MANHATTAN (CN) — Federal prosecutors on Friday rested their case against U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, the embattled New Jersey Democrat accused of selling his influence and power in exchange for gold bars, luxury cars and other bribes.
Testimony from FBI forensic accountant Megan Rafferty rounded out the prosecution’s case on Friday. She fielded questions from prosecutors about Menendez’s bank accounts and the gold bars he supposedly received as a bribe.
Defense lawyers claim the gold actually belonged to his wife, Nadine. They argued Menendez frequently stashed cash at his house because of his upbringing in Cuba.
“The government has not proven its case,” Menendez told reporters as he left the Manhattan federal courthouse on Friday.
For the past six weeks, government lawyers have outlined their case against Menendez to a Manhattan jury.
They say that in exchange for legislative favors to help the Egyptian and Qatari governments, the longtime senator conspired with his co-defendant wife to secretly accept gaudy bribes from wealthy businessmen. These bribes, prosecutors say, came as Menendez was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Two of those businessmen, Wael Hanna and Fred Daibes, are also co-defendants in the case. Prosecutors say Hanna bribed Menendez to protect his business monopoly in Egypt, while they say Daibes paid off the senator in an attempt to influence President Joe Biden’s nomination of a U.S. attorney.
Former insurance broker Jose Uribe was initially another co-defendant, but he pleaded guilty in March to giving Nadine Menendez a Mercedes-Benz convertible in exchange for Robert Menendez thwarting a fraud investigation against him. The senator boasted to him during a 2020 dinner that he “saved your ass," Uribe testified at trial.
“I begged him to please do anything in his power to please stop anything that could cause any harm to my family, ” Uribe said. He testified he made car payments of the convertible for three years, as “that was my best hope to get out of these investigations.”
Menendez was indicted last fall after federal investigators seized the Mercedes, gold bars and about $480,000 cash from the senator’s New Jersey home. Much of the cash, prosecutors say, was stuffed in clothing embroidered with Menendez’s name.
The 70-year-old has vehemently denied the charges and has bucked calls from his peers to resign. Many of those calls have come from within his own party, including from fellow New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who last year urged Menendez to step down.
But Menendez is committed to staying in Congress. In a longshot effort to retain his seat, he’s currently mounting a mysterious independent reelection campaign, which has raised little cash and reportedly has no paid staff.
It remains unclear if Menendez will testify in his defense. Before excusing the jury for the weekend on Friday, U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein, a Clinton appointee, reminded jurors that Menendez has no obligation to do so.
“These defendants are still presumed to be innocent. They have no obligation to put on a case. That’s an individual determination,” Stein said, urging the jury to “keep an open mind.”
According to a letter to the court — which was posted to the case docket on Thursday, then promptly removed — Menendez’s sister is expected to take the witness stand as early as Friday. She will tell jurors about Menendez’s relationship with his wife and the family’s unusual history of stashing large amounts of cash.
An additional Menendez family member will take the stand in his defense as well, counsel told the court after the jury was excused Thursday. The identity of that person has not yet become public.
The trial will resume Monday morning, when Menendez is expected to start mounting his defense.
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