halal meat certification firm to pay $23,569 to erase her mortgage debt and he and Mr. Uribe continued to “facilitate the funds,” prosecutors say.
Ms. Menendez and her first husband purchased the home, inbuilt 1960, when their two kids had been younger. The plan was to tear it down and rebuild, based on two former shut associates. As an alternative, over time, the small home with light white siding started to appear run-down and misplaced in a neighborhood of knockdowns changed by mansions with three-car garages and conspicuous stone facades.
After the senator moved in, in 2020, messages relayed on cellphones seized by investigators and included in courtroom filings confirmed Ms. Menendez beckoning handymen to the home to trim timber, lay carpet, ship an influence washer and restore the storage door.
In an interview with the F.B.I., one individual stated he had given Ms. Menendez a garden mower, however when the senator realized of it, “he grew to become offended” and informed her that “she needed to pay.”
However by 2022, after the couple’s home was searched, they had been working collectively to attempt to cowl their tracks, prosecutors stated.
Mr. Menendez wrote his spouse a verify for the quantity Mr. Hana had paid towards the mortgage, including a handwritten memo indicating it was “to liquidate mortgage,” prosecutors stated. She then reimbursed Mr. Hana, by means of his lawyer, noting it was “full fee of Wael Hana mortgage,” based on the indictment.
The Menendezes additionally refunded the automobile funds.
The cash, prosecutors stated, was not a mortgage, however a bribe fee — “as Menendez and Nadine Menendez properly knew.”
In March, prosecutors introduced a brand new cost towards the Menendezes: obstruction of justice.
