MANHATTAN (CN) — Prosecutors in New York federal court accused embattled New Jersey senator Bob Menendez of “repeatedly selling his influence and power” in a quid pro quo exchange for gold bars, luxury cars and sham paychecks during opening arguments on Wednesday afternoon, kicking off the Democrat’s criminal trial after two and a half days of jury selection.
“This was not politics as usual, this was politics for profit,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Pomerantz told jurors during opening arguments. “This was a United States senator on the take."
The 70-year-old senator faces sixteen counts of federal bribery charges that he conspired with his wife, Nadine, to secretly accept bribes of gold bars, cash and luxury gifts from wealthy businessmen — co-defendants Wael Hana and Fred Daibes — in exchange for legislative favors to help the governments of Egypt and Qatar while he was the then-chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The federal prosecutors said one such example of the legislative quid pro quo involved Menendez drafting a letter on behalf of Egypt to other U.S. senators, asking them to release a hold on $300 million in aid to that country over the legislators’ concerns about human rights abuses by the Egyptian government.
Pomerantz told jurors that Hana made bribe payments to Nadine, whom the business men used as a "go-between," through a shell company after Menendez contacted a U.S. Department of Agriculture official in a bid to help Hana secure a monopoly on certifying Halal meat imported into Egypt from the United States.
Pomerantz said on Wednesday that the Menendezes also received bribes from Daibes, a New Jersey real estate developer, in exchange for the senator’s official interference with two criminal investigations in New Jersey.
Menendez made efforts to install a favorable U.S. attorney in New Jersey in order to take the heat off Daibes in an underlying federal bank fraud probe, according to prosecutors.
After Daibes began giving Menendez one-kilogram gold bars to stall the New Jersey prosecution, Menendez Googled the price of a kilogram of gold "again and again,” Pomerantz told jurors.
An FBI search of the Menendez home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, in 2022 uncovered and led to the seizure of over $100,000 of solid gold bars and about $480,000 in cash.
According to prosecutors, Daibes' fingerprints were found on the cash-stuffed envelopes found at the house, along with nine bars of gold bullion that have serial numbers tracked to Daibes.
Prosecutors additionally charged Menendez in a superseding indictment in January with receiving gifts from Qatar through Daibes, in exchange for using his legislative influence to help Daibes obtain millions of dollars from an investment fund tied to Qatar. The additional charges extended the timeline of the scheme by another year, from 2018 into 2023.
“The public official does not have to take any action at all, the promise alone is enough,” Pomerantz explained to jurors about the federal law propping up the bribery conspiracy charges.
The prosecution is being carried out by the public corruption unit of U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
Menendez’s defense attorney Avi Weitzman meanwhile insisted the senator took no bribes.
"He’s an American patriot and has not been, and is not, a foreign agent,” Weitzman said. “Far from a bribetaker, Senator Menendez is a lifelong public servant.”
Weitzman did not deny that gold bars and cash were found in the Menendezes’ home but told jurors during the defense's opening argument on Wednesday there were “innocent explanations for the gold and the cash.”
Menendez’s lawyer said that the gold bars linked to Daibes were found in a locked closet that belonged to Nadine, who maintained split personal finances from the senator.
“He did not know she had any gold bars provided by Fred Daibes,” he said.
“He knew she had family gold,” he added, referring to Nadine’s Lebanese parents who purportedly left her gold bars and jewels as an inheritance.
Menendez repeatedly searched for the price of gold on his phone because its price of gold fluctuates greatly and he was trying to help Nadine sell her family gold at a good price in order to pay off her mortgage, Weitzman told jurors.
The cash, meanwhile, was from decades of cash withdrawals by Menendez from his upbringing by Cuban immigrants in a household where storing large amounts of cash at home was normal, Weitzman said.
Menendez’s defense also told jurors that “every action Senator Menendez took was to help his constituents,” which he said included providing such constituent services for New Jersey residents who happened to be his friends like Daibes and Uribe.
“You may not like it, but it’s not illegal,” he said.
Lawyers for Daibes and Hana will separately deliver their defense opening arguments on Thursday morning.
The trial is expected to last up to seven weeks through the end of June.
The gold bar bribery scandal is Menendez’s second set of corruption charges in a decade. The lawmaker was indicted in 2015 in a similar scheme involving accusations of peddling political influence to help Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen in exchange for luxury vacations in the Caribbean and Paris, flights on the eye doctor’s private jet and hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to organizations that supported the senator.
A deadlocked hung jury ended that trial two years later.
Menendez announced in March he would not run for reelection as a Democrat but suggested he remained open to still appear on the ballot in November as an independent, if he is acquitted on the corruption charges.
“I am hopeful that my exoneration will take place this summer and allow me to pursue my candidacy as an independent Democrat in the general election,” he said.
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