U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) exits Manhattan federal court on July 16, 2024, in New York City. Menendez and his wife Nadine are accused of taking bribes of gold bars, a luxury car, and cash in exchange for using Menendez’s position to help the government of Egypt and other corrupt acts according to an indictment from the Southern District of New York. The jury found Menendez guilty on all counts. (Adam Gray | Getty Images)
Federal prosecutors who successfully tried former Sen. Bob Menendez for taking bribes admitted to an evidentiary gaffe Wednesday, urging a judge to protect jurors’ guilty-on-all-counts verdict.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams alerted U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein that prosecutors recently discovered they had erroneously uploaded nine documents to a laptop jurors could consult during deliberations that had fewer redactions than Stein had ordered.
Williams, who represents the Southern District of New York, where the case was tried over 10 weeks last spring and summer, filed an 11-page letter to Stein that indicated prosecutors expect defense attorneys might use the goof to try to overturn Menendez’s July conviction.
But the nine documents were among 3,074 exhibits available on the jurors’ laptop for perusal, and given that jurors spent less than three full days deliberating, they probably never saw the faulty documents in question, Williams wrote. Defense attorneys also reviewed and signed off on the documents uploaded and didn’t notice the erroneous documents, he added.
Besides, he said, those nine documents were a small fraction of a mountain of evidence against the disgraced Democrat.
“This is simply not a case in which scant improperly redacted exhibits could possibly have caused any prejudice,” Williams wrote.
Attorneys Adam Fee and Avi Weitzman did not respond to the New Jersey Monitor’s request for comment Wednesday.
Stein heard arguments during the trial’s second week about the documents at issue. Defense attorneys wanted details redacted to ensure the exhibits complied with the “speech and debate clause,” a constitutional protection that keeps sitting lawmakers from being held liable for their official acts. The defense argued throughout the trial that the behavior that drove the feds to indict Menendez was the protected everyday acts of a federal legislator. That argument also was the basis of a request by Menendez’s attorneys in August that Stein vacate his conviction or order a new trial.
Jurors found Menendez, who resigned a month after his conviction, guilty of accepting gold bars, cash, a luxury car, and more in exchange for his political influence to help his friends Wael Hana and Fred Daibes further their business interests and curry favor with the governments of Egypt and Qatar.
The three are scheduled to be sentenced in January.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.