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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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      Menendez Defense Rests Without Senator Testifying

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      Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey is accused of a wide-ranging international bribery conspiracy. Jurors are likely to begin deliberating next week.After calling just four witnesses, lawyers for Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey rested their case late Wednesday afternoon in Manhattan federal court, setting the stage for jurors to begin deliberations in his international bribery conspiracy trial early next week.Mr. Menendez, 70, said that he decided against testifying in his own defense for two primary reasons.The government, he said, had not proved its case, and he did not want to give prosecutors an opportunity to rehash the charges twice — once on cross-examination and again in closing arguments.That was “simply not something that makes any sense to me whatsoever,” Mr. Menendez said as he left the courthouse after proceedings ended for the day.“I expect my lawyers will produce a powerful and convincing summation, deduce how the evidence came out, where they failed across the board, and have the jury render a verdict of not guilty,” he added.Final summations in the case — first by prosecutors, then by lawyers for Mr. Menendez and two co-defendants, followed by a government rebuttal — are likely to begin as early as Monday afternoon, according to the judge, Sidney H. Stein of Federal District Court.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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      Prosecutors Use Menendez Couple’s Texts to Depict Them as Collaborators

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      Senator Robert Menendez is accused of bribery and corruption. His lawyers have attempted to shift the blame to his wife, Nadine.In January 2019, Senator Robert Menendez placed a seven-minute call to New Jersey’s attorney general, Gurbir Grewal, in what prosecutors say was an effort to quash an insurance fraud case.A New Jersey businessman, Jose Uribe, had been desperate to make the fraud charges disappear, prosecutors say. He had turned to Nadine Menendez — who married the senator the next year — for help.In the hours and days before the senator’s call, there was a flurry of communication between Ms. Menendez, Mr. Uribe and a second businessman who is charged with the senator and his wife in an elaborate bribery scheme. Ms. Menendez would often contact the senator soon after texting with the men, sometimes using an alternate phone that the couple referred to as her “007” phone.The messages were shared Wednesday with jurors over hours of testimony from an F.B.I. special agent during the fourth week of Mr. Menendez’s bribery trial. The agent was responsible for verifying the accuracy of a chart summarizing more than 1,100 pieces of evidence, including emails, texts and voice mail recordings.Taken together, the messages appeared to be part of the prosecution’s effort to undercut a central element of Mr. Menendez’s defense: that he and his wife lived largely separate lives, and that he was unaware of her interactions with the men now accused of bribing the couple in exchange for political favors from the senator.Prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York took pains on Wednesday to instead present the senator and his wife as close collaborators who spoke regularly and were intimately involved in mundane details of each other’s daily lives.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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      Senator Menendez’s Wife Is Being Treated for Breast Cancer

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      Nadine Menendez is charged along with her husband, Senator Robert Menendez, in a complex bribery scheme. She will undergo a mastectomy.Nadine Menendez, the wife of Senator Robert Menendez, is being treated for breast cancer and will undergo a mastectomy, her husband revealed on Thursday.Mr. Menendez announced his wife’s cancer diagnosis in a statement released while he was in Federal District Court in Manhattan, where he is on trial on charges that he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for political favors.“We are of course concerned about the seriousness and advanced stage of the disease,” Mr. Menendez, 70, said in the statement. “We hope and pray for the best results.”The timing of the announcement, issued by his Senate office, was conspicuous and punctuated a remarkable first week on trial. It came less than a day after the senator’s lawyers told jurors in an opening statement that Ms. Menendez, 57, was largely to blame for the gold bars and other lucrative bribes prosecutors say he took in exchange for helping Egypt and New Jersey businessmen.Mr. Menendez said he was releasing the information now because of “constant press inquiries and reporters following my wife.” He asked that she be given privacy as she battles cancer, which he described as “grade 3.”A lawyer for Ms. Menendez could not immediately be reached for comment. Ms. Menendez has not appeared in court.Ms. Menendez was originally scheduled to stand trial with him and two other defendants beginning this week. But last month, the judge presiding over the case, Sidney H. Stein, agree to grant her a delay and separate trial in July after her lawyers informed the court that she was dealing with a “serious medical condition” that would require surgery.The disclosure prompted widespread speculation in New Jersey political circles. But at the time, the lawyers only shared details of her diagnosis in a sealed submission to Judge Stein, withholding it from the public.The couple have both been accused of conspiring to trade Mr. Menendez’s clout as a senator and leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for lucrative bribes, including the gold bars, cash and a $60,000 convertible for Ms. Menendez. In opening statements on Wednesday, prosecutors described Ms. Menendez as a crucial “go-between” for the senator and New Jersey businessmen accused of providing the payoffs.The senator and his wife have both pleaded not guilty. 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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      Opening Statements in Senator Menendez’s Corruption Trial: 5 Takeaways

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      The corruption trial of Senator Robert Menendez, a powerful New Jersey Democrat, spun into motion in Manhattan on Wednesday, with combative opening statements and an extraordinary claim by the defense.Speaking directly to the jury, a U.S. prosecutor asserted that Mr. Menendez “put his power up for sale,” trading favors involving Egypt and New Jersey businessmen for gold bars, cash and a Mercedes-Benz convertible. But it was a lawyer for Mr. Menendez who shook the courtroom awake, piling blame on the senator’s wife, Nadine Menendez.Mr. Menendez, 70, betrayed little emotion as he watched the opening statements from the courtroom, where he is facing some of the gravest charges ever leveled against a sitting U.S. senator. He has pleaded not guilty.He is being tried alongside two of the businessmen, Fred Daibes and Wael Hana. Prosecutors have also charged Ms. Menendez, but her trial was delayed until July for health reasons.Here are five takeaways from the senator’s third day on trial:The prosecution tried to keep it simple.Prosecutors have spun a dizzying set of accusations against Mr. Menendez, filing four rounds of charges that involve a halal meat monopoly, a Qatari sheikh and the inner workings of the U.S. government. All of it could easily confuse jurors.So laying out a road map for their case, they offered the panel a far simpler view: “This case is about a public official who put greed first,” said Lara Pomerantz, an assistant U.S. attorney. “A public official who put his own interests above the duty of the people, who put his power up for sale.”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