Menendez ‘Sold the Power of His Office,’ Prosecutor Says

NEW YORK — When FBI agents raided the New Jersey home of Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife, they found envelope after envelope of cash, a federal prosecutor told a jury Monday. Cash stuffed in bags, cash stuffed in the pockets of the senator’s jackets, cash stuffed in his boots. Gold bars worth thousands of dollars.

The valuables were bribes that two businesspeople paid to the couple in exchange for promises of official action by Menendez, the former chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the prosecutor, Paul M. Monteleoni, said.

“It wasn’t enough for him to be one of the most powerful people in Washington,” Monteleoni told jurors. “It wasn’t enough for him to be entrusted by the public with the power to approve billions of dollars of U.S. military aid to foreign countries.

“Robert Menendez wanted all that power,” he added. “He also wanted to use it to pile up riches for himself and his wife.

“Mr. Menendez sold the power of his office,” he said.

The prosecutor’s closing statement came as the trial of Menendez, 70, and the two businesspeople — Wael Hana and Fred Daibes — entered its ninth week in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Prosecutors say Hana and Daibes were enriched in the scheme and helped to funnel bribes to the senator and his wife, Nadine Menendez, 57.

In exchange, the indictment says, Bob Menendez steered aid and weapons to Egypt; used his political clout to help the government of Qatar; propped up Hana’s lucrative halal certification business monopoly; and sought to disrupt several criminal investigations in New Jersey on behalf of Daibes, a real estate developer, and another ally, Jose Uribe, a former insurance broker.

Menendez alone faces 16 felony charges: bribery, conspiracy, honest services fraud, obstruction of justice, extortion, acting as an agent for Egypt and other counts.

Ever since he was charged last year, Menendez has proclaimed his innocence, saying he would be exonerated and had no intention of resigning.

The senator’s colleagues in Washington are waiting warily for a verdict in his trial. A conviction would create tremendous pressure on him to resign or for his fellow senators to hold an expulsion vote. If he is found not guilty or the jury cannot reach a verdict, Menendez, a Democrat, has said he will run for reelection as an independent, potentially hurting his own party’s candidate, Rep. Andy Kim, in November.

Menendez is the first U.S. senator to be tried twice on federal bribery charges. In an unrelated matter, Menendez was tried in New Jersey in 2017, a case that ended in a mistrial after the jury said it could not reach a verdict.

On Monday, the courtroom was packed to capacity with spectators, including Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, whose office is prosecuting the case. Others, including a group of some 40 interns from the U.S. attorney’s office, were sent to a separate courtroom where they could watch on a live video feed.

As Monteleoni spoke, Menendez, seated beside his lawyers at the defense table, appeared focused and calm. He crossed his left leg over his right and kept his eye on the prosecutor, taking notes as Monteleoni methodically moved through the complex list of charges.

The prosecutor displayed various visual aids to the jury, including some materials with user-friendly headings, like “The Sham Job.” In describing the alleged bribe payments, he told the jury: “The thing of value doesn’t have to go to Menendez directly.”

The “sham job” was a $10,000-a-month position Hana promised to Nadine Menendez, Monteleoni said. “Did Menendez know about this job? Of course he did,” he added.

Indeed, Monteleoni took direct aim at a key aspect of Bob Menendez’s defense — shifting blame to his wife. The senator’s lawyers have argued that Nadine Menendez kept her husband “in the dark” about money she was receiving from others.

Monteleoni argued that the evidence showed Bob Menendez had direct knowledge of myriad payments and other benefits his wife was accruing. “You don’t get to be the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by being clueless,” he said.

Monteleoni displayed texts Nadine Menendez sent, saying they showed the senator knew she was brokering deals for the couple. “Bob called me looking to find out if everything’s been taken care of,” Menendez texted one of the businesspeople charged in the case.

Monteleoni displayed another text in which Menendez told her husband, “Love of my life, PLEASE, could you fix this letter and send it back to me?” The letter was for an Egyptian official who was asking other U.S. senators to release $300 million in aid that had been held up because of concerns over Egypt’s human rights record. Bob Menendez formulated a ghostwritten response within hours of receiving the text message, Monteleoni said.

“Quid pro quo,” Monteleoni said, speaking slowly and deliberately as he urged the jury to look at the timeline of events that he said showed the senator using his office to help his wife and himself. “When Menendez knows that Nadine is going to get paid, he springs into action again and again,” the prosecutor said.

Monteleoni also displayed text messages that he said showed Nadine Menendez sought “permission” and “instructions” from her husband as they conspired. “Menendez wants his fingerprints off of it,” Monteleoni said, because he didn’t “want to get caught.”

He delved into the mortgage payments prosecutors say Daibes made for Nadine Menendez — what Monteleoni called “bribe checks.” When Menendez wanted to get paid, she would ask her husband if it was OK to reach out to Daibes.

“Let me know if I should text Fred,” Menendez texted her husband in September 2019. “No, you should not text or email,” the senator replied. Again, Monteleoni said, jurors could see evidence of Bob Menendez’s state of mind, his knowledge that he had to cover his tracks.

Jurors have a mountain of testimony and evidence to sort through, and Monteleoni appeared to be trying to connect the dots to prove what he called “a clear pattern of corruption.”

Menendez, leaving the courthouse, mocked Monteleoni’s summation. “The government is intoxicated with their own rhetoric,” he told reporters before stepping into a waiting black Lincoln sedan. “They spent two hours on charts.”

Adam Fee, a lawyer for the senator, is expected to follow the government’s presentation Tuesday with a summation on the senator’s behalf, followed by lawyers for Hana and Daibes and a government rebuttal. (Nadine Menendez was also indicted in the alleged conspiracy, but her trial was postponed by the judge, Sidney H. Stein, because she is being treated for breast cancer. She has pleaded not guilty.)

The government appeared to have made it through about half of its closing argument Monday. After focusing initially on charges Menendez and his wife aided Egypt in exchange for lucrative bribes, the prosecutor led the jury through other key counts, including those related to Menendez’s alleged attempt to interfere in prosecutions that touch Daibes and Uribe.

“There is so much more, that it might make sense to do it tomorrow,” Monteleoni told the jury as he stopped at 5 p.m.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .