NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JULY 09: Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) leaves Manhattan Federal Court on July 09, 2024 in New York City. Prosecutors wrapped up closing arguments, giving way to the defense to begin in Sen. Menendez’s trial. Menendez is charged with corruption after gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash were found at his home. Menendez and his wife, Nadine, are accused of extortion, obstruction of justice and accepting bribes to perform favors for businessmen with connections to Egypt and Qatar. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Jurors who will weigh Sen. Bob Menendez’s fate heard dueling closing arguments at his federal bribery trial Tuesday, with a prosecutor summing up the actions of New Jersey’s senior senator as “a classic case of corruption on a massive scale” and a defense attorney dismissing that as “cherry-picked nonsense.”
Prosecutor Paul Monteleoni, wrapping up a five-hour summation he started Monday, blasted Menendez for claiming he didn’t know his wife, Nadine, took cash, gold, a luxury car, mortgage payments, and other valuables beginning soon after the couple started dating in 2018.
Going count by count of the 18-count indictment, Monteleoni reminded jurors of evidence prosecutors presented since the trial started in mid-May that linked the riches to the couple’s co-defendants, Fred Daibes, Wael Hana, and Jose Uribe.
Uribe, who pleaded guilty in March, and Daibes wanted the senator’s influence to end their criminal troubles, while Daibes and Hana sought the senator’s power as chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee to help them land lucrative business investments from Egyptian and Qatari officials, prosecutors have charged.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the buck stops here. The thousands and thousands of bucks stop here. It’s time to hold him responsible. It’s time to hold them all responsible,” Monteleoni said.
Menendez attorney Adam Fee faced jurors Tuesday afternoon to deliver the first half of his closing statement, ridiculing the prosecution’s case as a “towering Jenga stack of stuff.”
“If you listen to the prosecutors, you might think there was cash and gold in every room of that house, just like Scrooge McDuck swimming in gold coins,” Fee said.
FBI investigators found $486,000 in cash jammed in jackets, bags, boxes, and boots, gold bars worth over $100,000, a $67,000 Mercedes-Benz convertible, and other valuables in the couple’s Englewood Cliffs home during a June 2022 raid.
The senator’s defense team claimed Menendez stashed the cash over decades because of his distrust of banks — a “Cuban thing” common among refugees. The gold bars were gifts and family inheritances, they added. Hoarding cash at home and investing in gold bars is “quirky behavior” but not criminal, Fee said.
The government has not proven a single count under the very high burden they have — proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
– Menendez attorney Adam Fee
But Monteleoni reminded jurors that testimony showed investigators linked much of the cash and gold to Daibes and Hana through fingerprints, DNA, and serial numbers, and that many of the bank envelopes stuffed with cash brimmed with bills dated after 2018, when prosecutors say the bribery scheme began.
“The case isn’t about whether every dollar in Menendez’s house is a bribe. It’s about whether any of the cash in his house or the other valuables are bribes,” Monteleoni said.
He accused all three defendants of acting with an entitlement that breached the sacrosanct trust the public deserves from its elected officials.
“Menendez was elected to the U.S. Senate to represent the interests of the United States and its people. He cannot hold that position and at the same time act on behalf of a foreign government. But what you’ve seen at this trial is that that is exactly what he did,” he said.
Menendez occasionally shook his head during Monteleoni’s summation, while most jurors listened attentively, sometimes taking notes.
Fee told them the senator’s actions were “lawful, normal, and good for his constituents and this country.”
“The government has not proven a single count under the very high burden they have — proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said.
He accused prosecutors of telling “a story” that they “workshopped” during the trial whenever defense attorneys cast doubt on the testimony of government witnesses. He urged jurors not to confuse the inferences prosecutors hoped they would make with “assumption, speculation, fantasy, conjecture.”
“A one-sided story sounds compelling. So our goal throughout the trial has been to show you where are you getting the half-truths, where are you seeing the absence of evidence get filled in by a story that is not supported by proof,” Fee said.
Arguments went on so long that Judge Sidney H. Stein stopped proceedings before lunch and directed jurors and everyone else to stand up for a minute for “a stretch break.”
Still, the closings drew so many observers that officers opened an overflow room, and the defendants’ relatives — including the senator’s daughter, MSNBC host Alicia Menendez, and his older sister, Caridad Gonzalez, who testified in his defense last week — packed a pew reserved for family that has remained largely empty throughout the nine-week trial.
Fee is expected to finish his closing argument Wednesday, followed by summations by Hana’s attorney, Lawrence Lustberg, and Daibes’ attorney, César de Castro. Prosecutors will have an opportunity for a rebuttal, and Stein has yet to instruct the jury, so deliberations likely will begin Thursday.
The ongoing corruption trial is the second for Menendez, 70, whose 2017 trial ended in a hung jury. His wife also was indicted, but Stein postponed her trial until at least August after she told the court she needed medical treatment for breast cancer.
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