NEW YORK (AP) — Prosecutors rested Friday after seven weeks of presenting evidence in the bribery trial of Sen. Bob Menendez, allowing the Democrat and two New Jersey businessmen to begin calling their own witnesses next week to support the defense’s claims that no crimes were committed and no bribes were paid.
Before serving their sentences, prosecutors attempted to obtain details about the senator’s financial records through an interrogation by an FBI forensic accountant.
Prosecutors say the gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash found in a 2022 raid on Menendez’s home were bribes paid to three businessmen between 2018 and 2022 in exchange for favors Menendez used his political clout to perform on their behalf.
Defense attorneys argue that the gold belonged to his wife and that Menendez had a habit of keeping cash at home after his family lost nearly everything in Cuba, before moving to New York, where Menendez was born.
Menendez, 70, is on trial with two of the businessmen after a third pleaded guilty in a cooperation agreement with the government and testified at the trial. Menendez’s wife, Nadine Menendez, is also charged in the case, which was revealed last fall. Her trial has been postponed while she recovers from breast cancer surgery. All suspects have pleaded not guilty.
Menendez’s attorneys plan to present up to three days of testimony to support their argument that Nadine Arslanian kept Menendez in the dark about her financial troubles after she began dating him in early 2018.
They also plan to submit testimony to show that Arslanian, who married Menendez in the fall of 2020, was in close contact with Menendez at the height of the alleged conspiracy in late 2018 and early 2019 as she was being harassed by a ex boyfriend.
Judge Sidney H. Stein ruled Wednesday that defense attorneys may elicit testimony to counter evidence from prosecutors that could otherwise be interpreted as suggesting that Nadine Arslanian and Menendez were closely monitoring each other because they were involved in the alleged conspiracy.
But he said he would not let the jury hear evidence showing she ended up in the hospital at some point as a result of an abusive relationship with an ex-boyfriend.
“This will not be ‘Days of Our Lives’ or a soap opera,” the judge warned the attorneys.
