Sen. Bob Menendez’s Federal Corruption Trial Began With Opening Statements

Sen. Bob Menendez’s Federal Corruption Trial Began With Opening Statements

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez’s trial started as the prosecution and defense delivered their opening statements.

Bob and his wife Nadine face 18 charges. The prosecutors are trying him with New Jersey businessmen Fred Daibes and Wael Hana.

The Southern District of New York charged Menendez and Nadine in September with allegedly accepting “hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes” to protect three New Jersey businessmen and work on behalf of Egypt.

The feds allege the Menendezes “accepted cash, gold, payments toward a home mortgage, compensation for a low or-no-show job, a luxury vehicle, and other things of value.”

Remember, this is Menendez’s second federal corruption trial. He faced one in 2017 when he faced accusations “of doing favors for a friend, Dr. Salomon Melgen, a wealthy eye doctor from Florida, in exchange for gifts, including rides on a private plane, and political donations.”

Menendez is the first senator “indicted using a foreign agent statute, and the first in the Senate’s 235-year history to be indicted twice in separate bribery cases.”

Lara Pomerantz, the prosecutor, told the jury that Menendez “put his power up for sale.” She described him as a “senator on the take.”

The opening statement introduced the jurors to the case’s complex web, trying to connect the dots:

It began, she said, in 2018, when he sat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Around that time, he also began dating Nadine Arslanian, a friend of Hana, who Pomerantz described as a “failed businessman.” Hana, Pomerantz said, saw an opportunity to use the senator’s power to help himself and his Halal meat company.

Pomerantz touches on a question that has lingered since Menendez was first indicted in September: Who came up with the original idea for the alleged scheme? She says that it was Hana, who moved from Egypt to the United States when he was in his 20s. “When Hana learned Nadine was dating a senator, he saw an opportunity,” she just told jurors. Hana “had connections to the government of Egypt,” she said.

It’s no wonder the prosecutors think they might need up to six weeks to present their case.

Pomerantz brought Daibes into the picture, explaining his involvement with the gold bars:

Daibes gave gold bars that weighed one kilogram each and were worth $50,000, she said. Menendez knew how much they were worth, Pomerantz said, because he googled the price of gold. In exchange, Menendez moved to quash federal bank charges Daibes was facing.

Pomerantz described Nadine as the go-between, setting up a consulting company on the “night a lender initiated foreclosure proceedings” on her house.

The New York Times live blog mentioned Pomerantz left out an important allegation:

It’s worth noting that Pomerantz seems to avoid alleging that Menendez was present or privy to the details of the original deal that led to a new $60,000 convertible for Nadine. “Uribe met with Nadine directly,” she said. “Uribe agreed to buy a Mercedes. What was Uribe getting in return? Menendez would try to make the investigation go away.”

This part becomes more curious during Menendez’s lawyer’s opening statement…something that makes you raise an eyebrow.

Menendez’s lawyer, Avi Weitzman, told the jury that his client “took no bribes and broke no laws.”

Weitzman described Menendez as an “American patriot” who has devoted his life to the public.

The lawyer also presented Menendez’s “sob story.” He grew up in tenement housing, first to graduate college, and went into politics to do good. Blah blah blah.

Judge Stein even had a problem with the sob stories:

Judge Stein has now interrupted Avi Weitzman, Menendez’s lawyer, a couple of times. He appears to be concerned about how the lawyer is presenting biographical information about the senator’s character.

But then the opening statement turned juicy because Bob might try pinning a lot on his wife:

“Let me say this about Nadine: Nadine had financial concerns that she kept from Bob,” said Avi Weitzman, his lawyer. He asserts that the senator was in the dark about what his wife was up to with the businessmen prosecutors say bribed them.

Weitzman is casting Nadine Menendez as a financially troubled, fun-loving woman who had friendships with a lot of connected men who helped her out. She tried to keep that from Menendez, Weitzman said. They had separate lives and did not even share the same cell phone plan. He asked: “Is it really surprising that Bob might not know that those gold bars” were in her closet? “Nadine was hiding her financial challenges.”

Oh, boy. This beautiful woman managed to fool the smart senator!

“The evidence will show that Nadine was hiding her financial challenges from Bob,” claimed Weitzman. “She kept him in the dark about what she was asking others to give her.”

Remember that Pomerantz avoided mentioning Menendez when talking about the car?

Well….

Weitzman also said that Menendez assumed Nadine bought the $60,000 Mercedes-Benz for herself. One of the businessmen confessed he bought the car as a bribe.

Very interesting. I wonder if that omission will come back and bite the prosecutors.

Weitzman slightly changed his tone, saying that some accusations are just “constituent services” to right a wrong.

I’m looking forward to this trial. Menendez doesn’t have the Democratic support he used to have. Sen. John Fetterman is his fiercest critic, constantly trashing him on social media.

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