Nadine Menendez, the wife of former New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, faces sentencing Thursday in her federal bribery case.
She was convicted in April of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gold bars in exchange for political favors. Other alleged bribes included a Mercedes-Benz, money for a mortgage payment and for a low-to-no-show job.
Prosecutors are calling for Nadine Menendez to serve at least seven years in prison, but her defense has requested a one-year sentence, citing her ongoing cancer treatments.
After both sides presented their arguments Thursday, Nadine Menendez tearfully addressed the court. She told Judge Sidney H. Stein that Bob Menendez was like a savior following her divorce from a previous abusive relationship, and that she blindly did what he asked. She said she never imagined someone with his power and rank putting her in a position to do something illegal.
She added she takes full accountability, saying, “I was wrong about my husband.”
During opening statements of her trial, prosecutors told jurors “she did the dirty work,” alleging Nadine and Bob Menendez “engaged in a corrupt relationship with three New Jersey associates and businessmen” and provided Egyptian government officials with sensitive information.
“Nadine Menendez and Sen. Menendez were partners in crime. Over the span of five years, Nadine Menendez agreed to accept and accepted all sorts of bribes — including gold bars, cash, a Mercedes-Benz convertible, and a no-show job — all in exchange for the Senator’s corrupt official acts,” Acting U.S. Attorney Matthew Podolsky said after her guilty verdict. “Together, Nadine Menendez and the senator placed their own interests and greed ahead of the interests of the citizens the senator was elected to serve.”
She did not speak after the verdict, but her defense attorney said they were devastated. Meanwhile, her husband has vowed to appeal his conviction.
Renee Anderson is a digital producer at CBS New York, where she covers breaking news and other local stories. Before joining the team in 2016, Renee worked at WMUR-TV.
In their 25-page letter to Judge Sidney Stein, Menendez’s lawyers detailed the hardships she’s encountered throughout her life, writing, “Nadine is not her husband, or her co-defendants. Despite all of the government’s efforts to present her as a vixen, the reality is far from that. She is a deeply traumatized woman.”
They added, “Her entire life has been marked by men who have taken advantage of her, and harmed her, in myriad ways.”
Other letters from friends, family and her husband, Bob, also pleaded for leniency.
Prosecutors said Nadine Menendez was a partner in her husband’s crimes, helping to collect payoffs from three New Jersey businessmen in a wide-ranging scheme. The defense argued some of the gold she received was not bribes, but rather were passed down from her family or were gifts from businessmen who were longtime friends. NBC New York’s Jonathan Dienst reports.
Bob Menendez, who wrote his letter from prison at FCI Alletown in Pennsylvania, stated that his wife of five years has been punished enough and has lost everything she cared about.
“Your Honor, you gave me a tough sentence that surely serves the deterrent value you said was needed. To imprison Nadine, would not recognize the trauma she has suffered, how it has affected her and her judgment, and I would respectfully say would not have any greater deterrent effect,” wrote the 71-year-old.
Bob Menendez went on to say he regrets that she was painted as money-hungry during his trial.
“I regret that I didn’t fully preview what my defense attorney said about Nadine during my trial and in his summation. To suggest that Nadine was money-hungry or in financial need, and therefore would solicit others for help, is simply wrong,” he wrote.
Bob Menendez added that Nadine Menendez had money of her own from a previous divorce, and that any discussions about mortgage or car payments that were referred to in the trial were the result of fears of a lawsuit following the fatal car accident she was involved in.
Several medical professionals also wrote letters on Nadine Menendez’s behalf. A former BOP physician wrote that she would not be able to get the medial attention needed for her breast cancer treatments and that home confinement would be the better option for her.
In April, Nadine Menendez was convicted of the same corruption charges that sent Bob Menendez to prison for 11 years.
Sen. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, was convicted Tuesday on all counts in a federal bribery trial that involved three New Jersey businessmen and the governments of Egypt and Qatar.
He was also accused of disrupting criminal investigations by the New Jersey attorney general’s office into former insurance broker Jose Uribe, who pleaded guilty to trying to bribe Menendez by buying his wife, Nadine Menendez, a $60,000 Mercedes-Benz convertible.
Finally, prosecutors alleged, Menendez sought to conceal some of the bribe payments by characterizing them as loans.
Menendez said he was “deeply disappointed” by the verdict and plans to appeal.
Here is a look at each of the charges in the case:
Count 1: Conspiracy to commit bribery
This offense is related to the Egypt part of the scheme, as well as the federal bank fraud prosecution of Daibes and the Qatar elements.
Menendez was found guilty of conspiracy to commit bribery. Hana and Daibes were found guilty.
Count 2: Conspiracy to commit honest services fraud
The count involves every element of the alleged corruption scheme — Egypt, interference in the criminal cases and Qatar.
Menendez was found guilty of conspiracy to commit honest services fraud. Hana and Daibes were found guilty.
Count 3: Conspiracy to commit extortion under color of official right
It also relates to the entire scheme.
Menendez was found guilty of conspiracy to commit extortion under color of official right. Hana and Daibes were not charged with this offense.
Count 4: Conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice
The count involves Menendez’s alleged efforts to disrupt a federal bank fraud case against Daibes.
Menendez was found guilty of conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice. Daibes was found guilty. Hana was not charged with this offense.
Count 5: Bribery
The charge alleges Menendez received bribes from Hana and Daibes in exchange for taking actions to benefit Hana’s halal certification monopoly and Egypt, including pressuring a Department of Agriculture official and promising to approve military aid to Egypt.
Menendez was found guilty of bribery. Hana and Daibes were charged under a separate count.
Count 6: Bribery
It alleges Hana and Daibes offered and gave bribes to Menendez and his wife, including cash, gold bars, mortgage payments to save Nadine Menendez’s home from foreclosure and a “low-or-no-show” job that paid her tens of thousands of dollars.
Hana and Daibes were found guiltyof bribery. Menendez was not included in this count.
Count 7: Honest services wire fraud
The charge is connected to actions Menendez took to allegedly benefit Hana and Egypt while receiving things of value from Hana and Daibes.
Menendez was found guilty of honest services wire fraud. Hana and Daibes were found guilty.
Count 8: Extortion under color of official right
The charge is also connected to actions Menendez took to allegedly benefit Hana and Egypt while receiving things of value from Hana and Daibes.
Menendez was found guilty of extortion under color of official right. Hana and Daibes were not charged.
Count 9: Honest services wire fraud
It relates to Menendez’s alleged promise to disrupt the New Jersey attorney general’s prosecution and investigation of Uribe’s business associatesin exchange for a Mercedes.
Menendez was found guiltyof honest services wire fraud. Hana was found guilty. Daibes was not included.
Count 10: Extortion under color of official right
The charge relates to Menendez’s alleged attempts to interfere in criminal cases involving Uribe’s business associates in exchange for a Mercedes.
Menendez was found guiltyof extortion under color of official right. Hana and Daibes were not charged.
Count 11: Bribery
The charge alleges Daibes gave Menendez and his wife gold bars and thousands of dollars in cash. In return, Menendez allegedly tried to use his influence to nominate a federal prosecutor who he thought could make a bank fraud case against Daibes go away. Menendez also made public statements in support of Qatar and introduced Daibes to a member of the Qatari royal family who invested in his real estate project.
Menendez was found guilty of bribery. Daibes was charged in a separate count. Hana was not included.
Count 12: Bribery
This charge includes the same allegations as the previous count.
Daibes was found guilty of bribery. Menendez was charged in a separate count. Hana was not included.
Count 13: Honest services wire fraud
The charge involves Menendez’s actions that allegedly benefited Daibes and Qatar.
Menendez was found guilty of honest services wire fraud. Daibes was found guilty. Hana was not included on this count.
Count 14: Extortion under color of official right
The charge also relates Menendez’s actions that allegedly benefited Daibes and Qatar.
Menendez was found guilty of extortion under color of official right. Hana and Daibes were not charged.
Count 15: Conspiracy for a public official to act as a foreign agent
This count relates to Menendez’s actions toward Egypt, including ghostwriting a letter on behalf of Egypt to lobby his Senate colleagues to release aid to the country and providing it with details about U.S. Embassy employees in Cairo.
Menendez was found guilty of conspiracy for a public official to act as a foreign agent. Hana was found guilty. Daibes was not charged with this offense.
Count 16: Public official acting as a foreign agent
This count also stems from Menendez’s actions toward Egypt.
Menendez was found guilty of acting as a foreign agent while being a public official. Hana and Daibes, who are not public officials, were not indicted on this offense.
Count 17: Conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice
The count relates to Menendez writing his wife checks to pay back Hana for $23,000 in mortgage payments and $21,000 to Uribe for car payments after they learned they were under investigation.
Menendez was found guiltyof conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice.Hana and Daibes were not included on this count.
Count 18: Obstruction of justice
The chargeisalso based on the checks Menendez wrote to his wife to pay back Hana and Uribe.
Menendez was found guilty of obstruction of justice. Hana and Daibes were not charged with this count.
Caitlin Yilek is a politics reporter at CBSNews.com, based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked for the Washington Examiner and The Hill, and was a member of the 2022 Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship with the National Press Foundation.
U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez was convicted on Tuesday of all the counts he faced at his corruption trial, including accepting bribes of gold and cash from three New Jersey businessmen and acting as a foreign agent for the Egyptian government.The jury’s verdict followed a nine-week trial in which prosecutors said the Democrat abused the power of his office to protect allies from criminal investigations and enrich associates, including his wife, through acts that included meeting with Egyptian intelligence officials and helping that country access millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.As the verdict was read in court, Menendez, 70, looked toward the jury at times as he appeared to mark a document in front of him. Afterward, he sat resting his chin against his closed hands, elbows on the table.Menendez did not testify at the trial, but insisted publicly he was only doing his job as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He said the gold bars found in his New Jersey home by the FBI belonged to his wife, Nadine Menendez. She too was charged but her trial was postponed so she could recover from breast cancer surgery. She has pleaded not guilty.The verdict, delivered at a federal courthouse in Manhattan, comes four months before Election Day and potentially dooms Menendez’s chances of campaigning for reelection as an independent candidate.Immediately after the verdict, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, in a statement, called on Menendez to resign.”In light of this guilty verdict, Senator Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our country, and resign,” Schumer said.The trial was the second time that the New Jersey Democrat has faced corruption allegations. An earlier prosecution on unrelated charges in 2017 ended with a deadlocked jury.His codefendants, two New Jersey businessmen, were convicted of the charges they faced as well. All three had pleaded not guilty. Another businessman pleaded guilty before trial and testified against Menendez and the other defendants.The jury’s decision is a culmination of a lengthy investigation that included a June 2022 FBI raid on the couple’s home in Englewood Cliffs, a wealthy community just across the Hudson River from New York City. In the home, FBI agents found gold bars worth nearly $150,000 and cash, mostly in stacks of $100 bills, totaling over $480,000. In the garage was a Mercedes-Benz convertible.A supervising agent testified that he ordered the valuables seized because he suspected they might be the proceeds of a crime. Stacks of cash, he said, were found stuffed in boots, shoeboxes and jackets belonging to the senator.At trial, prosecutors argued that the gold bars, cash and car were bribes. Defense lawyers disputed that, arguing that the gold belonged to his wife and she had kept him in the dark about financial troubles so grim that she nearly lost the home to foreclosure. They said the cash stemmed from the senator’s habitual hoarding of cash at home after hearing how his parents escaped Cuba in 1951 with only the cash they had hidden in a grandfather clock.More shocking than the cash or gold, though, were allegations that Menendez had earned some of it by using his powerful perch on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to take actions that benefited Egypt, an important U.S. ally but one that is also often subject to American criticism over alleged human rights abuses.Prosecutors said Nadine Menendez held herself out as a conduit to her powerful husband, exchanging texts with an Egyptian general and helping to arrange a Washington visit by the chief of Egypt’s intelligence service. To one general she texted, “Anytime you need anything you have my number and we will make everything happen.”Sen. Menendez, prosecutors said, took actions to ingratiate himself with Egyptian officials, including providing them with information about the staff at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and ghostwriting a letter to fellow senators encouraging them to lift a hold on $300 million in military aid to Egypt. The senator also told his wife to let her Egyptian contacts know that he planned to sign off on $99 million in tank ammunition.Charges, originally announced last September, were expanded over time, eventually including bribery, extortion, fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and, for Menendez, acting as a foreign agent of Egypt.Menendez went on trial in mid-May along with two New Jersey businessmen who were accused of paying bribes: Wael Hana and Fred Daibes. A third businessman, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty prior to trial and testified against the others. Lawyers for Daibes and Hana said they are innocent.Prosecutors said serial numbers on the gold bars and fingerprints on tape that bound together the stacks of cash were traced to Hana and Daibes. Some fingerprints on tape, they said, belonged to Menendez.In return for bribes, prosecutors said, Menendez took numerous actions to benefit the businessmen.Those included protecting Egypt’s decision to award Hana a lucrative monopoly to certify that meat sent to Egypt met Islamic dietary requirements. Menendez asked a U.S. agriculture official to drop his opposition to the monopoly deal, which he had questioned over fears it would drive up prices.Uribe testified at the trial that he paid for Nadine Menendez to get a Mercedes-Benz convertible in exchange for the senator’s help assuring that his insurance business would not be affected by New Jersey criminal probes of a trucking company belonging to his friend.Prosecutors also said Sen. Menendez attempted to interfere in a federal criminal prosecution of Daibes, a politically influential real estate developer accused of bank fraud. The U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Philip Sellinger, testified at the trial that Menendez questioned him about the Daibes prosecution and said he believed he was “being treated unfairly.”Prosecutors also presented evidence that Menendez took actions favorable to Qatar’s government to help Daibes secure a multimillion-dollar deal with a Qatari investment fund.Menendez’s political career began in 1974 when, only two years out of high school, he was elected to the education board in Union City, New Jersey. He later served in the state legislature, then was elected to the U.S. House in 1992. He became a U.S. senator in 2006.Menendez had the dubious distinction of being the only U.S. senator indicted twice.In 2015, he was charged with letting a wealthy Florida eye doctor buy his influence through luxury vacations and campaign contributions. After a jury couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict in 2017, New Jersey federal prosecutors dropped the case rather than put him on trial again.Voters accepted the mistrial as an exoneration and returned Menendez to the Senate.After his second indictment last summer, Menendez claimed he was being persecuted, saying some people “cannot accept that a first-generation Latino American from humble beginnings could rise to be a U.S. Senator.”While the trial was underway, he announced he would run for reelection as an independent.
NEW YORK —
U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez was convicted on Tuesday of all the counts he faced at his corruption trial, including accepting bribes of gold and cash from three New Jersey businessmen and acting as a foreign agent for the Egyptian government.
The jury’s verdict followed a nine-week trial in which prosecutors said the Democrat abused the power of his office to protect allies from criminal investigations and enrich associates, including his wife, through acts that included meeting with Egyptian intelligence officials and helping that country access millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.
As the verdict was read in court, Menendez, 70, looked toward the jury at times as he appeared to mark a document in front of him. Afterward, he sat resting his chin against his closed hands, elbows on the table.
Menendez did not testify at the trial, but insisted publicly he was only doing his job as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He said the gold bars found in his New Jersey home by the FBI belonged to his wife, Nadine Menendez. She too was charged but her trial was postponed so she could recover from breast cancer surgery. She has pleaded not guilty.
The verdict, delivered at a federal courthouse in Manhattan, comes four months before Election Day and potentially dooms Menendez’s chances of campaigning for reelection as an independent candidate.
AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., leaves Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, July, 15, 2024, in New York.
Immediately after the verdict, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, in a statement, called on Menendez to resign.
“In light of this guilty verdict, Senator Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our country, and resign,” Schumer said.
The trial was the second time that the New Jersey Democrat has faced corruption allegations. An earlier prosecution on unrelated charges in 2017 ended with a deadlocked jury.
His codefendants, two New Jersey businessmen, were convicted of the charges they faced as well. All three had pleaded not guilty. Another businessman pleaded guilty before trial and testified against Menendez and the other defendants.
The jury’s decision is a culmination of a lengthy investigation that included a June 2022 FBI raid on the couple’s home in Englewood Cliffs, a wealthy community just across the Hudson River from New York City. In the home, FBI agents found gold bars worth nearly $150,000 and cash, mostly in stacks of $100 bills, totaling over $480,000. In the garage was a Mercedes-Benz convertible.
A supervising agent testified that he ordered the valuables seized because he suspected they might be the proceeds of a crime. Stacks of cash, he said, were found stuffed in boots, shoeboxes and jackets belonging to the senator.
At trial, prosecutors argued that the gold bars, cash and car were bribes. Defense lawyers disputed that, arguing that the gold belonged to his wife and she had kept him in the dark about financial troubles so grim that she nearly lost the home to foreclosure. They said the cash stemmed from the senator’s habitual hoarding of cash at home after hearing how his parents escaped Cuba in 1951 with only the cash they had hidden in a grandfather clock.
More shocking than the cash or gold, though, were allegations that Menendez had earned some of it by using his powerful perch on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to take actions that benefited Egypt, an important U.S. ally but one that is also often subject to American criticism over alleged human rights abuses.
Prosecutors said Nadine Menendez held herself out as a conduit to her powerful husband, exchanging texts with an Egyptian general and helping to arrange a Washington visit by the chief of Egypt’s intelligence service. To one general she texted, “Anytime you need anything you have my number and we will make everything happen.”
Sen. Menendez, prosecutors said, took actions to ingratiate himself with Egyptian officials, including providing them with information about the staff at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and ghostwriting a letter to fellow senators encouraging them to lift a hold on $300 million in military aid to Egypt. The senator also told his wife to let her Egyptian contacts know that he planned to sign off on $99 million in tank ammunition.
Charges, originally announced last September, were expanded over time, eventually including bribery, extortion, fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and, for Menendez, acting as a foreign agent of Egypt.
Menendez went on trial in mid-May along with two New Jersey businessmen who were accused of paying bribes: Wael Hana and Fred Daibes. A third businessman, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty prior to trial and testified against the others. Lawyers for Daibes and Hana said they are innocent.
Prosecutors said serial numbers on the gold bars and fingerprints on tape that bound together the stacks of cash were traced to Hana and Daibes. Some fingerprints on tape, they said, belonged to Menendez.
In return for bribes, prosecutors said, Menendez took numerous actions to benefit the businessmen.
Those included protecting Egypt’s decision to award Hana a lucrative monopoly to certify that meat sent to Egypt met Islamic dietary requirements. Menendez asked a U.S. agriculture official to drop his opposition to the monopoly deal, which he had questioned over fears it would drive up prices.
Uribe testified at the trial that he paid for Nadine Menendez to get a Mercedes-Benz convertible in exchange for the senator’s help assuring that his insurance business would not be affected by New Jersey criminal probes of a trucking company belonging to his friend.
Prosecutors also said Sen. Menendez attempted to interfere in a federal criminal prosecution of Daibes, a politically influential real estate developer accused of bank fraud. The U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Philip Sellinger, testified at the trial that Menendez questioned him about the Daibes prosecution and said he believed he was “being treated unfairly.”
Prosecutors also presented evidence that Menendez took actions favorable to Qatar’s government to help Daibes secure a multimillion-dollar deal with a Qatari investment fund.
Menendez’s political career began in 1974 when, only two years out of high school, he was elected to the education board in Union City, New Jersey. He later served in the state legislature, then was elected to the U.S. House in 1992. He became a U.S. senator in 2006.
Menendez had the dubious distinction of being the only U.S. senator indicted twice.
In 2015, he was charged with letting a wealthy Florida eye doctor buy his influence through luxury vacations and campaign contributions. After a jury couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict in 2017, New Jersey federal prosecutors dropped the case rather than put him on trial again.
Voters accepted the mistrial as an exoneration and returned Menendez to the Senate.
After his second indictment last summer, Menendez claimed he was being persecuted, saying some people “cannot accept that a first-generation Latino American from humble beginnings could rise to be a U.S. Senator.”
While the trial was underway, he announced he would run for reelection as an independent.
Sen. Bob Menendez, a powerful New Jersey Democrat, was convicted Tuesday in a sprawling bribery scheme in which he was accused of selling out his office for lucrative bribes, including cash and gold bars.
A federal jury convicted Menendez on all 16 felony counts after prosecutors portrayed him as the puppet-master of a complex bribery scheme that involved two foreign governments and three New Jersey businessmen.
The verdict marks a remarkable downfall for the longtime senator who sat atop the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee and beat separate bribery charges in 2017.
Menendez tried to shift the blame to his wife, Nadine Menendez, arguing she kept him in the dark about her dealings with the businessmen and her financial troubles. Her trial was postponed as she recovers from breast cancer surgery.
In his closing arguments, prosecutor Paul Monteleoni said the senator “was in charge” and his wife “was his go-between, demanding payment, receiving payment and passing messages but always — always — keeping him informed.”
“He calls the shots,” Monteleoni said.
The scheme began in 2018, around the time Menendez began dating his now wife, according to prosecutors.
They alleged Menendez acted to secretly benefit the government of Egypt, including ghostwriting a letter for the country lobbying his Senate colleagues to release military aid; pressured a U.S. Department of Agriculture official to protect a halal certification monopoly Egypt granted to a businessman, Wael Hana, who was paying the senator’s wife; attempted to quash a federal prosecution against a second businessman, Fred Daibes, while helping him land a lucrative investment deal with Qatar; and interfering in criminal investigations by the New Jersey attorney general’s office into the associates of a third businessman, Jose Uribe. Menendez was also accused of obstruction of justice after he and his wife tried to characterize some of the alleged bribe payments as loans and “caused” their former lawyers to make false statements to prosecutors.
In return for political favors, the businessmen provided Menendez and his wife with lavish gifts, including cash, gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz convertible, furniture and mortgage payments.
Caitlin Yilek is a politics reporter at CBSNews.com, based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked for the Washington Examiner and The Hill, and was a member of the 2022 Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship with the National Press Foundation.
Washington — The fate of Sen. Bob Menendez now lies in the hands of twelve jurors, who began deliberations Friday afternoon in the New Jersey Democrat’s bribery trial.
The trial, initially expected to last six weeks, has stretched into its ninth week.
Menendez, who has pleaded not guilty, is charged with 16 felony counts, including obstruction of justice, acting as a foreign agent, bribery, extortion and honest services wire fraud. He is accused of using his political influence to benefit two foreign governments, while helping three New Jersey businessmen in return for bribes that included stacks of cash, gold bars, mortgage payments and a Mercedes-Benz convertible.
Since mid-May, prosecutors have detailed a wide-ranging corruption scheme in which Menendez allegedly used his influence as the then-chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee to secretly benefit Egypt and pressure a Department of Agriculture official to protect a halal certification monopoly Egypt granted to businessman Wael Hana, who was paying the senator’s wife, Nadine Menendez.
The senator also allegedly tried to quash state and federal criminal cases related to former insurance broker Jose Uribe and real estate developer Fred Daibes. Menendez was helping Daibes land a lucrative investment deal with Qatar at the same time, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutors say Menendez and his wife tried to obstruct the investigation after they were initially charged by characterizing some of the alleged bribe payments as loans, which “caused” their former lawyers to make false statements to prosecutors.
A judge postponed Nadine Menendez’s trial until August because she’s recovering from breast cancer surgery. She has pleaded not guilty.
Hana and Daibes, who have also pleaded not guilty, are on trial with the senator.
Uribe pleaded guilty earlier this year and testified in this trial that he asked Menendez directly for his help, months after he said he handed Nadine Menendez $15,000 in cash in a restaurant parking lot for a downpayment on a $60,000 Mercedes. Uribe made her car payments until June 2022 — the same month the FBI searched the Menendezes’ home and found over $480,000 in cash and gold bars worth more than $100,000.
“This is a big case, but it all boils down to a classic case of corruption on a massive scale,” prosecutor Paul Monteleoni said this week during closing arguments.
The senator chose not to testify in his own defense. His lawyers have asserted the government is prosecuting routine legislative activity. They also have tried to pin the blame on Nadine Menendez, saying she had financial troubles that she did not disclose to her husband.
“There is no text, there is no email, there is no recording, there is no voicemail, there is no photo, that ever shows Senator Menendez taking a bribe in exchange for doing something. There is none,” his lawyer Adam Fee said this week, saying the government’s case is based on “painfully thin” evidence.
Fee asked jurors to “resist the temptation to pick the salacious story about a corrupt politician, because it’s not there.”
Prosecutors pushed back on the defense’s assertion that the couple lived separate lives, showing jurors text messages of the couple sharing mundane details about their day with each other and the senator checking in on his wife’s location. They said Menendez was careful while committing the alleged crimes.
“When a sophisticated, careful person like Menendez commits a crime, he doesn’t say the quiet part out loud,” Monteleoni said. “He doesn’t negotiate the bribe payment himself. He has Nadine do that for him. He insulates himself.”
Caitlin Yilek is a politics reporter at CBSNews.com, based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked for the Washington Examiner and The Hill, and was a member of the 2022 Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship with the National Press Foundation.
A lawyer for Sen. Bob Menendez urged jurors on Tuesday to acquit him of every charge at the New Jersey Democrat’s corruption trial, saying federal prosecutors had failed to prove a single count beyond a reasonable doubt.
The attorney, Adam Fee, told the Manhattan federal court jury that there were too many gaps in evidence that prosecutors wanted jurors to fill in on their own to conclude crimes were committed or that Menendez accepted any bribes.
“The absence of evidence should be held against the prosecution,” he said. “There’s zero evidence of him saying or suggesting that he was doing something for a bribe.”
And he defended over $100,000 in gold bars and more than $480,000 in cash found in an Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, home during a June 2022 FBI search, although he acknowledged of the valuables: “It’s provocative. It’s atypical.”
“Prosecutors have not come close to meeting their burden to show you that any of the gold or cash was given to Senator Menendez as a bribe,” Fee said.
Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, arrives at federal court in New York City on July 8, 2024.
Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images
“This is a case with a lot of inferences,” he said, suggesting there were large gaps in the evidence that was unsupported by emails, texts or other evidence.
The longtime lawmaker faces 16 felony counts, including obstruction of justice, acting as a foreign agent, bribery, extortion and honest services wire fraud.
After the jury was sent home Tuesday, Fee told Judge Sidney Stein that he was about halfway through a five-hour closing that will resume Wednesday morning. His closing will be followed by arguments from two other defense lawyers before prosecutors present a rebuttal argument. The jury is likely to get the case on Thursday.
Earlier Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Monteleoni said in a closing argument that began Monday that the senator had engaged in “wildly abnormal” behavior in response to bribes, including trying to interfere in criminal cases handled by the top state and federal prosecutors in New Jersey.
Menendez has pleaded not guilty to charges that he accepted bribes including gold and envelopes of cash from 2018 to 2022 from three New Jersey businessmen who wanted his help in their business ventures.
His trial entered its ninth week on Monday.
Menendez is on trial with two of the businessmen — Wael Hana and Fred Daibes. Hana, who prosecutors say enlisted Menendez to help him protect a monopoly on the certification of meat exported from the U.S. to Egypt, and Daibes, an influential real estate developer, have also both pleaded not guilty. A third businessman, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty and testified that he bought a Mercedes-Benz convertible for the senator’s wife in exchange for Menendez quashing criminal investigations into his business associates.
Wael Hana arrives for trial at Manhattan Federal Court on June 11, 2024, in New York City.
Michael M Santiago/Getty Images / Getty Images
Monteleoni rejected attempts by the defense to make it seem that Menendez was unaware of efforts to get cash or favors from the businessmen by his then-girlfriend, Nadine Arslanian, who became his wife in October 2020. Fee has argued that she went to great lengths to hide her financial troubles, including an inability to pay for her home, from Menendez.
To demonstrate his point that Menendez was in charge of bribery schemes, the prosecutor pointed to testimony about a small bell the senator allegedly used to summon his wife one day when he was outside their home with Uribe and wanted her to bring him paper.
The bell “showed you he was the one in charge,” Monteleoni said, “not a puppet having his strings pulled by someone he summons with a bell.”
Menendez has resisted calls, even by some prominent Democrats, that he resign, though he did relinquish his powerful post as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after the charges were unveiled last fall.
Washington — Attorneys for Sen. Bob Menendez concluded calling witnesses on Wednesday, opting not to have the New Jersey Democrat take the stand in his own defense as he fights allegations that he traded political favors for gold bars and cash.
While leaving court, Menendez said it did not make “any sense” for him to testify. “From my perspective, the government has failed to prove every aspect of its case,” he said.
A handful of witnesses testified on his behalf, compared to the 30 witnesses called by the prosecution during the trial, which has so far spanned eight weeks.
Menendez’s defense attorneys called his sister and the sister of his wife, Nadine Menendez, to testify on Monday as they sought to show it was not unusual for the couple to keep gold and large amounts of cash in their home.
When federal investigators executed a search warrant at Menendez’s home in June 2022, they found more than $480,000 in cash stashed in envelopes, coats, shoes and bags, as well as 13 gold bars worth more than $100,000.
Menendez, who has pleaded not guilty, is charged with bribery, extortion, wire fraud, obstruction of justice and acting as a foreign agent for Egypt. Nadine Menendez has also pleaded not guilty. Her trial was postponed until August as she recovers from breast cancer surgery.
The senator’s older sister, Caridad Gonzalez, told jurors that their parents and aunt had a practice of storing cash at home after their family fled persecution in Cuba in 1951, before Menendez was born. She called the habit “a Cuban thing.”
“Daddy always said don’t trust the banks,” Gonzalez said. “If you trust the banks, you never know what can happen, so you must always have money at home.”
Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, exits federal court in New York on June 10, 2024.
Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images
She recalled finding a stash of cash in a shoebox in Menendez’s home in the 1980s.
But prosecutors undercut one of the points made by Gonzalez after she testified that she asked her brother to help a neighbor with an immigration issue. Prosecutors showed text messages between the senator and his sister that suggest he did not give that issue the same treatment that prosecutors say the businessmen who bribed the couple got.
The businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, are on trial with the senator. They have also pleaded not guilty.
When they asked Menendez for help, he allegedly pressured a U.S. Department of Agriculture official to protect Hana’s halal certification monopoly and interfered in a criminal case in New Jersey involving Daibes, according to prosecutors.
Russell Richardson, a forensic accountant, testified that Menendez withdrew about $400 in cash almost every few weeks from 2008 to 2022, totaling more than $150,000.
The testimony was meant to bolster Menendez’s explanation that he withdrew thousands of dollars in cash from his bank account over decades because of his family’s experience in Cuba.
Richardson testified during cross-examination that he did not find any record of Menendez withdrawing $10,000 in cash at one time. Some of the cash seized from Menendez’s home was found in bundles of $10,000, and Daibes’ fingerprints were found on some of the envelopes containing the cash.
Part of Menendez’s defense strategy has been to pin the blame on his wife, claiming the senator was unaware of his wife’s financial challenges and her dealings with the businessmen accused of bribing them.
Nadine Menendez’s younger sister, Katia Tabourian, testified that her sister and the senator broke up in late 2018 because her sister’s ex-boyfriend “was creating a lot of chaos in her relationship with the senator.” Menendez’s lawyers say the couple could not have plotted together during the pause in their relationship.
Tabourian confirmed that her sister locked her bedroom closet, which Menendez’s lawyers said he did not have a key to. Investigators found gold bars and cash in the closet during the 2022 search. Tabourian said it was common for her family to give cash, gold and jewelry as gifts.
Jurors are expected to have the case by the end of next week, following testimony from Hana’s witnesses and closing arguments. Daibes’ legal team rested Wednesday without presenting a defense.
—Ash Kalmar and Christine Sloan contributed reporting.
Caitlin Yilek is a politics reporter at CBSNews.com, based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked for the Washington Examiner and The Hill, and was a member of the 2022 Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship with the National Press Foundation.
Washington — Prosecutors in Sen. Bob Menendez’s bribery trial rested their case against the New Jersey Democrat on Friday, bringing an end to seven weeks of testimony from more than two dozen witnesses they’ve called to persuade a jury that the senator used his political influence to benefit three businessmen and two foreign governments in exchange for bribes.
The allegations date back to 2018, around the time the Democratic senator began dating the woman who is now his wife, Nadine Menendez, whose trial was postponed as she recovers from breast cancer surgery.
Over the last month and a half, prosecutors detailed a wide-ranging corruption scheme in which Menendez allegedly used his influence as the then-chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee to secretly benefit Egypt; pressured a U.S. Department of Agriculture official to protect a halal certification monopoly Egypt granted to a New Jersey businessman, Wael Hana; interfered in a criminal investigations by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office into the associates of a second New Jersey businessman, Jose Uribe; and attempted to influence a federal prosecution of a third New Jersey businessman, Fred Daibes.
In return, prosecutors say, the businessmen provided Menendez and his wife with lavish gifts, including cash, gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz convertible, furniture and mortgage payments as Nadine Menendez was facing foreclosure on her home.
Hana and Daibes are on trial with Menendez. All three have pleaded not guilty.
Businessman says Mercedes was bribe
Sen. Bob Menendez leaves Manhattan federal court on June 7, 2024, in New York.
Adam Gray / AP
Uribe, who pleaded guilty in March, was the prosecution’s star witness, telling jurors that he bribed the senator by buying his wife a luxury car for the purpose of disrupting two state criminal investigations into his business associates. Hana, a longtime friend of Nadine Menendez, indicated that the senator and his wife could “make these things go away,” according to Uribe.
The insurance broker testified that he asked the senator directly for his help during two meetings in August and September 2019, months after he said he handed Nadine Menendez $15,000 in cash in a restaurant parking lot for a downpayment on the Mercedes. Uribe made her car payments until June 2022 — the same month the FBI searched the Menendezes’ home and found over $480,000 in cash stuffed in envelopes, coats, shoes and bags, and 13 gold bars worth more than $100,000.
“I paid for the car as an arrangement with Nadine that I will provide a car, in return for her getting Mr. Menendez to use his power to stop [the investigations],” Uribe said earlier this month.
Gurbir Grewal, the then-attorney general for New Jersey,told jurors about a January 2019 call and September 2019 meeting in which Menendez raised a concern “about a pending criminal manner.”
“I can’t talk to you about this,” Grewal recalled telling Menendez.
After the September meeting with the state attorney general, Uribe said Menendez told him, “That thing that you asked me about, there’s nothing there. I give you your peace.” The senator later boasted about saving him twice, Uribe testified.
But Uribe’s credibility also came under fire during cross-examination by defense attorneys. He admitted to a long list of lies that have culminated in a number of criminal charges over the years.
An agent for Egypt?
Another piece central to the alleged scheme was a New Jersey startup owned by Hana, which prosecutors say was used to funnel bribe payments to the senator and his wife.
In April 2019, Egypt granted a lucrative monopoly to Hana’s halal certification company, setting off alarms at the Department of Agriculture. Before that, four companies had split ensuring that meat exported from the U.S. to Egypt was prepared according to Islamic law. The abrupt change confused U.S. officials because Hana’s company did not have any prior experience in halal certification and had few employees. The decision increased meat costs in Egypt and was seen as detrimental to U.S. businesses, according to several officials who testified.
The U.S. was stonewalled when it sought answers from Egypt, which officials said was unusual for the country — one of the largest recipients of U.S. military aid.
“When the Americans request a meeting, we get meetings,” Bret Tate, a former agricultural attaché in Cairo, said.
As the U.S. continued to press Egypt, Ted McKinney, a former top agricultural official, said he got a call from Menendez with the message: “Stop interfering with my constituent.”
“I felt he was telling me to stand down and stop doing all of the things that we were doing to try to revive some sense of competition in the U.S. beef market,” McKinney told jurors in May. “It was the first time I’d ever had a call that we thought would clearly harm elements of the U.S. food and [agriculture] industry.”
Menendez’s lawyers challenged the characterization of the conversation, saying he was doing his job by helping a constituent.
By that time, prosecutors alleged, Menendez was doing favors for Egyptian officials that he knew through his wife and Hana, including secretly helping the country lobby his colleagues to release $300 million in aid that had been held up over human rights concerns and providing it with details about U.S. Embassy employees in Cairo, which prosecutors argued was sensitive information.
On May 21, 2019, soon after Egypt granted the monopoly, the FBI was surveilling an upscale steakhouse near the White House, waiting for their target who had come from New York to arrive, according to two FBI agents who testified.
Two agents, undercover as a husband and wife on a date, sat on the restaurant’s patio near a group that included an Egyptian official, Hana and his business associate. Then Menendez and his wife showed up. It’s unclear who the FBI’s target was, though an agent testified that the senator was not the intended subject of the surveillance. The undercover agents snapped photos and took silent footage with a concealed video camera.
One of the agent’s testified that she heard the senator’s wife ask the other group, “What else can the love of my life do for you?” The agent did not hear the response.
With the assistance of the senator, Nadine Menendez set up a shell company in summer 2019, which was used to receive payments from a “low-or-no-show job” at Hana’s company, according to prosecutors. At the time, she was tens of thousands of dollars behind on her mortgage and facing foreclosure. Hana wired her $23,000 to save her home from foreclosure and then put her on the company’s payroll for $10,000 a month, a former lawyer for the businessman’s company testified.
Sarah Arkin, a former senior aide to Menendez, testified this week about a number of incidents involving the senator and Egyptian officials that she considered to be unusual.
Arkin told jurors that Menendez held meetings with Egyptian officials that she had not been told of, a deviation from normal practice.
For one of the meetings she was aware of, she said the senator had handwritten the invitation for the Egyptian defense attaché in Washington and Hana to visit his office. The handwritten invite was “an unusual item,” she said. When the meeting happened in March 2018, Nadine Menendez, who had just begun dating the senator, was also there.
In September 2021, when Arkin was helping Menendez prepare for a congressional delegation trip to Egypt and Qatar, she said the senator instructed his staff to plan the visit with an Egyptian intelligence officer posted in the country’s embassy in Washington. The trips, she said, were normally planned by the State Department.
“All of this Egypt stuff is very weird. I’ve never seen anything like it,” another staffer texted Arkin as they planned the trip.
Menendez’s lawyers have portrayed his interactions with Egyptian officials as another part of his job as a member of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Menendez stepped down from his role as committee chair when he was indicted last fall.
Gold bars and Qatar
Prosecutors say Daibes, the third businessman indicted, bribed the couple with cash and gold bars in order for the senator to try to influence a federal bank fraud case against the real estate developer.
The case came up as Menendez was considering recommending his longtime friend, Philip Sellinger, to be U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey.
Sellinger, who now holds the job, said the senator told him he thought Daibes “was being treated unfairly” by the U.S. attorney’s office and “hoped that if I became U.S. attorney that I would look at it carefully.” Sellinger testified that he told the senator he may have to recuse himself from the case if appointed because of an unrelated lawsuit his law firm had handled related to Daibes.
Sellinger said their longtime friendship ended shortly after that and Menendez told him he would no longer nominate him for the role.
But Sellinger said he “never believed [Menendez] to be asking me to do anything unethical or improper,” and the senator did eventually recommend him for the position.
As Menendez was trying to help Daibes, he was researching the value of gold online, according to evidence introduced by the prosecution. An FBI agent testified that he reviewed records including the senator’s internet search history dating back to 2008. The senator’s first search about gold was in April 2019, the agent said. After that, he repeatedly researched the price of gold.
“One kilo gold bar,” one of those searches read.
The online searches also happened as the senator allegedly used his influence to help Daibes secure a $95 million investment from a Qatari investment fund by taking actions favorable to Qatar’s government.
Nearly a dozen envelopes of cash with tens of thousands of dollars bearing the fingerprints or DNA of Daibes were found in the Menendez home, according to expert testimony and evidence shown to jurors. Prosecutors have linked some of the gold found inside the senator’s home to Daibes and Hana through serial numbers.
But a New Jersey jeweler, who testified Wednesday about selling tens of thousands of dollars worth of gold for Nadine Menendez, said he did not record the serial numbers of the gold he sold for her. The jeweler recalled that she first asked him to sell two one-kilogram bars of gold in March 2022, which fetched nearly $60,000 each.
“She said she needed to pay the bills,” he recalled, adding that Nadine Menendez told him the gold was from her family. “She had expenses in, like, home bills.”
In May of that year, she asked him to sell four one-ounce gold coins worth $7,200 and another two one-kilogram gold bars, the jeweler said. They didn’t discuss where she got them from or why she wanted to sell them, he said. The requests came weeks before the FBI executed a search warrant at the Menendez home.
Jurors also heard this week from an FBI specialist about when some of the bills found among the nearly half a million dollars in cash stockpiled in the senator’s home were issued. Evidence showed hundreds of the bills entered circulation starting in 2018, when the alleged corruption scheme began. But defense attorneys said the newer bills made up only a fraction of the stash.
What happens next
Lawyers for Menendez, Hana and Daibes have said they could call more than a dozen witnesses, beginning Monday, but haven’t said whether any of the defendants will testify themselves.
The judge told jurors last week that he expects the case will be in their hands by the end of the week of July 8.
In their opening statement and during cross-examination over the last seven weeks, the senator’s attorneys have shifted the blame to his wife, which legal experts say could backfire with jurors.
Caitlin Yilek is a politics reporter at CBSNews.com, based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked for the Washington Examiner and The Hill, and was a member of the 2022 Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship with the National Press Foundation.
Prosecutors on Thursday showed jurors at Sen. Bob Menendez’s trial multiple instances when he researched the value of gold as he tried to help a New Jersey businessman who authorities say bribed him with gold and cash.
The evidence about the New Jersey Democrat’s online searches was prominently displayed to a New York jury as prosecutors traced the history of his text messages and internet queries as he allegedly tried to aid Fred Daibes, a prominent real estate developer who is on trial with him.
The evidence is considered crucial in the government’s effort to prove that Menendez and his wife received gold bars, cash and a luxury car from 2018 to 2022 from three New Jersey businessmen who benefited from favors Menendez is alleged to have delivered in return.
Menendez, Daibes and another businessman and co-defendant, Wael Hana, have pleaded not guilty. His wife, Nadine Menendez, faces trial at a later date and is recovering from breast cancer surgery. She too has pleaded not guilty.
A third businessman pleaded guilty prior to trial and testified against the other defendants. The businessman, Jose Uribe, said he tried to bribe Menendez by paying for a Mercedes-Benz convertible for Nadine Menendez. In return, he said he wanted the senator to use his influence to stop criminal investigations into his business associates.
The gold bars found in the home Menendez shared with his wife in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, took a prominent role early in the trial when an FBI agent described a 2022 search of the residence the senator moved into in 2020.
The search found gold bars worth more than $100,000 and over $486,000 in cash, some stuffed in the pockets of coats hanging in closets, in bags and in shoes and boots. A Mercedes-Benz was parked in the garage.
On Thursday, the topic of gold came up repeatedly as another FBI agent described internet searches Menendez conducted when he researched the price of gold in April 2019, twice in May 2021, again in October 2021, twice in December 2021, once in January 2022 and again in March and May 2022.
Among the searches, agent Paul Van Wie said, were instances when Menendez researched the worth of a gram, an ounce and a kilo of gold. The agent said a search of Menendez’s internet history since 2008 showed that the senator had never searched for gold prices during that span until April 5, 2019.
Menendez’s lawyers have said gold bars found in the home belonged to his wife and that she kept the senator in the dark about gifts she accepted when she was in financial trouble.
Prosecutors sought to prove Thursday through emails, text messages and the online searches for the price of gold that Menendez was interested in gold as he allegedly sought to recommend a new federal prosecutor for New Jersey who could help Daibes get a favorable outcome in a criminal case against him.
The online searches also occurred as Menendez allegedly used his international clout to help Daibes secure a $95 million investment from a Qatari investment fund by taking actions favorable to Qatar’s government.
Daibes has been credited with the construction of a string of luxury waterfront buildings, known as the “gold coast,” in the New Jersey town of Edgewater.
Prosecutors showed the jury email and text correspondence Thursday reflecting that Menendez introduced Daibes to a member of Qatar’s royal family who was a principal in the investment firm and also met with Qatari officials and made public statements supportive of Qatar as the real estate deal was being negotiated.
After the deal was signed in May 2022, Daibes gave Menendez at least one gold bar, prosecutors say.
In the 2022 search of the Menendez home, FBI agents found two one-kilogram gold bars and nine one-ounce gold bars with serial numbers showing they had previously been possessed by Daibes, along with about nearly a dozen envelopes of cash with tens of thousands of dollars bearing the fingerprints or DNA of Daibes, according to the evidence shown to jurors.
One of the one-kilogram gold bars was found inside a Ziploc bag that had been wrapped in a paper towel, an FBI agent testified at the beginning of the trial. In the same closet, the FBI discovered a safe containing loose cash, envelopes of cash, seven one-ounce gold bars and another one-kilogram gold bar, the agent said.
Menendez’s lawyers say the closet, which was locked, was his wife’s and he did not have a key to it.
In August 2021, according to evidence shown to the jury Thursday, Menendez used an encrypted messaging application to send Daibes the text of a press release in which he praised the government of Qatar, before texting Daibes: “You might want to send to them. I am just about to release.”
When Menendez was charged last fall, he held the powerful post of chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a position he relinquished after he was charged. He has resisted calls, including from prominent Democrats, that he resign from the Senate and he recently announced that he’s running for reelection as an independent.
Prosecutors at the trial of Sen. Bob Menendez used the testimony of his former campaign manager on Tuesday to try to link alleged bribes of the Democrat to the appointment of New Jersey’s top prosecutor three years ago.
Michael Soliman, a former top Menendez political adviser, testified immediately after New Jersey’s U.S. attorney, Philip Sellinger, finished two days on the witness stand at the Manhattan federal court trial that is in its sixth week.
Menendez and two New Jersey businessmen are on trial on charges alleging the senator accepted gold bars, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and a luxury car from businessmen from 2018 to 2022 in return for helping them in their business dealings, including by trying to meddle in court cases.
Sellinger testified last week that Menendez told him that if he recommended that he be appointed as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor, he hoped he’d take a look at a criminal case against Fred Daibes, a prominent New Jersey real estate developer, because he believed he “was being treated unfairly.”
Sellinger said he told Menendez the next day that he would have to notify the Justice Department that he might need to be recused from the Daibes case because he had worked on a lawsuit while in private practice that was adverse to Daibes.
Menendez then recommended somebody else for the job, and Soliman testified Tuesday that he was told by a top Menendez aide in December 2020 that the senator and Sellinger “had a falling out.”
Soliman said that after the appointment of the new candidate fell through following a series of negative news articles about her, Sellinger told him that he wanted the senator to know that he checked with the Justice Department and learned that “the issue” that he thought would require his recusal did not after all.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Richenthal asked Soliman if there was any confusion expressed by Menendez about what “the issue” was when he relayed the conversation to the senator.
“No,” Soliman said.
Soliman, who said he did not know what “the issue” was that Sellinger had referenced, also said Menendez did not ask any questions regarding the message Sellinger passed along.
Sellinger, who is not accused of any wrongdoing, was sworn in as U.S. attorney in December 2021 and has held the post ever since.
Sellinger, testifying last week, recalled his conversation with Soliman differently, claiming that he told Soliman exactly what he told the senator: that he expected he might be recused from the Daibes case because of the civil case he had worked on that was adverse to Daibes.
Sellinger said he called Menendez in spring 2022 to invite him to speak at a public ceremony celebrating Sellinger’s appointment as U.S. attorney.
“He said: ‘I’m going to pass,’” Sellinger recalled.
Sellinger said the senator then said: “The only thing worse than not having a relationship with the United States attorney is people thinking you have a relationship with the United States attorney and you don’t.”
Sellinger testified on cross-examination last week and Tuesday in ways favorable to the senator, including saying he never believed Menendez had asked him to do anything improper or unethical.
Buoyed by Sellinger’s testimony on cross-examination, Menendez left the courthouse Tuesday seeming upbeat, saying just before getting in his car: “Sellinger made it very clear. He was asked to do nothing wrong. And he didn’t.”
Daibes, who is on trial with Menendez, contracted COVID last week, forcing a three-day delay in a trial that is now expected to stretch into July. After Wednesday’s holiday, the trial resumes Thursday.
Washington — A New Jersey businessman who says he bribed Sen. Bob Menendez by buying his wife a Mercedes-Benz convertible for the purpose of disrupting two criminal investigations will continue to be cross-examined Tuesday in the Democrat’s corruption trial.
Over two days, Jose Uribe, an insurance broker who is the prosecution’s star witness, has detailed how he says he bribed the senator and his wife, Nadine Menendez, in order to stop criminal investigations by the New Jersey attorney general into his business associates.
Uribe is the only defendant to plead guilty in the case. The others, including the senator and his wife, have pleaded not guilty. Menendez is being tried alongside Wael Hana, the owner of a halal certification company, and Fred Daibes, a real estate developer — both are also accused of bribing the senator.
Uribe testified Monday that he asked the senator directly for his help with quashing the investigations during two meetings in August and September 2019.
The first meeting allegedly came months after he said he met Nadine Menendez in a restaurant parking lot, where he claims he handed her $15,000 in cash for the down payment on a luxury convertible. After that, he made monthly payments on the vehicle and sought to conceal his involvement in them, Uribe told jurors.
“I remember saying to her, ‘If your problem is a car, my problem is saving my family, and we went into the agreement of helping each other,’” Uribe said.
During a dinner in August 2019 with the senator and his wife, the investigations were discussed, Uribe testified. An employee who Uribe considered family was under investigation and a business associate had been charged with insurance fraud. The business associate ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation.
“He would look into it,” Uribe said of Bob Menendez’s response after he asked him to “stop this investigation.” “I asked him to help me get peace for me and my family.”
The second meeting, Uribe said, happened over brandy and cigars in Nadine Menendez’s backyard on Sept. 5, 2019.
The two men were alone when Bob Menendez told Uribe he had a meeting the next day at his Newark office with the New Jersey attorney general, according to Uribe.
The senator, he said, rang a little bell sitting on the table and called for his wife using the French word for “my love.” She brought out a piece of paper and returned inside, Uribe testified. Bob Menendez asked him to write down the names of the people he was concerned about, Uribe said, recalling that the senator then folded the piece of paper and put it in his pants pocket.
Uribe said he and Bob Menendez didn’t discuss the car payments during their conversations. He assumed the senator had known about the payments and he was never told by Nadine Menendez not to keep it a secret.
The day after Bob Menendez met with New Jersey’s attorney general, Nadine Menendez asked Uribe to meet the senator at his apartment building. The senator told him there was “no indication of an investigation against my family,” Uribe testified.
Uribe said he received a call from the senator on Oct. 29, 2019, when he said Menendez told him: “That thing that you asked me about, there’s nothing there. I give you your peace.”
Nearly a year later, the two men were at dinner when Bob Menendez told him, “I saved your a** twice. Not once but twice,” Uribe testified.
Caitlin Yilek is a politics reporter at CBSNews.com, based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked for the Washington Examiner and The Hill, and was a member of the 2022 Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship with the National Press Foundation.
Washington — A star witness who testified about bribing New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez will be back on the stand Monday.
Jose Uribe, a New Jersey insurance broker, told jurors last week that he bought the Democratic senator’s wife, Nadine Menendez, a new Mercedes-Benz convertible in exchange for the senator’s “power and influence” to stop criminal investigations into his business associates.
Uribe pleaded guilty in March and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in the case against Menendez, who has pleaded not guilty and has denied accepting any bribes.
In 2018, Uribe was desperate to help a business associate who was charged with insurance fraud and an employee who was under investigation.
“I was f****d,” Uribe said Friday.
Uribe testified that his friend, Wael Hana, who is on trial with Menendez, told him he had “a way to make these things go away” for $200,000 to $250,000, and mentioned the Menendezes.
“What did he say about them?” prosecutor Lara Pomerantz asked.
“He could go to Nadine,” Uribe said. “Nadine will work with — go to Senator Menendez.”
Prosecutors allege Menendez called New Jersey state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal to try to disrupt the insurance fraud case in January 2019. The alleged interference didn’t work, however, and Uribe’s business associate eventually pleaded guilty. But the investigation into Uribe’s employee, whom he considers to be a daughter, continued.
Uribe said he repeatedly messaged Hana for reassurance that the issue would be resolved favorably by the senator, but he was losing hope that Hana was following through on his part. So, he approached Nadine Menendez himself in March 2019 with an offer: “I will provide the car as long as she helps me,” he said.
Nadine Menendez was in need of a car after a December 2018 crash and had complained to Hana about her lack of a vehicle.
Uribe and Nadine Menendez agreed that he would buy her a car and the senator, whom she would marry the next year, would try to make the investigation go away, he told jurors.
Menendez is being tried alongside Hana, the owner of a halal certification company, and Fred Daibes, a real estate developer. Hana and Daibes, who are accused of trying to bribe the senator, have also pleaded not guilty.
The judge postponed Nadine Menendez’s trial until later this summer because she is being treated for breast cancer. She has also pleaded not guilty.
Caitlin Yilek is a politics reporter at CBSNews.com, based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked for the Washington Examiner and The Hill, and was a member of the 2022 Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship with the National Press Foundation.
Washington — A key witness in the corruption trial of Sen. Bob Menendez is expected to testify Friday about what he says was an attempt to bribe the New Jersey Democrat by buying his wife, Nadine Menendez, a new Mercedes-Benz convertible.
Jose Uribe, a New Jersey insurance broker who was indicted with Menendez, pleaded guilty in March and confessed to buying a $60,000 luxury car to influence the senator. He is cooperating with prosecutors.
During the March hearing, Uribe said he conspired with the senator’s wife and others to buy her the car in exchange for her husband “using his power and influence as a United States senator to get a favorable outcome and to stop all investigations related to one of my associates,” according to the Associated Press.
He also told the judge he wanted to stop a “possible investigation into another person who I considered to be a member of my family,” adding that he concealed his involvement in the car payments “because I knew it was wrong.”
Throughout the senator’s corruption trial, which is in its fourth week, prosecutors have used text messages, emails, voice mails and financial records to portray the senator and his wife as collaborators in a complex bribery scheme that involved a halal meat monopoly, the Egyptian and Qatari governments and trying to influence several criminal investigations.
The senator is being tried alongside two New Jersey businessmen — Wael Hana, the owner of a halal certification startup, and Fred Daibes, a real estate developer. All three have pleaded not guilty. Nadine Menendez’s trial was delayed until later this summer as she undergoes treatment for breast cancer. She has pleaded not guilty.
Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, center, exits federal court in New York on Wednesday, June 5, 2024.
Alex Kent/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Hana connected Uribe to the couple after Nadine Menendez was involved in a car crash that killed a pedestrian in December 2018. Nadine Menendez, who was not charged in the death, had been complaining to Hana about her lack of a car after the crash, according to text messages presented by prosecutors as evidence.
Meanwhile, Uribe was desperate to help a business associate who was charged with insurance fraud and an employee who was under investigation, according to prosecutors.
In January 2019, prosecutors say, the senator called New Jersey’s attorney general to try to disrupt the insurance fraud case. The alleged interference didn’t work, however, and Uribe’s business associate eventually pleaded guilty. But the investigation into Uribe’s employee, who he said he considered to be a family member, continued.
Uribe and Nadine Menendez came to an agreement that he would buy her the car she needed and the senator, whom she would marry the next year, would try to make the investigation go away, prosecutors say.
Nadine Menendez had her new car by early April 2019, after meeting Uribe in a restaurant parking lot where he gave her $15,000 in cash for a down payment, according to the indictments.
“Congratulations mon amour de la vie we are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes,” she allegedly texted the senator.
Uribe later arranged car payments, texting an associate, “I don’t want to use anything with my name on it,” according to messages prosecutors showed jurors.
After the FBI searched their home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, in June 2022, whereagentsdiscovered stacks of cash, gold bars and the Mercedes, Nadine Menendez and Uribe met to discuss what he would say if asked about the car payments, according to what he told the court when he pleaded guilty.
“I told her that I would say a good friend of mine was in a financial situation and I was helping that friend to make the payments on the car, and when she was financially stable, she will pay me back. Nadine says something like, ‘That sounds good,’” Uribe told the judge in March, according to the AP.
Prosecutors say the senator then wrote a check to his wife, who then wrote one to Uribe, characterizing it as a loan. That characterization was a lie, an attempt to hide the earlier bribe, prosecutors said.
Menendez’s attorneys have tried to shift any blame to his wife, arguing they lived separate lives and he was largely in the dark about her dealings with the three businessmen accused of bribing them.
“She kept Bob sidelined from those conversations,” his attorney Avi Weitzman said.
Caitlin Yilek is a politics reporter at CBSNews.com, based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked for the Washington Examiner and The Hill, and was a member of the 2022 Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship with the National Press Foundation.
Trial of Sen. Bob Menendez takes a weeklong break after jurors get stuck in elevator
Updated: 11:15 AM EDT May 22, 2024
Good morning. Thank you to all of you who are here today, especially the New Jerseyans who have joined me. As I address the events of the last few days on Friday, the southern district of New York brought charges against me. I understand how deeply concerning this can be. However, the allegations leveled against me are just that allegations for anyone who has known me throughout my 50 years of public service. They know I have always fought for what is right. My advocacy has always been grounded in what I learned from growing up as *** son of Cuban refugees, especially my mom, my hero, Eina Menendez, everything I’ve accomplished. I’ve worked for despite the naysayers and everyone who has underestimated me. I recognize this will be the biggest fight yet. But as I have stated throughout this whole process, I firmly believe that when all the facts are presented, not only will I be exonerated, but I still will be the New Jersey’s senior senator for now. I want to address four things. First, *** cornerstone of the foundation of American Democracy and our justice system is the principle that all people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. All people I asked for nothing more and deserve nothing less. The court of public opinion is no substitute for our revered justice system. We cannot set aside the presumption of innocence for political expediency. When the harm is irrevocable to those who have rushed to judgment, you have done so based on *** limited set of facts framed by the prosecution to be as salacious as possible. Remember, prosecutors get it wrong sometimes. sadly, I know that instead of waiting for all the facts to be presented, others have rushed to judgment because they see *** political opportunity, opportunity for themselves or those around them. All I humbly ask for in this moment in my colleagues in Congress, the elected leaders and the advocates of New Jersey that I have worked with for years, as well as each person who calls New Jersey home is to pause and allow for all the facts to be presented. Second, my long record on Egypt, one fact is indisputable throughout my time in Congress, I have remained steadfast on the side of civil society and human rights defenders in Egypt and everywhere else in the world. If you look at my actions related to Egypt during the period described in this indictment and throughout my whole career, my record is clear and consistent in holding Egypt accountable for its unjust detention of American citizens and others, its human rights abuses, its deepening relationship with Russia and efforts that have eroded the independence of the nation’s judiciary among *** myriad of concerns. In 2017, I led *** bipartisan letter to then President Trump expressing grave concern with the worsening situation for human rights and civil society in Egypt. That same year, I sent *** letter to the Senate Appropriations subcommittee supporting us assistance to Egypt. As long as Egypt adhered to the Camp David Accords and urged the Appropriations Committee to include the requirements for assistance reform strategies outlined in the Egypt Assistance Reform Act of 2013. In 2018, I urged Secretary Tillerson to focus more on human rights issues in Egypt and raise concerns that the electoral environment ahead of Egypt’s elections at the time was not free, fair and credible. In 2019, I met with President El Sisi at the Munich Security Conference and emphasized the level of repression inside of Egypt, risking eroding our security cooperation and raising concerns about Egypt’s intent to purchase *** Russian missile system. In 2020 I spoke on the Senate floor for International Women’s Day and cited the cases of Marinor, El Masri, *** human rights lawyer and Ezra Abdel Fattah, *** human rights activist and reporter who were unjustly detained in Egypt for fighting for human rights democracy and the Free Press. I have placed holes on foreign military sales funding to Egypt and in the presence of other United States senators. I have challenged President Sisi directly on human rights abuses, arbitrary detention and press freedoms. And the list goes on throughout my 30 years in the House of Representatives and the Senate. I have always worked to hold accountable those countries including Egypt for human rights abuses, the repression of its citizenry, civil society, and more those who now are attempting to malign my actions as it relates to Egypt simply don’t know the facts. For 30 years. I have withdrawn thousands of dollars in cash from my personal savings account which I have kept for emergencies. And because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba, now, this may seem old fashioned, but these were money drawn from my personal savings account based on the income that I have lawfully derived over those 30 years. I look forward to addressing other issues. At trial four. I want to speak directly to the people of New Jersey. As I started these remarks, you’re the reason why I have dedicated the entirety of my adult life to improving the lives of hard working New Jerseyans and all Americans. Some of the people calling for my resignation for political reasons, say I have lost the trust of the people of New Jersey that couldn’t be more wrong today. I’m surrounded by everyday people and constituents who know me, they are here because I fought for important health care policies like the Affordable Care Act, access to reproductive health care funding for community health centers and lowering the cost of prescription drugs they are here because I have fought for working people, those who work 5 to 9 to support those working from 9 to 5. I’ve always advocated for the right of workers to organize for better wages and working conditions and have been *** staunch supporter of delivering critical services like affordable child care to better support working families. They are here because when New Jersey was in the darkest days following Superstorm Sandy, I never relented in making sure that New Jerseyans were made whole and had the resources to rebuild stronger and more resilient than before they are here. Because during the worst pandemic in *** century, I went to bath with small business owners throughout the state to ensure they could keep their doors open and their employees on the payroll, they are here because when state and local governments were faced with excruciating decision of having to lay off front line responders, police officers and firefighters during the pandemic, I delivered billions in federal funding and investments to keep our state, cities and towns and hospitals afloat. They are here because throughout my career and some may not like the positions I’ve taken. I have stood against authoritarian regimes in Iran and its desire to achieve nuclear weapons or Cuba and its dictatorship or authoritarianism in Turkey, Venezuela, Russia and wherever in the world where human rights and democracy have been threatened and they are here because I have made it my life’s work about protecting refugees and immigrants who come to our shores, seeking *** better future for their Children. Just as my family, they are here because during the past 30 years, I have fought tooth and nail. So New Jersey would receive critical infrastructure funding and fought against the forces that tried to dismantle the Gateway project. They are here because since my earliest days in Congress, I have repeatedly stood up to the gun lobby to stop illegal firearms from claiming too many lives and destroying communities. They are here because when tragedy struck one of New Jersey’s federal judges, I made *** promise that I would not stop until I passed *** law to better protect the dedicated public servants in the judiciary. And last year I delivered passing legislation signed into law by the president that will better protect judges and their families. And they are here because I never gave up on delivering justice for 9 11 families, especially the widows and Children of those killed who were previously and unfairly excluded from the US victims of state sponsored terrorism. And in December, working with others, I delivered billions of dollars in long overdue federal relief to that community and other US victims of terror. They are here because when other members of Congress wanted to turn their backs on our veterans and not pass the Pact Act to provide health care for our veterans who were exposed to toxic burn pits. I was there and they are here. Because I successfully passed legislation to better serve World War II vets as well as those suffering from Gulf War illnesses for now. I remain focused on continuing to do the important work I do every day on behalf of the 9 million people who call New Jersey Home, including doing everything we can this week to avoid *** government shutdown. Deliver critical funding for states affected by catastrophic natural disasters and ensure the people of Ukraine have everything they need to defeat Putin. And I’ll return to Washington this week to do exactly that.
The trial of Sen. Bob Menendez grinded to a weeklong break on Tuesday after federal court jurors who were treated to a brick-by-brick build of the prosecution’s bribery case got stuck in an elevator a day after they were forced from their usual assembly room because of flooding.Judge Sidney H. Stein said jurors were trapped in an elevator for several minutes during what was supposed to be a 10-minute late-afternoon break that lasted almost a half hour.The elevator breakdown came as jurors were shuttled between floors to an assembly room because carpeting in their usual assembly room just outside the courtroom was found to be soaked on Monday after somebody left sink faucets on over the weekend. As jurors left for the day, Stein humorously warned them: “Don’t all get into one elevator.”The mishap came on a day when prosecutors slowly tried to build their case against the Democrat with evidence they hoped would score points with jurors against Menendez and his two co-defendants — two New Jersey businessmen who the government claims paid him bribes consisting of gold bars, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and a car.Lawyers for Menendez, 70, of Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and the businessmen say their clients are not guilty and that the government is trying to turn common interactions between a politician and his constituents into crimes.Among the witnesses Tuesday was a man who worked for the State Department during the years when prosecutors say Menendez used his powerful post as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to do favors for Egypt so he could keep the flow of bribes on track.Joshua Paul, who now works as a consultant for a nonprofit, testified that the committee and its chairperson have extraordinary powers over the State Department because it controls its leadership, dictates how it operates and confirms ambassadors worldwide.After his arrest last fall, Menendez was forced to step down from the post, though he has resisted calls for him to leave the Senate.Prosecutors say Menendez did things benefitting Egyptian officials so that he could receive bribes in exchange for clearing the way for one codefendant to secure a lucrative monopoly to certify that meat exported to Egypt from U.S. slaughterhouses met Islamic dietary requirements.Besides bribery, extortion, fraud and obstruction of justice, Menendez is also charged with acting as a foreign agent of Egypt.
The trial of Sen. Bob Menendez grinded to a weeklong break on Tuesday after federal court jurors who were treated to a brick-by-brick build of the prosecution’s bribery case got stuck in an elevator a day after they were forced from their usual assembly room because of flooding.
Judge Sidney H. Stein said jurors were trapped in an elevator for several minutes during what was supposed to be a 10-minute late-afternoon break that lasted almost a half hour.
The elevator breakdown came as jurors were shuttled between floors to an assembly room because carpeting in their usual assembly room just outside the courtroom was found to be soaked on Monday after somebody left sink faucets on over the weekend. As jurors left for the day, Stein humorously warned them: “Don’t all get into one elevator.”
The mishap came on a day when prosecutors slowly tried to build their case against the Democrat with evidence they hoped would score points with jurors against Menendez and his two co-defendants — two New Jersey businessmen who the government claims paid him bribes consisting of gold bars, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and a car.
Lawyers for Menendez, 70, of Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and the businessmen say their clients are not guilty and that the government is trying to turn common interactions between a politician and his constituents into crimes.
Among the witnesses Tuesday was a man who worked for the State Department during the years when prosecutors say Menendez used his powerful post as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to do favors for Egypt so he could keep the flow of bribes on track.
Joshua Paul, who now works as a consultant for a nonprofit, testified that the committee and its chairperson have extraordinary powers over the State Department because it controls its leadership, dictates how it operates and confirms ambassadors worldwide.
After his arrest last fall, Menendez was forced to step down from the post, though he has resisted calls for him to leave the Senate.
Prosecutors say Menendez did things benefitting Egyptian officials so that he could receive bribes in exchange for clearing the way for one codefendant to secure a lucrative monopoly to certify that meat exported to Egypt from U.S. slaughterhouses met Islamic dietary requirements.
Besides bribery, extortion, fraud and obstruction of justice, Menendez is also charged with acting as a foreign agent of Egypt.
A day after jurors held the one-kilogram gold bars seized from Sen. Bob Menendez’s home in their own hands, they’ll hear more from the FBI agent who led the search of the New Jersey Democrat’s home in June 2022.
Lawyers for Menendez will continue questioning FBI agent Aristotelis Kougemitros on Friday.
Kougemitros told prosecutors Thursday that his team mostly eschewed the “flashy” FBI trappings when they arrived at the split-level Englewood Cliffs home Menendez shares with his wife, Nadine, to execute a search warrant.
“We came with unmarked vehicles, which we normally have, but we had less of them,” he said. “We didn’t have a large group, which we normally have for a search. We wore subdued markings that identify us. We were sensitive that we were searching the home and executing a search warrant of a United States senator.”
No one was home at the time of the search, so the group of agents typed in the code to the garage, where a black Mercedes-Benz convertible was parked, and entered the house, he said. The FBI agent noted they had to call a locksmith to open several doors in the house, including those to the primary bedroom and its closets.
Kougemitros said the FBI was authorized to look for various items of value and seized 52 items from the home, including cellphones, gold, cash and jewelry.
On the floor of one of the closets, they found a one-kilogram gold bar inside a Ziploc bag that had been wrapped in a paper towel, he testified. In the same closet they discovered a safe containing loose cash, envelopes of cash, seven one-ounce gold bars and another one-kilogram gold bar, according to Kougemitros. Cash was also found elsewhere in the house, he said, recalling finding $100,000 in a duffel bag and tens of thousands more inside boots and jacket pockets.
“The amount of cash that we began to discover was so voluminous that I directed the team that we would no longer be photographing any of the cash; we would be seizing the cash, because I believed it was evidence potentially of a crime,” he said.
There was so much cash, the FBI agent said, that he called in reinforcements. Two FBI agents from Manhattan “brought two cash-counting machines,” Kougemitros said.
In total, the FBI seized 11 one-ounce gold bars, two one-kilogram gold bars and $486,461 in cash, he said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Pomerantz repeatedly called attention to the cash and gold bars that were found in the couple’s home in her opening statement on Wednesday, alleging they were given to the senator by New Jersey businessmen as bribes in exchange for political favors.
On Thursday, while questioning Kougemitros, she showed the jury a photo taken during the search of an envelope that contained $7,400 cash. The envelope was embossed with Fred A. Daibes and an Edgewater, New Jersey, address.
Menendez is being tried alongside Daibes, a New Jersey real estate developer, and Wael Hana, owner of the halal meat company IS EG Halal, who are both accused of bribing the senator. All three have pleaded not guilty.
A third businessman who was indicted, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty in March and confessed to buying Menendez’s wife a $60,000 Mercedes convertible to influence the senator. Uribe will testify during the trial.
On Thursday, Adam Fee, a lawyer for Menendez, sought to sow doubt about whether the senator had access to the primary bedroom closet where the safe and gold bars were found, questioning the FBI agent about the location of a blue blazer that prosecutors are connecting to Menendez.
On Wednesday, another attorney for Menendez, Avi Weitzman, said Menendez did not have a key to the closet.
Caitlin Yilek is a politics reporter at cbsnews.com and is based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked for the Washington Examiner and The Hill, and was a member of the 2022 Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship with the National Press Foundation.
Bob Menendez arrives in federal court in New Jersey last year accompanied by his son, Rob. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Hudson County, New Jersey, is one of the country’s last remaining redoubts of old-fashioned machine politics where, just across the river from the city, political bosses control patronage and can funnel loyalists to the polls for their preferred candidates. Its most powerful figure is Robert Menendez, the New Jersey senator now facing corruption charges in federal court.
When Menendez’s successor in Congress, Albio Sires, decided not seek another term in 2022, almost instantaneously, every major political figure in the county — including Sires — decided to back Menendez’s 36-year-old son, Rob, who had never before run for office.
Two years after he was elected on the strength of his name, Rob Menendez might lose for the same reason. He is facing a well-funded challenge in the Democratic primary this June from Ravi Bhalla, the two-term mayor of Hoboken who is going after the congressman as a corrupt nepo baby. Menendez, he says, shared “the same consultant … the same donors, same corporate PACs, the same lobbyists” with his father. The congressman is “nothing more than old wine in new bottles … it’s getting more of the same, but just from another generation,” he says.
Rob Menendez spent his entire youth watching his father’s rise to power. He was not even 1 year old when Bob became mayor of Union City in 1986 after testifying against the prior mayor’s corrupt political machine while wearing a bulletproof vest in federal court. He was 2 and a half when his father first paired his mayoralty with a seat in the state legislature in 1988. By first grade, Bob was building his own organization as he made it to Congress. During the summer before Rob went to high school, his father was floated as a potential running mate to Al Gore. Rob was in college at the University of North Carolina when Bob became a senator and immediately took a job at the politically connected law firm of Lowenstein Sandler after graduating from Rutgers Law School. In 2020, Rob was floated as a potential mayoral candidate in Jersey City against incumbent Steve Fulop (who has pointedly refused to back Menendez’s congressional bid) and got his first job in government from Governor Phil Murphy, who appointed him as a Port Authority commissioner in 2021. He was elected to Congress in 2022 with minimal opposition and has become a dependable and loyal member of the Democratic caucus on Capitol Hill.
Even though he is mayor of Hoboken, Bhalla isn’t beloved there and several members of the city council have backed Menendez. Running in a majority-Hispanic district in New York City’s pricey television market, it will be expensive for either candidate to advertise and do so in both English and Spanish ads. This makes it more difficult for Bhalla to introduce himself to voters outside of Hoboken, though arguably it makes it more difficult for Menendez to differentiate himself from his father. (Menendez’s campaign declined to make him available for comment.)
Normally, a primary challenge against a candidate backed by a machine would go nowhere, but the political landscape in the Garden State is unrecognizable compared to just a few years ago. Bob Menendez is now a political pariah as he faces criminal indictments for allegedly being a foreign agent of both Egypt and Qatar. The power of machines has been permanently weakened after Tammy Murphy, the machine-backed wife of the governor, dropped out of the race to replace Mendendez last month. Most of all, the most powerful tool for machine politicians to sway voters, the ballot line, has been invalidated by a federal judge as a result of a lawsuit filed by Andy Kim, the progressive congressman who forced Murphy out of the race. (The ruling is being appealed.) “The line,” as it’s known, is a unique feature to New Jersey politics that gave preferred placement on ballots in primary elections to the candidates endorsed by county party chairs. Endorsed candidates all ran together in a single column rather than having candidates grouped by the office in which they sought.
Even Bhalla concedes that the differences between the two “aren’t that stark” and that this is a race about Menendez and what he calls a toxic political culture. “I often say that my biggest liability in my ability to rise up in Hudson County politics is that I’m qualified,” he says. Quoting an unnamed fellow elected official, he says “the selection” of Menendez to fill the House seat was “rank nepotism.”
With Kim now cruising to the Senate nomination and the senior Menendez exploring a campaign as an independent while headed toward a criminal trial scheduled for May, the congressional primary will be a critical test of the strength of Jersey machine politics. Even with the end of “the line,” political bosses are by no means extinct in the district, even if they are endangered.
In Menendez’s native Union City there still is a powerful Democratic organization led by Brian Stack, who serves simultaneously both as mayor and state senator. North Bergen has Nicholas Sacco, who is still mayor but had to finally step down as state senator as well after getting redistricted with Stack. The area has a warren of tiny, dense municipalities with a large number of political patronage jobs. As one plugged-in Hudson County Democrat noted, “it is the last bastion of real political-boss-driven politics there. There are incredibly popular, well-liked mayors who really can deliver thousands and thousands of votes and have large volunteer organizations and put hundreds of people on the streets.”
This is in contrast to the district’s southern portion, where white-collar workers who commute at least part time into Manhattan fill the apartment towers that line the Hudson River in places like Jersey City and Hoboken. These voters may not be uniformly pro-Bhalla, but they don’t have the same connections to the county’s traditional power brokers.
Menendez needs a last hurrah from the machine politicians who were long loyal to his father. In a low-turnout election such as the primary, the machine’s ability to bring voters to the polls can be decisive. In an increasingly nationalized political landscape, he has to hope that at least some politics are still local.
New Jersey first lady Tammy Murphy on Sunday suspended her run for U.S. Senate, days after embattled Sen. Bob Menendez announced he would not be running as a Democrat.
Murphy made the announcement on X.
“I have been genuine and factual throughout, but it is clear to me that continuing in this race will involve waging a very divisive and negative campaign, which I am not willing to do,” Murphy said.
Murphy threw her hat into the ring in November to replace embattled Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, who announced Thursday that he would not be seeking the nomination as a Democrat while he battles federal corruption charges. But he left the door open to running as an independent, saying “hopeful that my exoneration will take place this summer and allow me to pursue my candidacy.”
With her race for Senate over, Murphy said she’ll be using her time to focus on getting President Biden reelected and ensuring victories for Democrats in New Jersey.
“With Donald Trump on the ballot and so much at stake for our nation, I will not, in good conscience, waste resources tearing down a fellow Democrat,” she said.
Aliza Chasan is a digital producer at 60 Minutes and CBSNews.com. She has previously written for outlets including PIX11 News, The New York Daily News, Inside Edition and DNAinfo. Aliza covers trending news, often focusing on crime and politics.
A co-defendant in the alleged corruption investigation into New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez who was accused of giving the senator’s wife a luxury convertible has agreed to plead guilty and will cooperate with prosecutors, NBC New York has learned.
Businessman Jose Uribe pleaded guilty to seven counts in connection with the alleged corruption probe, including conspiracy to commit bribery, honest services fraud, obstruction of justice, and more.
Uribe has agreed to cooperate with the prosecution looking into the allegations against New Jersey’s senior senator and will testify against Menendez.
“It is understood the defendant…shall truthfully and completely disclose all information with the respect to the activities of himself and others concerning all matters about which this Office inquires of him,” the plea agreement states.
Menendez, a Democrat, and his wife stand accused of taking bribes of gold bars, a luxury car and cash in exchange for using his outsized sway in foreign affairs to help the government of Egypt — and others — as well as other corrupt acts, according to an indictment that came down in Sept. 2023.
Jose Uribe is a New Jersey businessman in the trucking and insurance business who was friends with fellow defendant Wael Hana, according to an indictment. Hana and Uribe allegedly got Nadine Menendez a Mercedes convertible after the senator called a government official about another case involving an associate of Uribe, according to the indictment.
“Congratulations mon amour de la vie, we are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes,” Nadine Menendez texted her husband, along with a heart emoji after they got the vehicle.
Uribe allegedly gave the Mercedes to Menendez and his wife as he sought help with a criminal investigation into his associates being run out of the New Jersey state attorney general’s office. In exchange, Menendez is accused of calling then-New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal directly about the matter.
Uribe is one of three businessmen the couple is accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from, along with Hana and Fred Daibes.
Menendez, his wife and all of the other defendants have pleaded not guilty. Uribe previously pleaded not guilty in October, but in a surprise change, changed his plea on Friday.
Had he been convicted on all seven counts, Uribe faced up to 95 years in prison.
This is a developing story, please check back for updates.
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Jonathan Dienst, Tom Winter and Courtney Copenhagen
A Democratic lawmaker slammed his Republican colleagues over their fealty to Donald Trump on Tuesday night during a marathon 15-hour session on impeachment charges against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over border security issues.
Rep. Rob Menendez (D-NJ) said the House Homeland Security Committee has held 17 hearings on the border, but zero full committee hearings on other issues within its jurisdiction such as emergency preparedness, cyber threats, infrastructure protection and more.
“We have not lived up to our oversight obligation here on this committee because you all are obsessed with the border,” he said. “Because you bend the knee to the ‘Orange Jesus’ as you refer to him across the aisle.”
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) wrote in her 2023 book that Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) used the phrase to describe Trump.
Green is now chair of the committee Menendez was railing against.
Menendez called the impeachment hearings a “sham” and said the committee has “failed” its jurisdiction.
“I’ve tried to listen here. I try to be a team player, I really do. I try not to engage in the partisanship,” he said. “But I’ve had it.”
The committee debated for 15 hours, ending early Wednesday only after Republicans blocked Democratic lawmakers from attempting any additional amendments, CNN noted.
The committee voted along party lines, 18-15, to advance the articles of impeachment to the House floor. Politico said a vote could come as early as next week.
