Bob Menendez Bribery Trial Over Gold Bars, Cash Begins (1)

The bribery trial of Senator Robert Menendez begins Monday with the embattled New Jersey Democrat potentially blaming his wife for his predicament and seeking to call a psychiatrist to defend why he hoarded the $480,000 in cash and 13 gold bars FBI agents found in his house.

Jury selection got underway on Monday morning in New York federal court for Menendez and two businessmen accused of bribing him, with the trial expected to last six to seven weeks. Prosecutors charged Menendez, 70, and his wife, Nadine, with accepting cash, gold and a Mercedes Benz in return for favors. He’s also charged with illegally helping the government of Qatar and acting as an agent of Egypt. He faces 20 years in prison on the most serious charge.

Menendez, a senator since 2006, has seen his political support vaporize in the Senate and New Jersey, where he’s derided as “Gold Bar Bob.” In a March video, he said: “I am innocent and will prove so.” He said he hopes to be exonerated and may run as an independent Democrat in November.

WATCH: Sen. Robert Menendez arrives at court.

Source: Bloomberg

He stepped down as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a powerful post that prosecutors say was central to Menendez corruptly using his clout to help Egypt. Prosecutors say that Menendez gave Egyptian officials “highly sensitive” information about personnel at the US embassy in Cairo and helped Egypt obtain arms sales and other military aid from the US.

Blaming His Wife

Menendez’s wife was key to Egypt making inroads with him, prosecutors say. They began dating in 2018, when she and Wael Hana, an Egyptian-American businessman also facing trial, introduced Menendez to Egyptian intelligence and military officials seeking influence, the US alleges.

Hana has his own interest in Menendez. His company had an exclusive right from Egypt to certify US food exports as compliant with halal standards, and Menendez pressed a US Department of Agriculture official to help protect that monopoly, the US says.

Menendez has suggested he may blame Nadine Menendez, who will face a later trial because she has an undisclosed illness and needs surgery. If he testifies, his lawyers wrote in a court filing, the senator may discuss communications about their dinners with Egyptian officials and her explanations of why businessmen gave her “certain monetary items.”

Those explanations and communications “will tend to exonerate Senator Menendez” by showing he had no corrupt intent – a key element in a bribery case, his lawyers wrote. They’ll also incriminate “Nadine by demonstrating the ways in which she withheld information from Senator Menendez or otherwise led him to believe that nothing unlawful was taking place,” according to the filing.

Stacks of cash seized as part of probe into US Senator Menendez’s alleged bribery scandal

Psychological Trauma

Prosecutors said they found cash stuffed in envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets and a safe. Some envelopes bore the fingerprints and DNA of another co-defendant, New Jersey developer Fred Daibes, and his driver, prosecutors say.

Menendez has offered various explanations for the cash. His lawyers said in a court filing that the cash reflected “decades of documented withdrawals by the senator from his own bank account.” They also said that the gold bars would “be shown to be entirely unrelated to any actions” by the senator.

Menendez also wants jurors to hear from a psychiatrist about other explanations for the senator’s cash. One involves the “intergenerational trauma” stemming from his parents fleeing Cuba after having their funds confiscated by the Cuban government, a court filing shows.

The psychiatrist, Karen Rosenbaum, would also testify that he “experienced trauma when his father, a compulsive gambler, died by suicide after Senator Menendez eventually decided to discontinue paying off his father’s gambling debts.”

Menendez’s lack of treatment over these traumas “resulted in a fear of scarcity for the senator and the development of a longstanding coping mechanism of routinely withdrawing and storing cash in his home,” the senator’s lawyers wrote.

Prosecutors urged US District Judge Sidney Stein to reject the testimony, saying Menendez’s lawyers didn’t follow the rules for introducing it. The explanation, they wrote, is an impermissible attempt to “endanger sympathy based on his family background, in the guise of expert testimony” for Menendez.

Gold bars seized as part of probe into US Senator Menendez’s alleged bribery scandal

The judge hasn’t ruled yet on the request.

Menendez is also accused of trying to interfere in a criminal investigation conducted by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, and trying to interfere in a separate federal prosecution of Daibes.

Businessman Jose Uribe has pleaded guilty, admitting he conspired to bribe Menendez with a Mercedes Benz convertible in exchange for favors. He agreed to testify against Menendez.

The trial is expected to last several weeks.

(Updates with jury selection starting in paragraph 2 and with more context on charges against Menendez in paragraph six.)

--With assistance from Ava Benny-Morrison.

To contact the reporter on this story:
David Voreacos in New York at dvoreacos@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou at megkolfopoul@bloomberg.net

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