Robert Menendez makes last-minute bail push days before he’s set to report to prison

MANHATTAN (CN) — Former U.S. Senator Robert Menendez is making a last-ditch bid to get bail while he appeals his federal bribery conviction and 11-year sentence.

If he loses, the disgraced New Jersey Democrat will have to report to prison next Tuesday.

Menendez was convicted last year for taking bribes and corruptly acting as an agent for the benefit of foreign interests, including the Egyptian government and the Qatari royal family.

Prosecutors say they found hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in Menendez’s New Jersey home, much of it stuffed into clothing embroidered with the senator’s name, as well as gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz — all bribes part of a far-reaching scheme to sell his influence.

Jurors took just over two days last summer to find Menendez guilty on all 16 counts against him, including bribery, conspiracy, wire fraud, acting as a foreign agent and obstruction of justice.

Claiming that the verdict has “substantial issues,” Menendez on Monday asked the Second Circuit to let him out on bail while he fights his conviction in the federal appellate court.

“The defendant does have a right to have those [issues] resolved before serving time for things that may end up being vacated,” Menendez’s lawyer Meir Feder argued to a Second Circuit panel.

Feder argued that federal prosecutors pitched their case against Menendez as a “three-legged stool,” where each scheme the ex-senator was accused of “expressly depended on evidence and inferences having to do with the other schemes.” As such, any issue Menendez wins on appeal could unravel the entire case, Feder claimed.

Menendez is looking to overturn his conviction, in large part, based on the notion that the district court didn’t properly consider his constitutional rights. Feder argued Monday that neither the prosecutors nor Menendez’s trial court “seriously” considered the Speech or Debate Clause, which gives lawmakers immunity from prosecution based on how they vote in the legislature.

“It was treated as essentially an inconvenience to prosecute a case about gold bars, instead of as a critical structural prosecution and separation of powers,” Feder said. “But these in fact are very real speech or debate issues.”

Feder added that the lower court erred when it found that Menendez’s conduct was “completely outside of speech or debate protection.”

He met immediate pushback from U.S. Circuit Judge Steven Menashi, a Donald Trump appointee.

“Doesn’t that just follow directly from the Constitution?” Menashi said of the lower court’s ruling.

It’s a high bar Menendez will have to clear to avoid reporting to prison next week. Businessmen Fred Daibes and Wael Hanna, two of Menendez’s codefendants who were found guilty of bribing him, unsuccessfully tried to avoid jail time with similar arguments to the appellate court.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Monteleone disputed the classification of prosecutors’ case as a “three-legged stool,” telling the circuit panel that it “really has nothing to do with the way that the case was presented to the jury.”

Making up Monday’s panel were Menashi, Joe Biden appointee U.S. Circuit Judge Alison Nathan and Barack Obama appointee U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla. The trio of judges didn’t immediately issue a ruling following the arguments.

Menendez has already won a delay of his prison report date from June 6 to June 17 so he could attend his stepdaughter’s wedding. According to court records, Menendez said he wanted to be able to escort his wife, Nadine Menendez, to the ceremony and tend to her medical needs.

Nadine Menendez was a codefendant with her husband in the federal bribery case but stood trial alone after Robert Menendez was convicted so she could receive treatment for breast cancer.

She was convicted on the same bribery scheme earlier this year — a conviction that she, too, is trying to toss. She filed a motion on Friday claiming that her Sixth Amendment rights were violated at trial when she was denied her first choice of counsel.

Nadine Menendez’s original trial lawyer, David Schertler, was forced off the case due to conflict after he was identified as a fact witness on her obstruction charges in a superseding indictment.

But he was never called to testify, and Nadine Menendez accused prosecutors of “creat[ing] a conflict, forcing Mr. Schertler to be a witness against his own client and to withdraw from the case.”

Nadine Menendez is due to be sentenced on Sept. 11.

Follow @Uebey Follow @uebey.bsky.social