Ex-New Jersey A.G. shares a ‘gross’ story of strong-arming at Menendez’s corruption trial

Former New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal testified that Sen. Bob Menendez tried to intervene in a pending criminal case. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

The day in September 2019 Gurbir Grewal was summoned to Sen. Bob Menendez’s office in Newark, he expected to discuss a policy issue — perhaps new initiatives that Grewal, then New Jersey’s attorney general, had implemented to reduce gun violence and opioid deaths.

Instead, New Jersey’s senior senator wanted to talk about a pending case, Grewal told jurors Thursday, the 15th day of Menendez’s federal corruption trial in Manhattan.

Grewal said he cut Menendez off before he could say any more, advising the senator to have the defendant’s attorney take any concerns directly to the judge or prosecutors in the case. The meeting ended minutes later, and Grewal paused outside with his colleague Andrew Bruck, who had accompanied him.

“Andrew said to me, ‘Whoa, that was gross,'” Grewal testified.

While more than a dozen witnesses have testified so far, Grewal offered some of the most dramatic moments of the trial so far, as just the second to share his personal experience alleging Menendez tried to use his political power for personal gain. His testimony — which packed the courtroom with spectators — came six days after a former federal official told jurors that Menendez called him and told him to “quit interfering” in his friend’s business deal with Egypt.

In Grewal’s case, he said he still doesn’t know the identity of the defendant Menendez wanted his help with. He never asked, nor alerted anyone in his office about Menendez’s “pretty unprecedented” request, because of his longtime practice of not talking with any outsiders — even powerful lawmakers — about pending criminal matters, he testified. The goal was to “insulate” his staff and ward off the chilling effect such interventions might have on prosecutions, he said.

“There has to be a process in which those issues are raised up through the right channels,” Grewal said.

Testimony on Wednesday showed that Menendez planned to talk to Grewal about Elvis Parra, a trucking company owner who was scheduled to stand trial for insurance fraud in April 2019.

Jose Uribe, a failed insurance broker, wanted the senator to persuade state authorities “to kill and stop all investigation” in Parra’s case, in which an Uribe-linked insurance company called Phoenix Risk Management was implicated, according to texts and other evidence. In exchange, testimony showed, Uribe spent tens of thousands of dollars to help Menendez’s wife, Nadine, buy a new Mercedes-Benz convertible.

The alleged bribes didn’t work. Parra eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to serve non-custodial probation and pay restitution, while Grewal said he did “nothing” in response to Menendez’s alleged meddling.

Under questioning by federal prosecutor Daniel Richenthal, Grewal — who now heads the enforcement division of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission — acknowledged that Menendez made no “explicit ask” during the meeting or phone calls and was “polite” throughout their interactions.

“What I understood the upshot of this conversation to be was that he didn’t like how this matter was being handled by our office and wanted it handled differently,” Grewal said.

Grewal told jurors the meeting and the two brief phone calls that preceded it concerned him because Menendez, a Democrat, was a close political ally of Gov. Phil Murphy at that time.

“That was my concern, of sort of being on his bad side,” Grewal said of the governor.

He had financial reasons to be concerned, too, he said. The attorney general’s office gets about half its $1 billion budget from state funds and the rest from other sources, including federal funds, he testified.

“You want to maintain good relationships,” he told jurors.

Grewal conceded, under cross-examination by defense attorney Avi Weitzman, that other public officials have asked him to intervene in criminal cases.

Former state Sen. Dick Codey, who also served as New Jersey’s acting governor in 2004, complained to Grewal about the prosecution of a basketball coach, and a chief of staff in the Murphy administration also tried to intervene in an unspecified case, Grewal agreed under Weitzman’s questioning.

Grewal said he gave both men the same advice he gave Menendez — to have the defendants’ attorneys share their gripes with the assigned prosecutors and judges. And he issued a memo afterward barring anyone at the governor’s office trying to intervene in prosecutions, modeled after a federal Department of Justice policy for White House staff, he testified.

Grewal testified that after his interaction with Codey, Codey introduced legislation prohibiting the state attorney general and a few other top public officials from running for governor for a certain period after their terms end.

“Is it fair to say, as a result of that conversation with  Dick Codey, you did experience retaliation from him?” Weitzman asked Grewal.

“I don’t know if it was a result of that particular matter  or not,” Grewal said.

Codey told the New Jersey Monitor Thursday that it’s “absolutely not” true that his legislation was a form of retaliation against Grewal.

As Thursday’s testimony wound to a close, Richenthal countered Weitzman’s Codey questioning with a follow-up question to Grewal that oozed sarcasm: “Do two wrongs make a right?”

Judge Sidney H. Stein sustained Weitzman’s immediate objection.

The trial’s most sensational testimony is expected Friday when Uribe will take the stand. Uribe was indicted alongside Menendez in September and pleaded guilty in March in a deal with prosecutors in which he agreed to testify against Menendez and their co-defendants. An FBI fingerprint specialist also is set to testify Friday.

Reporter Nikita Biryukov contributed to this report.

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