Prosecutors in Menendez bribery trial rest their case

NEW YORK – After seven weeks of trial, federal prosecutors rested their case Friday against Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., who is accused of conspiring to take hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold, cash and other bribes in return for his willingness to dispense political favors at home and abroad.

Defense lawyers are expected to begin calling witnesses next week in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Throughout the trial, lawyers for Menendez, who has vigorously maintained his innocence, have aggressively cross-examined a parade of government witnesses, seeking to undermine their credibility.

“The government hasn’t proven its case,” Menendez said as he left the courthouse Friday.

The conclusion of the government’s case comes nine months after Menendez, his wife and several New Jersey businesspeople were first charged with participating in a vast bribery conspiracy that prosecutors say began in 2018.

The senator is accused of taking bribes in exchange for steering aid and weapons to Egypt, propping up an ally’s business monopoly and trying to disrupt several criminal investigations in New Jersey on behalf of friends.

The original indictment was updated multiple times as prosecutors broadened the charges. In October, the senator was charged with being an agent of Egypt. In March, he and his wife, Nadine Menendez, were accused of obstructing justice by causing their attorneys to make false statements to prosecutors in an attempt to suggest that alleged bribes were legitimate loans. (The lawyers were not accused of wrongdoing.)

The trial, which began in May, is expected to wrap up after the July 4 holiday. Menendez, 70, has said he will be exonerated and that he hopes to run for re-election in November. On Thursday, paperwork was filed in Washington on Menendez’s behalf formally notifying the Federal Election Commission that he planned to seek a fourth term in the Senate as an independent.

Since the start of the trial, prosecutors have introduced thousands of pieces of evidence, including text, email and voicemail messages, and questioned more than a dozen witnesses. New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor, Philip R. Sellinger, and a former attorney general, Gurbir S. Grewal, were both called to testify against the senator in connection with claims that he had tried to pressure them into quashing criminal prosecutions.

The senator’s longtime political adviser and a staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who had worked with Menendez for years, each spent hours on the witness stand.

Two of the businesspeople charged with Menendez, Fred Daibes and Wael Hana, are on trial with him. Nadine Menendez, 57, had her trial postponed by the judge, Sidney H. Stein, because she is being treated for breast cancer. Like the senator, she, Daibes and Hana have all pleaded not guilty.

Jose Uribe, a former insurance broker who pleaded guilty in March, spent several days on the witness stand outlining his role in the alleged conspiracy. Uribe admitted to providing Nadine Menendez with a Mercedes-Benz in 2019 in exchange for gaining the senator’s “power and influence” to “stop and kill” insurance fraud investigations that prosecutors in Grewal’s office were pursuing.

Uribe told jurors he had several one-on-one conversations with the senator about the state fraud investigations. He also testified, however, that he and the senator had never discussed the car or how it would be paid for.

According to prosecutors, Nadine Menendez served as a vital go-between and a conduit for the bribes.

But the senator’s lawyers have argued that he was unaware of his wife’s activities and that he had no key to a locked bedroom closet in the couple’s home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, where FBI agents found much of the cash and all of the bars of gold bullion.

On Friday, an FBI forensic accountant, Megan Rafferty, testified about what the senator’s bank records showed about how and when money had moved in and out of his accounts. During cross-examination, the senator’s lawyer, Adam Fee, elicited testimony indicating the senator made regular $400 withdrawals over the years, seemingly intended to bolster Menendez’s public statements that he regularly withdrew cash in small amounts and stockpiled it at home for “emergencies.”

Then, shortly before 1:30 p.m., after Rafferty left the witness stand, a prosecutor, Eli J. Mark, rose and said, “Your honor, at this time the government rests.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.