NEW YORK — Final arguments are set to begin Monday in the New Jersey bribery trial Senator Bob Menéndez.
Closings were scheduled to begin in the afternoon, as the trial enters its ninth week in Manhattan federal court. Prosecutors planned the initial closing to last about five hours, so it was unlikely they would make it more than half way through before the jury was sent home.
Prosecutors are expected to marshal the evidence they presented against the Democrat to support their claim that gold bars, more than $480,000 in cash and a luxury car found during a 2022 FBI raid on Menéndez’s residence are income. of bribes paid by three people from New Jersey. businesspeople.
In addition to testimony from several dozen witnesses, prosecutors presented hundreds of documents, emails, text messages, phone records and other factual evidence.
In exchange for bribes, prosecutors say, the senator took measures from 2018 to 2022 to protect or enhance the business interests of businesspeople. Some of the crimes are said to have occurred while Menéndez held the powerful position of chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Menendez, 70, and two of the businessmen have pleaded not guilty and are being tried together. A third businessman pleaded guilty in the case and testified against the others during the federal trial, the second the senator has faced in the last decade. None of the defendants testified.
A previous trial against Menendez in New Jersey ended in 2017 with a deadlocked jury.
Nadine Menendez, 57, the senator’s wife, is also accused in the case, but her trial has been postponed while she recovers from breast cancer surgery. She also pleaded not guilty.
As part of their defense, Menendez’s lawyers argued that the gold bars belonged to his wife and that tens of thousands of dollars in cash found in Bob Menendez’s boots and jacket resulted from his habit of keeping money at home after hearing from his family as they escaped Cuba in 1951 with only the money they hid at home.
His lawyers also claimed that Nadine Menendez, who began dating the senator in 2018 and married him two years later, kept him in the dark about her financial problems and the assistance she requested from businesspeople.
Menendez was born in Manhattan after the family moved to New York City, although he was raised in the New Jersey cities of Hoboken and Union City, according to his sister’s testimony.
Menendez has held public office continuously since 1986, serving as a state legislator before serving 14 years as a U.S. congressman. In 2006, then-Gov. Jon Corzine nominated Menendez to the Senate seat he vacated when he became governor.
A few weeks ago, Menendez filed to run for re-election this year as an independent.
