NEW YORK (AP) — For the second time in a decade, U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez faces a corruption trial Monday, with his political career and freedom at stake in a criminal case that has already removed him from one of the most powerful posts forced into Congress.
The 70-year-old New Jersey Democrat and his wife are accused of taking bribes from three wealthy businessmen in his home state and providing a variety of favors in return, including interfering with criminal investigations and taking actions to benefit governments of Egypt and Qatar.
Menendez’s attorneys say he stayed within the rules and did nothing illegal. He has spoken optimistically about mounting a re-election campaign this summer if he is acquitted.
But even if he escapes without conviction, as he did in a previous corruption prosecution in 2017, the damage to his reputation could make a political comeback all but impossible.
FBI agents who searched the senator’s New Jersey home found a stash of gold bars worth more than $100,000, and more than $486,000 in cash, some of it in the bags of clothes hanging in his closets.
His fellow Democrats in Washington DC appear to have already written him off and are repeatedly encouraging him to resign.
“The evidence against him is vivid,” said Dan Cassino, executive director of the Fairleigh Dickinson University poll. “This isn’t paperwork or checks: it’s gold bars. The images are powerful, and given that New Jersey voters generally don’t know much about the officials who represent them, this may be the only thing they know about Menendez.”
Menendez has taken a defiant stance.
“I am innocent and I will prove it no matter how many charges they continue to pile up,” he said after the charges against him were updated again in early March to include a charge of trying to obstruct the investigation.
Menendez was forced to relinquish his powerful position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee shortly after the revelation of charges including bribery, fraud, extortion and acting as Egypt’s foreign agent.
The senator’s lawyers have suggested in court filings that he will defend himself in part by claiming that his wife, Nadine, kept him in the dark about her dealings with the businessmen, who have also been charged in the case.
One of them, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty and is expected to testify. He was accused of buying a Mercedes-Benz for Nadine Menendez after her previous car was destroyed when she struck and killed a man crossing the street. She was not criminally charged in connection with the fatal accident.
Prosecutors said Senator Menendez twice tried to help Uribe by trying to influence criminal investigations involving his business associates.
Another man, Wael Hana, is accused of paying off Menendez for helping him strike a lucrative deal with the Egyptian government to confirm that imported meat met Islamic dietary requirements. Prosecutors said Menendez ingratiated himself with Egyptian officials by, among other things, ghostwriting a letter to fellow senators encouraging them to lift their hold on $300 million in military aid.
Menendez also pressured a U.S. agriculture official to stop opposing Hana’s company as the sole halal certifier, prosecutors said.
The third businessman, real estate developer Fred Daibes, is accused of supplying gold bars and cash to Menendez and his wife to get the senator to use his power to help him secure a multimillion-dollar deal with a Qatari investment fund , including by taking action. beneficial to the government of Qatar.
Nadine Menendez was charged along with her husband, but her trial was postponed until at least July due to a health issue. Her actions, however, will be crucial to the story that prosecutors will present to jurors through dozens of witnesses in a trial expected to last up to two months.
The three-term senator has held positions at every level of government in New Jersey. He got his start in the rough political world of Hudson County, an area across from Manhattan known for its influential party bosses.
Menendez was two years out of high school in 1974 when he was elected to the Union City Board of Education. After stints in the New Jersey State Assembly, Senate and ultimately the U.S. House of Representatives, he was appointed to the U.S. Senate in 2006 when Jon Corzine resigned to become governor. He won the election later that year.
His political career suffered its first major crisis in 2015, when he was indicted on charges by a wealthy Florida ophthalmologist accused of buying Menendez’s influence through luxury vacations and campaign contributions.
Menendez firmly denied the allegations at the time and vowed not to leave the Senate. A trial ended in 2017 with a deadlocked jury and federal prosecutors in New Jersey dropping the case.
Menendez not only stayed in Congress, he was re-elected and retained his chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee. He married Nadine Menendez in 2020 after the couple dated for two years.
Menendez has remained in the Senate even after this latest indictment, ignoring calls for him to resign before his six-year term ends on January 3. Although he has said he will not run for re-election as a Democrat, he has left that open. the possibility of an independent run. That could complicate matters for Democrats, who have a slim lead in the U.S. Senate and can barely afford the prospect of three-way elections in Democratic stronghold New Jersey.
But unlike in 2015, his party largely abandoned him. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy and others called on him to resign. Democratic Rep. Andy Kim launched a campaign for Menendez’s seat the day after the indictment.
Judge Sidney H. Stein rejected Menendez’s attempt to claim legislative immunity, which protects him from the charges.
The judge has yet to decide whether the defense can call a psychiatrist to show that Menendez habitually kept cash in his home as a “fear of scarcity” in response to family stories of how their savings were seized during Cuba’s communist revolution , before it was confiscated. born, and due to financial problems arising from the gambling problem of his father, a struggling carpenter.
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Catalini reported from Trenton, New Jersey.
