NEW YORK — Prosecutors rested on Friday after presenting evidence for seven weeks in the senator’s bribery trial. Bob Menéndezallowing 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 he rested, prosecutors obtained details about the senator’s financial records by questioning an FBI forensic accountant.
Prosecutors say gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash found in a 2022 raid on Menendez’s home were bribes paid by three businessmen from 2018 to 2022 in exchange for favors that Menendez used his political power to perform on their behalf.
Defense lawyers say the gold belonged to his wife and that Menéndez had a habit of keeping money at home after his family lost almost everything in Cuba before moving to New York, where Menéndez 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. Menéndez’s wife, Nadine Menendez is also accused in the case, which was revealed last fall. Her trial has been postponed while she recovers from breast cancer surgery. All defendants pleaded not guilty.
Menendez’s lawyers plan to spend up to three days presenting testimony from multiple witnesses to support their argument that Nadine Arslanian kept Menendez in the dark about her financial problems after she began dating him in early 2018.
They also plan to present testimony to try 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 because she was being harassed by an ex-boyfriend.
Judge Sidney H. Stein ruled Wednesday that defense attorneys can take testimony to counter evidence presented by prosecutors that could be interpreted as suggesting that Nadine Arslanian and Menendez appeared to be closely tracking each other’s whereabouts because they were involved in the alleged conspiracy.
But he said he would not allow the jury to hear any evidence that suggested she ended up in hospital at some point as a result of an abusive relationship with an ex-boyfriend.
“This is not going to be ‘Days of Our Lives’ or some soap opera,” the judge warned the lawyers.
