Menendez asks judge to throw out guilty verdicts

Sen. Bob Menendez and the two New Jersey businesspeople found guilty last month of bribing him asked a judge on Monday to throw out the verdicts against them.

The legal maneuver is unlikely to succeed since it asks U.S. District Court Judge Sidney Stein to reverse a two-month corruption trial over which he presided.

Menendez has announced he will resign from the Senate, effective Tuesday, and abandon his long shot reelection bid. But he is still trying to avoid what could be a lengthy prison sentence for accepting bribes, acting as a foreign agent for Egypt, obstruction of justice, extortion and conspiracy.

The senator's motion, which acknowledges that it's “no simple task” to vacate a jury verdict, previews a series of novel legal issues that could eventually send the case to the Supreme Court. His co-defendants filed separate motions.

The senator focuses on the constitution’s “speech or debate” clause, which grants lawmakers a form of immunity. His legal team argues prosecutors disregarded the privilege and swaths of evidence from the case should not have been shown to jurors. Stein excluded some key pieces of evidence but allowed others, including testimony from a pair of Menendez aides.

The senator also argues that prosecutors failed to clear the necessary hurdles to show the senator accepted bribes in exchange for taking official acts. Menendez’s filing disputes that things he was convicted of doing meet the legal standard of official acts.

Menendez’s motion was written in part by Yaakov Roth, an attorney at Jones Day who represented former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell in his bribery case and argued on behalf of “Bridgegate” defendant Bridget Kelly and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo aide Joseph Percoco at the Supreme Court — which overturned all three convictions.

If Stein does want to undo the verdicts, he could order a new trial or use his own legal judgment to acquit Menendez.

If sentencing proceeds as scheduled on Oct. 29, Menendez and his co-defendants can begin appealing to higher courts after that.