A lawyer for Senator Robert Menendez on Wednesday laid blame for the bribery fees the senator faces squarely on his spouse — a lady he discovered “dazzling” however who, his lawyer stated, hid her previous dire funds and the supply of her newfound revenue from her highly effective husband.
She had saved him at nighttime about “what she was asking others to offer her,” the lawyer, Avi Weitzman, instructed a jury in opening statements at the beginning of the senator’s federal corruption trial in Manhattan.
The gold and a few of the money that the F.B.I. present in a search of the senator’s New Jersey dwelling — objects that prosecutors say had been bribes — had been saved in a locked closet the place his spouse, Nadine Menendez, saved her clothes, Mr. Weitzman stated.
“He didn’t know of the gold bars that existed in that closet,” Mr. Weitzman added, describing Mr. Menendez as an American patriot and “lifelong public servant” who “took no bribes.”
Prosecutors have charged Mr. Menendez, 70, and his spouse with accepting presents price a whole bunch of hundreds of {dollars}, together with money, gold, dwelling furnishings and a $60,000 Mercedes, in alternate for political favors for associates at dwelling and the governments of Egypt and Qatar.
It’s the second bribery trial of Mr. Menendez, a Democrat who has lengthy been dogged by allegations of corruption. He walked away largely unscathed from the primary, which resulted in a hung jury in 2017 in New Jersey. However the brand new fees, leveled in September by a federal grand jury in Manhattan, are more likely to finish the senator’s three-decade profession in Congress.
On Wednesday, a federal prosecutor, Lara Pomerantz, introduced Mr. Menendez as a high-ranking elected official along with his arms out on a regular basis, a senator “who put his energy up on the market.”
“This was not politics as common,” Ms. Pomerantz stated as she mapped out a sophisticated internet of fees, utilizing brief sentences and colloquial language. “This was politics for revenue. This was a United States senator on the take.”
The trial and the wildly clashing portraits of Mr. Menendez promised to supply a uncommon have a look at the interior workings of presidency and the personal lifetime of one of many nation’s strongest elected officers.
Greater than as soon as Ms. Pomerantz turned and gestured towards Mr. Menendez, who was seated behind her, flanked by his attorneys. The senator leaned ahead attentively, however confirmed no apparent emotion, his hand at occasions resting on his chin and over his mouth.
The indictment fees Ms. Menendez with being a go-between who acted as a conduit for bribes and messages. And the senator’s protection, if not gallant, additionally could not hurt her personal protection; it’s unlikely to be admissible as proof at her trial, which is slated to start out in July.
Ms. Menendez, 57, was not in courtroom on Wednesday.
She was initially to be tried alongside her husband, however the choose, Sidney H. Stein, postponed her trial after her attorneys stated she had a “critical medical situation” that will require surgical procedure and a doubtlessly lengthy restoration interval. Her attorneys had no remark about Mr. Weitzman’s claims.
As a result of she is going through fees herself and legally can’t be compelled to testify in opposition to her husband, it’s unlikely that she’s going to testify at Mr. Menendez’s trial.
Mr. Weitzman, in an hourlong assertion, instructed the jury that the senator was conscious of gold that Ms. Menendez stated she had inherited from her household — rug sellers, initially from Armenia, who emigrated to america from Lebanon when Ms. Menendez was a toddler. However he stated she had saved secret different gold bars that prosecutors say got to her by a co-defendant, Fred Daibes.
The couple started courting in early 2018 and married in 2020, about six months after Mr. Menendez moved into his fiancée’s modest, split-level dwelling in Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
The senator, Mr. Weitzman stated, was enchanted by Ms. Menendez, who has a grasp’s diploma in French and speaks 4 languages.
“Bob fell for her,” he stated.
However they by no means shared a checking account, or perhaps a cellphone plan, he stated, and spent a lot of the week dwelling aside whereas the senator was in Washington.
Mr. Menendez is being tried with two New Jersey businessmen — Mr. Daibes and Wael Hana — who prosecutors say benefited from the scheme and helped to funnel bribes to the couple. The senator, his spouse, Mr. Hana and Mr. Daibes have all pleaded not responsible.
The fees in opposition to Mr. Menendez, when first introduced by Damian Williams, the U.S. legal professional for the Southern District of New York, rattled Washington and spurred requires the senator’s resignation, even from beforehand staunch supporters like New Jersey’s junior senator, Cory Booker, and the state’s governor, Philip D. Murphy.
Choose Stein instructed potential jurors that the trial might final almost two months. A lot of the prosecution’s case might be introduced via the testimony of witnesses, together with a New Jersey businessman, Jose Uribe, who was charged and later pleaded responsible and is cooperating with the federal government.
The prosecutor, Ms. Pomerantz, indicated the federal government would additionally show for the jury what the indictment described as “fruits” of the alleged bribery scheme.
These embody a few of the greater than $480,000 in money and 13 bars of gold bullion, price greater than $100,000, that prosecutors say had been discovered within the search of the Menendezes’ dwelling, in June 2022. A lot of the money was stuffed in envelopes and hidden in garments, closets and a protected, the indictment says.
Mr. Menendez, in information conferences and interviews, has constantly maintained his innocence, saying he could be exonerated and leaving open the potential for operating for re-election in November as an impartial. However he declined to hunt the Democratic nomination for the seat, and a June 4 major is continuing with out his title on the poll.
On the Senate ground in January, he stated the Southern District prosecutors had constructed fees on “baseless conjecture, not info,” and that they had been engaged “not in a prosecution however a persecution.”
The indictment alleges an audacious array of schemes. Mr. Menendez is accused of steering weapons and support to Egypt at a time when there have been questions in Congress over that nation’s human rights report. He tried to intervene with a number of state and federal legal investigations that concerned Mr. Uribe and Mr. Daibes, prosecutors say. He is also charged with utilizing his affect to assist Mr. Hana’s halal meat certification enterprise win a profitable monopoly in Egypt.
“Robert Menendez was a United States senator on the take, motivated by greed, targeted on how a lot cash he might put in his personal pocket and in his spouse’s,” Ms. Pomerantz instructed the jury.
Quickly after he was charged, Mr. Menendez supplied a public rationalization for a minimum of a few of the money investigators found in his home. He stated he routinely withdrew giant sums of cash from his financial savings account, a customized he stated he had discovered from his Cuban immigrant dad and mom.
Mr. Menendez’s attorneys have since stated in courtroom papers they needed to have a psychiatrist testify in regards to the senator’s behavior of stockpiling cash. The physician, they wrote, would inform the jury that the follow was rooted in deep psychological trauma tied to the loss of life by suicide of Mr. Menendez’s father almost a half century in the past, and a household historical past of confiscated property in Cuba.
The federal government objected to the potential testimony, and on Tuesday Choose Stein stated he wouldn’t enable it.
The jury of six males and 6 ladies — in addition to six alternate jurors — was chosen and sworn in by Choose Stein a little bit earlier than 1 p.m. on Wednesday, after two-and-a-half days of questioning. The jurors come from New York Metropolis and Westchester County, and a number of other of them have superior levels. The group features a retired economist, an leisure guide and an occupational therapist.
Legal professionals for Mr. Hana and Mr. Daibes had been anticipated to ship opening statements on Thursday.
Nicholas Fandos, Maria Cramer and Maia Coleman contributed reporting.
