Former NJ Attorney General Testifies Senator Bob Menendez Confronted Him Twice Over Pending Criminal Case

NEW YORK – A former New Jersey attorney general testified Thursday in Senator Bob Menendez bribery trial that the Democrat tried twice to discuss a pending criminal case with him, requests that he considered “quite unprecedented”.

Gurbir Grewal was called as a witness by prosecutors to support their claim that Menendez attempted 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.

Menéndez, 70, is on trial in Manhattan federal court with two of the businessmen. All three pleaded not guilty. The third businessman pleaded guilty and is expected to testify.

Grewal, now the head of enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission, recalled that Menendez first approached him in early 2019, shortly after he took the job as New Jersey’s top law enforcement officer.

He testified that a cousin who was a close friend of Menendez asked if she could give Grewal’s personal cell phone number to Menendez and he agreed.

Menendez called late in the afternoon, interrupting a meeting, but Grewal said he left the office to answer 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 matter and when he was told it did, he followed his policy and instructed Menendez to ask a defense attorney to contact prosecutors or the judge about any relevant matter.

He said the 5-6 minute phone call ended shortly thereafter, without the senator saying anything further on the matter.

Grewal said he didn’t mention it to any 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 any decisions about their cases “free from anything external.”

The following September, Grewal testified, Menendez requested a meeting at his office in Newark, New Jersey, and Grewal went, bringing with him another senior official, his deputy attorney general.

Grewal said he thought the senator wanted to talk about his office’s policies, but Menendez returned to his complaint about the treatment of Hispanics after appearing surprised that he had brought someone with him, which Grewal said he often did when he met with legislators.

Grewal said he asked if his complaint again referred to the criminal case he referred to in the phone call earlier in the year and Menendez said yes. Grewal said he repeated his previous instruction that defense attorneys address any issues with the judge or prosecutors handling the case.

“The impression I got was that he didn’t like the way the matter was being handled, but he didn’t say how it 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 next to the car that would take them when his colleague said, “Wow, that was disgusting,” Grewal recalled.

On cross-examination, Menendez’s defense attorney, Avi Weitzman, elicited from Grewal that the senator was “extremely polite and respectful in all of our interactions.”

When Weitzman asked him if Menendez asked him to investigate the matter or threatened to “take it to Congress,” Grewal laughed and said no such conversation occurred.

“I wasn’t afraid of retaliation,” Grewal said, adding that Menendez “just moved on” with the trash talk when the attorney general closed the inquiry. “He didn’t pressure me.”

Still, Grewal said outreach from a lawmaker about a particular ongoing criminal case was “pretty unprecedented in my experience.”

Weitzman informed Grewal that a state legislator and the governor’s chief of staff had reached out to talk about a case while he was attorney general.

As he left court on Thursday, Menéndez told a reporter in Spanish: “Defending human rights is not a crime.”