Jury selection begins Monday in the federal criminal trial of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., accused of accepting “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in bribes — including some in gold bars — in exchange for acts officers.
The once-powerful former head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, which he described as “obscene.”
The indictment alleges that federal investigators found more than $480,000 in cash stashed in the New Jersey home he shares with his wife, “much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets and a safe.”
It also alleges that the couple received “gold bars, home mortgage payments, compensation for little or no attendance at work, a luxury vehicle, and other items of value” such as jewelry and fitness equipment.
The senator’s wife, Nadine Menendez, was also charged but will face trial at a later date due to a medical condition.
Prosecutors from the office of U.S. Attorney Damian Williams of the Southern District of New York indicted the couple and three businessmen who allegedly bribed the pair in September of last year. One of those businessmen, José Uribe, pleaded guilty earlier this year and agreed to cooperate with the investigation. The other two, Fred Daibes and Wael Hana, pleaded not guilty and will be tried alongside Menéndez.
The indictment alleges that Menendez made positive statements about Qatar to help Daibes obtain a multimillion-dollar investment from a company linked to the country. O indictment noted that a search of Menendez’s home in 2022 revealed “two one-kilogram gold bars and nine one-ounce gold bars that had serial numbers indicating they had previously been owned” by Daibes.
Menendez is also accused of having “provided confidential information to the U.S. government” and taking “other actions that secretly assisted the government of Egypt” in exchange for bribes from Hana.
Prosecutors also accused New Jersey’s senior senator of allegedly trying to impede federal investigations into him, his wife and Daibes, and of trying to intervene in the state prosecution of a Uribe associate and the state investigation of an employee of the businessman.
Menendez, who has faced widespread calls from his Democratic colleagues to resign, said in a speech on the Senate floor in January that “there will be at trial a full explanation of what the truth is about these matters, a truth that proves that I am entirely innocent of the accusations.”
He also claimed that the money was all his. “For 30 years, I withdrew thousands of dollars in cash from my personal savings account, which I saved for emergencies and due to my family’s history of facing confiscation in Cuba,” he said in a statement in September.
Court documents from last week show that Menendez is seeking to have a forensic psychiatrist testify in his defense. The psychiatrist would say that Menendez is affected by “intergenerational family trauma and how this disorder caused the senator to develop a fear of scarcity and a coping mechanism of routinely withdrawing and storing money in his home.”
He is also seeking to have a forensic accountant testify that despite the prosecution’s assertion that Menéndez has been living beyond his means, his “spending patterns were consistent with his legal compensation and income.” Prosecutors are objecting to his testimony.
The sitting U.S. senator’s trial is taking place about two blocks from where former President Donald Trump is being tried in state court.
The federal criminal trial is the second Menendez has faced since being elected to the Senate in 2006. He was accused in 2015 of illegally accepting favors from a Florida ophthalmologist, including flights on a private jet, three nights at a five-star hotel and three nights at a five-star hotel. in Paris and more than $750,000 in political contributions to himself and the Democratic Party. The case ended in a mistrial in 2017 after jurors were unable to reach a unanimous verdict and prosecutors decided not to try him again.
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