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

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    In a closing statement, a prosecutor said the Menendez home was awash in cash and walked jurors through what the government has called a complicated web of corruption.When F.B.I. agents raided the New Jersey home of Senator Robert Menendez and his wife, they found envelope after envelope of cash, a federal prosecutor told a jury on 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 businessmen paid to the couple in exchange for promises of official action by Mr. Menendez, the former chairman 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,” Mr. 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.”“No, Robert Menendez wanted all that power,” he added. “But he also wanted to use it to pile up riches for himself and his wife.”“So, Menendez sold the power of his office,” he said.The prosecutor’s closing statement came as the trial of Mr. Menendez, 70, and the two businessmen — Wael Hana and Fred Daibes — entered its ninth week in Federal District Court in Manhattan. Prosecutors say Mr. Hana and Mr. 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, Mr. Menendez steered aid and weapons to Egypt, used his political clout to help the government of Qatar, propped up Mr. Hana’s lucrative halal certification business monopoly and sought to disrupt several criminal investigations in New Jersey on behalf of Mr. Daibes, a real estate developer, and another ally, Jose Uribe, a former insurance broker.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Is There Any Chance He Can Sit on a Camel?’ A Senator’s Wife Wanted to Know.

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      An aide to Senator Robert Menendez testified that she had been asked to consult with an Egyptian intelligence officer who had befriended Nadine Menendez.In March 2019, an aide to Senator Robert Menendez drafted a letter that used strong language to criticize the president of Egypt and the country’s human rights record. Mr. Menendez declined to sign it.Mr. Menendez, then the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he wanted to try a less confrontational approach, the aide, Sarah Arkin, testified on Monday at the senator’s bribery trial.“We’ve been going after them for so long on human rights — have been really out there publicly criticizing them — and it hasn’t really changed anything on the ground,” Ms. Arkin, a senior staff member with the committee, said Mr. Menendez had told her.Instead, Mr. Menendez said he wanted “to be a little less publicly critical and do more private and quiet engagement,” Ms. Arkin said.Ms. Arkin’s testimony came at the start of the seventh week of the senator’s trial in Manhattan federal court. Mr. Menendez, 70, is charged with steering aid and weapons to Egypt in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes as part of a wide-ranging and yearslong conspiracy.He has strenuously maintained his innocence, and as Mr. Menendez was leaving court on Monday he defended his record related to Egypt and its president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. “No one has been a harsher critic of Egypt,” Mr. Menendez said. “No one has been more persistent a critic of President el-Sisi on the question of human rights, democracy, rule of law.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Menendez Jurors Hear Audio and See Texts From Seized Phones

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      Prosecutors introduced private messages between Senator Robert Menendez and his future wife to show what they say was the start of a bribery conspiracy.On Jan. 31, 2018, the day Senator Robert Menendez was formally cleared of bribery charges that had dogged him for nearly three years in New Jersey, he got a text from Nadine Arslanian, a woman he would soon begin to date and later marry.“Now re-election!!!!” Ms. Arslanian wrote.“Yes!” Mr. Menendez replied before asking, “Are you around on Friday?”She was. After a dinner date at a New Jersey restaurant, it was Ms. Arslanian’s turn to send a text with a question: “What is your international position?”Mr. Menendez, 70, responded that he was the “ranking member” on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — “which means senior Democrat.”The text exchanges, along with emails and recordings of voice mail messages and other exhibits, were part of hours of evidence that federal prosecutors presented on Tuesday, in the third week of Mr. Menendez’s corruption trial in Manhattan.Prosecutors used the volley of communications to begin to lay out an origin story of not only a romantic relationship but also what they claim was a burgeoning, five-year bribery conspiracy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Defense Blames Senator Menendez’s Wife as Bribery Trial Starts

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      Senator Robert Menendez is charged in a vast international web of corruption. His federal trial began on Wednesday.A lawyer for Senator Robert Menendez on Wednesday laid blame for the bribery charges the senator faces squarely on his wife — a woman he found “dazzling” but who, his lawyer said, hid her past dire finances and the source of her newfound income from her powerful husband.She had kept him in the dark about “what she was asking others to give her,” the lawyer, Avi Weitzman, told a jury in opening statements at the start of the senator’s federal corruption trial in Manhattan.The gold and some of the cash that the F.B.I. found in a search of the senator’s New Jersey home — items that prosecutors say were bribes — were kept in a locked closet where his wife, Nadine Menendez, stored her clothing, Mr. Weitzman said.“He did not know of the gold bars that existed in that closet,” Mr. Weitzman added, describing Mr. Menendez as an American patriot and “lifelong public servant” who “took no bribes.”Prosecutors have charged Mr. Menendez, 70, and his wife with accepting gifts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, including cash, gold, home furnishings and a $60,000 Mercedes, in exchange for political favors for friends at home and the governments of Egypt and Qatar. It is the second bribery trial of Mr. Menendez, a Democrat who has long been dogged by allegations of corruption. He walked away largely unscathed from the first, which ended in a hung jury in 2017 in New Jersey. But the new charges, leveled in September by a federal grand jury in Manhattan, are likely to end the senator’s three-decade career in Congress.Who Are Key Players in the Menendez Case?Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and his wife, Nadine Menendez, are accused of taking part in a wide-ranging, international bribery scheme that lasted five years. Take a closer look at central figures related to the case.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New Details in Menendez Bribery Case: A Diamond Ring and Covid Tests

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      In a court filing, prosecutors say Senator Robert Menendez urged New Jersey mayors to use a coronavirus testing lab that was paying his wife.A luxury Mercedes-Benz, gold bars, exercise equipment and stacks of cash featured prominently in a federal indictment that charged Senator Robert Menendez with accepting a sordid array of bribes.Now, prosecutors say a diamond engagement ring for the senator’s future wife, Nadine Menendez, was also part of the elaborate bribery scheme — and a source of infighting between co-defendants who are expected to stand trial together in May.Wael Hana, a longtime friend of Ms. Menendez’s who is also charged in the alleged conspiracy, attempted to cheat her out of the full value of the ring, according to court documents filed late Monday by prosecutors in Manhattan.In doing so, Mr. Hana, an Egyptian-American businessman who founded a halal meat company that prosecutors say was used to funnel bribes to the Menendezes, threatened to derail plans for the senator to assist the government of Egypt — part of the complicated plot he is accused of.“[Hana] was about to ruin things with Bob,” a confidential source, who was in touch with Egyptian officials, said, according to the government’s filing. “Bob who is starting to listen to us.”Mr. Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, has pleaded not guilty, as have Ms. Menendez, Mr. Hana and two other defendants.Read the documentProsecutors say a diamond engagement ring was part of an elaborate bribery scheme involving Senator Robert Menendez and his future wife, Nadine Menendez.Read DocumentWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More