NEW YORK (AP) — Senator Bob MenendezThe sister of came to her brother’s defense Monday, testifying at the beginning of the defense presentation in his bribery trial that she was not surprised to hear the Democrat kept money at home because “that’s a Cuban thing.”
Caridad Gonzalez, 80, was called by Menendez’s lawyers to support their argument that the discovery of hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in Menendez’s home during a 2022 raid was not unusual for a man whose parents fled Cuba in 1951 with only the cash they had stashed at home.
“It’s normal. It’s a Cuban thing,” she said when asked to respond to Menendez ordering her to retrieve $500 worth of $100 bills from a boot-sized box in a closet in his daughter’s bedroom in the 1980s when she worked for him as a legal secretary.
She testified that everyone who left Cuba in the 1960s and 1970s kept cash at home because “they were afraid of losing what they had worked so hard for, because in Cuba they took everything from you.”
Prosecutors said more than $486,000 in cash, more than $100,000 in gold bars and a luxury car found during the 2022 raid on Menendez’s Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, home were the result of bribes.
Menendez, 70, was born in Manhattan and grew up in the New Jersey cities of Hoboken and Union City before working as a lawyer and starting his political career, Gonzalez said.
He has pleaded not guilty to bribery, fraud, extortion, obstruction of justice and acting as a foreign agent of Egypt.
He is on trial with two New Jersey businessmen who pleaded not guilty after being accused of paying him bribes to obtain favors to help them with their business and investment ventures. A third businessman pleaded guilty and testified against his co-defendants.
Menendez’s wife, Nadine, has pleaded guilty to the charges in the case, though her trial has been postponed until she recovers from breast cancer surgery.
During her testimony, Gonzalez told the dramatic story of her family’s departure from Cuba. She said they lived comfortably, had a driver and were the first family in the neighborhood to own a television, before a competitor to her father’s tie and bow tie business used its influence to disrupt their lives.
She said the man wanted her father to close his business and work for him. One day, he called in four police officers and two government officials to search their home.
She said her father kept his money in a secret compartment of a grandfather clock, but it was not discovered during the raid.
When the family moved to America and the future senator was born, the story of their escape and the importance of money became a topic of conversation over dinner as her father recounted the history of Cuba, she said.
“Dad always said, ‘Don’t trust the banks. If you trust the banks, you never know what can happen. So you always have to have money at home,'” she recalled.
She said other family members also kept money at home, including an aunt whose house burned down without losing the $60,000 in cash she had kept in the basement.
Later Monday, a sister of Menendez’s wife distanced the senator from his wife’s assets, which included gold and jewelry. She said her sister had not told her about her financial problems, other than once asking her to co-sign a loan because she could no longer afford her mortgage payments.
According to Menendez’s lawyers, the senator’s wife kept him in the dark about her financial problems and the help she received from businessmen to solve them.
