NEW YORK (AP) — A former New Jersey attorney general testified Thursday at Sen. Bob Menendez’s bribery trial that the Democrat twice tried to discuss an ongoing criminal case with him, requests he called “pretty unprecedented.”
Gurbir Grewal was called as a witness by prosecutors to support their claim that Menendez tried to interfere in a criminal case at the request of one of three New Jersey businessmen who allegedly paid him bribes, including gold bars, hundreds of thousands of dollars and a luxury car.
Menendez, 70, is on trial along with two businessmen in Manhattan federal court. The three have pleaded not guilty. The third businessman has pleaded guilty and is expected to testify.
Grewal, now chief enforcement officer of the Securities and Exchange Commission, recalls that Menendez first contacted him in early 2019, shortly after taking the job as New Jersey’s top law enforcement official.
He testified that a cousin who was close friends with Menendez asked if she could give Grewal’s personal cell phone number to Menendez, and he agreed.
Menendez called late one afternoon and interrupted a meeting, but Grewal said he left the office to take the call.
After some small talk, Menendez expressed concern that some state investigators were treating Hispanics in the trucking industry differently than workers who were not Hispanic, Grewal said.
Grewal said he asked Menendez if the concern arose from a criminal case and when told it did, he followed his policy and instructed Menendez to have an attorney contact prosecutors or the judge about any relevant matter.
He said the five- to six-minute phone call ended shortly afterward without the senator saying anything more.
Grewal said he didn’t tell prosecutors in his office because he didn’t want anyone working on the case to feel pressured or intimidated.
He said he wanted them to make decisions about their affairs “free from anything outside.”
The following September, Grewal testified, Menendez requested a meeting at his office in Newark, New Jersey, and Grewal went with another top official, his deputy attorney general.
Grewal said he thought the senator wanted to talk about his office’s policies, but Menendez instead raised his complaint again about the treatment of Hispanics after appearing surprised that he was bringing someone along, which Grewal said he often did during meetings with legislators.
Grewal said he asked if his complaint again related to the criminal case he referenced in the phone call earlier this year, and Menendez said it did. Grewal said he reiterated his earlier instruction to let defense attorneys handle any issues with the judge or prosecutors handling the case.
“The impression I got was that he didn’t like the way the case was handled, but he didn’t say how the case should be handled,” Grewal testified.
Grewal said the conversation ended shortly after he told Menendez, “I can’t talk to you about this.”
After leaving the meeting, he and the deputy attorney general who accompanied him were standing near the car that was taking them away when his colleague said, “Whoa, that was disgusting,” Grewal recalled.
Under cross-examination, Menendez attorney Avi Weitzman made it clear to Grewal that the senator was “extremely polite and respectful in all of our interactions.”
When Weitzman asked whether Menendez had asked him to investigate the matter or threatened to “take you before Congress,” Grewal chuckled and said no such conversation had taken place.
“I had no fear of retaliation,” Grewal said, adding that Menendez “just continued” with the talk when the attorney general dropped the investigation. “He didn’t pressure me.”
Still, Grewal said a lawmaker reaching out about a particular pending criminal case was “pretty unprecedented in my experience.”
Weitzman told Grewal that a state lawmaker and the governor’s chief of staff had tried to speak about a case while he was attorney general.
As Menendez left the courthouse on Thursday, he told a reporter in Spanish: “Advocating for human rights is not a crime.”
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AP writer Cedar Attanasio contributed to this report.
