Prosecutors in the bribery trial of Senator Bob Menendez have finished presenting their case. Now it’s time to defend

NEW YORK (AP) – Prosecutors in the bribery trial of Sen. Bob Menendez stayed the case Friday after presenting evidence for seven weeks, allowing the Democrat and two New Jersey businessmen to begin calling their own witnesses to support the defense’s claim that no no crimes were committed and no bribes were paid.

On the final day of direct examination, prosecutors obtained detailed information about the senator’s financial records by questioning an FBI accountant. Judge Sidney H. Stein then dismissed jurors for the weekend. Defense lawyers are scheduled to begin presenting their case Monday.

Prosecutors say gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash found during a search of Menendez’s home two years ago were bribes paid by three businessmen between 2018 and 2022 in exchange for favors that the senator, using his political power, performed in their name.

Defense attorneys say the gold belonged to his wife and that Menendez had a habit of keeping cash at home after his family lost almost everything in Cuba before moving to New York, where Menendez was born.

“The government has failed to prove its case,” the senator noted as he left the courthouse on Friday afternoon.

Menendez, 70, is on trial with two businessmen after a third pleaded guilty in a cooperation agreement with the government and testified at trial. Menendez’s wife, Nadine Menendez, is also charged in the case, which was unsealed last fall. Her trial has been postponed while she recovers from breast cancer surgery. All the defendants have pleaded not guilty.

Menendez’s attorneys plan to spend up to three days presenting testimony from several witnesses to support their argument that Nadine Menendez, who was Nadine Arslanian when she began dating the senator in early 2018, kept him in the dark about her financial problems. The couple got married in the fall of 2020.

The defense also plans to present testimony that Arslanian was in close contact with the senator at the height of the alleged conspiracy in late 2018 and early 2019 because she was being harassed by her ex-boyfriend.

Stein ruled Wednesday that defense attorneys can obtain testimony against counter-evidence presented by prosecutors that otherwise could be interpreted to suggest that Arslanian and the senator were closely monitoring each other’s movements because they participated in the alleged conspiracy.

But he said he would not allow the jury to hear any evidence suggesting she was hospitalized at some point as a result of an abusive relationship with her ex-boyfriend.

“This won’t be ‘Days of Our Lives’ or any soap opera,” the judge warned the lawyers.

Larry Neumeister, Associated Press