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Senator Menendez’s lawyers begin their defense Monday. Here are key elements of the prosecutors’ case. • New Jersey Monitor

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On Friday, the 26th day of Sen. Bob Menendez’s federal corruption trial, prosecutors wrapped up their case against the senior New Jersey senator and two of his co-defendants.

The trial began in mid-May and featured more than two dozen witnesses who testified before U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein in the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Federal Courthouse in Manhattan, including U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger, former state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, two former Menendez’s advisors and more.

Prosecutors hope to convince jurors that Menendez accepted lavish bribes to interfere in foreign policy and domestic criminal investigations. Menendez’s lawyers have argued that his actions were like those of a U.S. senator doing his job.

As the defense prepares to present its case, here are key moments in the prosecution’s case against Menendez and co-defendants Wael “Will” Hana and Fred Daibes. Menendez’s wife, Nadine, also faces charges and is expected to go on trial later this year.

Cash everywhere

FBI agents found plenty of cash in Menendez’s home at Englewood Cliffs that they had to have someone bring in the automatic cash register to add it all up.

“The sheer number of bills we encountered was too large to count manually,” said Aristotelis Kougemitros, the FBI special agent who led the search.

Money — $486 461 in cash along with 13 gold bars – it was fierce in jackets and shoes and then stuffed them into bags and boxes in the couple’s cluttered home.

FBI agents found $486,461 in cash stuffed into bags and boxes during a search of the Englewood Cliffs home of Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife Nadine in June 2022. (Courtesy of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York)

“Very suspicious” meat monopoly

Prosecutors say Hana’s monopoly on halal meat exports to Egypt was not due to her business acumen, but because bribes he gave to Menendez and the senator’s favor to the Egyptian government on Hana’s orders.

U.S. Department of Agriculture official James Bret Tate testified that he wanted to push back on Egypt’s decision to make Hany the only importer of halal-certified meat, but Egypt refused to meet with him. And that was extraordinary, he said.

“When the American embassy requests a meeting, we arrange meetings,” Tate said.

A text message that Senator Bob Menendez sent to his wife, Nadine, regarding the US sale of military ammunition to Egypt. (Courtesy of the Office of the Attorney General, Southern District of New York)

“Love Email”

Menendez lost his bid to prevent jurors from seeing what was called a “love email”, he sent a text message to Nadine Menendez telling her to inform Hana that the senator was going to Egypt with weapons.

The senator’s lawyers argued that the U.S. Constitution’s Free Speech and Debate Clause – which provides immunity to lawmakers carrying out official legislative acts – applied here, but Stein argued that a promise to do something is not itself a legislative act.

Prosecutors say the transfer of aid and weapons to Egypt — which has historically received the most military aid from the United States of any country except Israel — is one of Menendez’s actions that helped Hana protect his monopoly.

Making Nadine happy

Prosecutors say Nadine Menendez acted as a go-between connecting her husband with businessmen accused of giving him bribes.

Attorney Howard Dorian, who represented Hana, made this clear in a text sent to a man involved in one of the alleged bribery schemes.

“This is very important “to make Nadine happy,” Dorian wrote.

The texts also show how Nadine Menendez gave Senator Menendez topics to talk about on Hana’s orders.

“In your speech, please say that Egypt is now moving in the right direction with the new government Now. With the IMF and all the new developments, new capital and the new Suez Canal, Egypt is important to the United States,” she texted Senator Menendez.

“Stop interfering”

Former US Department of Agriculture official he told the judges that Menendez called him when the faculty he wondered why Egypt decided to conquer Halal meat only from Hany.

“Stop meddling in the affairs of my constituents,” Menendez said, according to former official Ted McKinney.

Mercedes-Benz

When Nadine Menendez needed a new car after her own was destroyed in an accident that killed a pedestrian in Bogota, businessman Jose Uribe decided to help her.

Uribe had an associate who was facing prosecution by the Attorney General’s Office, and a related, expanding investigation threatened to ensnare Uribe’s own business. So he made a “deal” with Nadine Menendez—a car in exchange for her husband’s help in solving his criminal troubles, he told jurors. According to testimony, he made a down payment and paid for Nadine’s new car every month for almost three years.

After Nadine Menendez signed the papers for the Mercedes-Benz, she texted her husband.

“The car is at home,” she wrote.

“Woopy!!!” the senator replied.

She sent a text message to Uribe: “You are a miracle worker who makes dreams come true. I will always remember that.”

Uribe was charged along with the Menendezes, but pleaded guilty in March as part of a cooperation agreement with prosecutors.

Federal prosecutors say Nadine Menendez received this Mercedes Benz convertible as a bribe from Jose Uribe. (Courtesy of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York)

‘Gross’

Grewal, a former New Jersey attorney general, told the jury that Menendez tried to talk to him three times about the allegations against Uribe’s associate.

The last time it happened was at Menendez’s office in Newark, where Grewal and his colleague Andrew Bruck met with the senator. Later, Grewal testified, Bruck had this to say: “Wow, that was disgusting.”

Grewal acknowledged that Menendez did not ask any “explicit questions” during the meeting or phone calls and was “polite” throughout the conversation.

“What I understood from the outcome of this conversation to be he didn’t like the way this thing was looking supported by our office and I wanted it to be handled differently,” Grewal said.

‘Yes’

Uribe spoke out he actually bribed Menendez hoping the senator would quash the investigation focusing on his associate and business.

“I made arrangements with Nadine Menendez and others to provide Nadine with a car in order to gain Mr. Menendez’s power and influence“- said Uribe.

Uribe also testified that Menendez admitted his interference.

“I saved your little ass not once, but twice,” Uribe told the senator in Spanish.

New Jersey businessman Jose Uribe, 56, arrives at a Manhattan courthouse after being charged with bribery in connection with Senator Bob Menendez and his wife Nadine Menendez, October 2, 2023, in New York City. (Photo by David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)

They were friends

Sellinger said that while Menendez was considering his candidacy for the new U.S. attorney for New Jersey in 2020, Menendez told Sellinger that the office’s prosecution of Daibes, a developer accused of bank fraud, was unfair.

“Senator Menendez hoped that if I became U.S. attorney, I would look at this closely.” Sellinger told the judges.

When Sellinger said he could be withdrawn from the Daibes case because of a conflict of interest, Menendez chose another candidate, Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez, Sellinger said. When that fell through, Sellinger got the job, and when new superiors stepped away from the Daibes case, Menendez ended their friendship, he testified.

Behind the scenes

Michael Soliman, former advisor to Menendez, he explained how he helped Menendez shield Suarez’s potential nomination as U.S. attorney from public scrutiny by falsely claiming there were other candidates and placing false stories in the press.

“My job was to protect the senator, so I only cared about his appearance,” Soliman said.

Soliman also said he met with Sellinger after he became U.S. attorney — Menendez asked Soliman to tell Sellinger to give Daibes “all the procedures he’s due” — but Sellinger warned him at the start of the meal not to bring up any outstanding cases criminal charges, or Sellinger will have to notify the Department of Justice.

runny nose

Prosecutors allege Daibes bribed Menendez to obtain investments from a Qatari royal.and that the deal almost fell through because the prince found out about Daibes’ bank fraud. Menendez he came in to meet with Sheikh Sultan bin Jassim Al Thani, whose brother is the emir of Qatar, and other members of the Qatari royal family to defuse the situation, prosecutors say.

“I hope this leads to a mutually beneficial and beneficial agreement that you both have reached. left involved IN “We are discussing,” Menendez wrote to bin Jassim in an encrypted WhatsApp message in January 2022.

Four months later, Daibes and the company founded by the sheikh signed a contract worth $190 million.

Egypt

Sarah Arkin, Menendez’s former foreign policy adviser, told jurors Menendez started acting “weird” in the relationship Egypt, prosecutors say, was bribing him at the time to keep his lucrative halal business afloat.

Arkin said Menendez began meeting with Egyptian officials without her, contrary to accepted protocol.

“A key part of my job is to prepare him for these meetings,” Arkin said. “I didn’t know exactly who he was talking to, what information he did or didn’t have, who he might want to meet, or where the information was coming from.”

During a search of the home of Senator Bob Menendez and his wife Nadine in June 2022, FBI agents found 13 gold bars. (Courtesy of the United States Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York)

Gold bars

Jeweler Vasken Khorozian told Nadine Menendez in 2022, transactions in gold bars worth approximately $250,000 were completed, just weeks before the FBI searched Menendez’s home and found more gold bars and cash.

Khorozian said she came to his Edgewater store three times this spring, initially telling him she was in the bar business because of her “financial situation.”

Prosecutors could not say whether Daibes or Hana gave the gold bars to the Menendezes – Khorozian did not write down their serial numbers.

“If I knew what I know now, I would have done everything differently,” Khorozian said.

Disclosures

The Senate ethics director said income, assets, gifts and liabilities Both senators and their spouses should be disclosed, so that voters can see for themselves representative financial situation.

However, if the gold bars, cash and other valuables the Menendezes took from Daibes, Hana and Uribe were indeed loans and gifts, as the defense team claims, the senator should report them on mandatory annual disclosure forms, said Shannon Kopplin, general counsel and staff director for the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee.

He did not doKopplin said.

In February 2022, about 16 months after their wedding, Kopplin said she called the senator who had questions about how he reported gold bars he said belonged to his wife.

This Next month, he officially revealed his wife’s goldKopplin said. Three months later, FBI agents seized it as evidence.

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