Jurors begin deliberating in Sen. Menendez’s corruption trial

Sen. Bob Menendez walks into the Daniel Patrick Moynihan federal courthouse in Manhattan on Friday, July 12, 2024. Jurors began deliberating in his federal corruption case Friday afternoon after the judge spent the morning delivering jury instructions. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)

Sen. Bob Menendez’s fate is now in the hands of 12 New Yorkers after his federal bribery case went to the jury Friday afternoon in Manhattan.

Jurors began deliberations at 2:10 p.m. and had not reached a verdict by 5:10 p.m. Judge Sidney H. Stein directed them to return Monday morning to resume deliberations.

“We’re here as long as you want,” Stein told them.

Jurors have a computer at their disposal to call up trial exhibits — and just 15 minutes after they began deliberations, they requested cables to connect the computer to a big screen to see exhibits. Stein also advised them they could return to the courtroom to hear testimony read and see and feel the more than $500,000 worth of gold bars and cash investigators seized from the senator’s home and his wife’s safe deposit box during an FBI search in June 2022 — valuables court officials already passed around the jury box once, during the nine-week trial’s first week.

Friday morning, the judge spent almost three hours finishing the jury charge he started reading Thursday afternoon, reviewing the 18-count indictment, instructing jurors on the elements needed to reach a conviction on each charge, and otherwise explaining the law.

“It’s a lot of words, but it’s all very logical,” Stein told them.

The jurors — who had appeared increasingly bored as the trial wore on — seemed downright excited as they headed in to the private jury deliberation room, the judge’s lengthy jury charge and verdict sheet in hand. They traded waves, smiles, and peace signs with five alternate jurors they left behind in the courtroom, who Stein thanked for their service and sent home for the afternoon.

The alternate jurors were not discharged altogether, though, in case they need to be called back into service.

Recalling an alternate is rare, Stein assured them, but noted it had just happened earlier Friday in another courtroom, where an alternate replaced a juror who had researched the case outside the deliberation room, a jury no-no. It also happened in Menendez’s first corruption trial in 2017, when a juror was excused for a long-scheduled vacation. That case ended in a hung jury.

Friday, Stein gave jurors all kinds of deliberation guidance, including “not to give up a view you conscientiously believe in, just because you are outnumbered.”

After jurors disappeared to deliberate, Menendez walked out of the courtroom, telling reporters: “Faith in God.”

Earlier, the senator ate lunch in the cafeteria of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan federal courthouse with his daughter, MSNBC host Alicia Menendez, who has dropped by throughout the trial to watch from a pew reserved for family, and his older sister, Caridad Gonzalez, who testified in his defense last week and has attended the trial faithfully since.

Menendez has maintained his innocence since his September indictment, saying his actions were the normal work of a U.S. senator and prosecutors were motivated by racism.

Early mornings, while waiting for court to start and during breaks, he has gazed at the city’s skyline from courthouse windows, sang and hummed Josh Groban songs and other tunes, greeted and hugged relatives and other well-wishers who showed up in support, and posed for occasional selfies with courthouse staff.

He is charged with 16 federal crimes, including bribery, extortion, honest services wire fraud, acting as a foreign agent, and conspiracy. Prosecutors say he and his wife, Nadine, took cash, gold bars, a luxury car, home furnishings, mortgage payments, a no-show job for Nadine, and more from businessmen Wael Hana, Fred Daibes, and Jose Uribe.

In exchange, prosecutors say, the senator — chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee until his indictment — agreed to act in the interest of Egypt and Qatar so that officials in those countries would invest in Hana’s and Daibes’ businesses and  disrupt the criminal prosecution of Daibes.

Hana and Daibes are standing trial alongside the senator. Uribe, who pled guilty in March, testified that he gave Nadine Menendez a $67,000 Mercedes-Benz convertible as a bribe so that the senator would “kill and stop all investigation” in a state insurance fraud case that threatened his own company.

Stein postponed Nadine Menendez’s trial until at least August because she is undergoing treatment for breast cancer.

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