Sen. Bob Menendez ‘put his power up for sale’ in exchange for gold bar bribes, feds say in closing arguments
Sen. Bob Menendez abused his powerful post to scoop up stacks of cash and gold bars in exchange for serving the whims of New Jersey businessmen and foreign governments, federal prosecutors said Monday as the veteran pol’s bribery trial neared its end.
The embattled Garden State Democrat “put his power up for sale,” prosecutor Paul Monteleoni told jurors during closing arguments at Menendez’s two-month-long trial in Manhattan federal court.
Menendez, 70, leveraged his position as the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — tasked with approving millions of dollars in US military aid — to “pile up riches,” the prosecutor said.
“Mr. Menendez sold the power of his office to take official action,” Monteleoni told jurors. “You saw, again and again, a clear pattern of corruption.”
The feds discovered 13 gold bars worth $150,000 and $486,461 in cash — including bills stuffed inside the senator’s official government windbreaker and a Timberland boot — when they raided Menendez’s Englewood Cliffs home in June 2022.
Serial numbers on the gold bars and fingerprints on the cash-filled envelopes tie the stash to New Jersey real estate mogul Fred Daibes and businessman Wael Hana, who are also charged as part of the bribery conspiracy, prosecutors said.
In exchange for those gifts, and other goodies like a $120,000-a year no-show job for his wife Nadine Menendez, the lawmaker pressured the Department of Agriculture to protect Hana’s cushy “monopoly” on approving halal meat exports to Egypt, the prosecutor alleged.
Hana served as a middleman between Bob Menendez and Egypt while the senator doled out favors to the country — such as ghostwriting a letter urging the US government to unfreeze $300 million in aid that had been held up amid human rights concerns, Monteleoni said.
“Why did Daibes and Hana shower Menendez and his wife with these valuables? What were they getting? The promise of power,” Monteleoni said.
Menendez allegedly recommended US Attorney Philip Sellinger for his coveted role as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor after trying to discuss a pending bank fraud case against Daibes with him, Sellinger testified.
New Jersey insurance broker Jose Uribe, a close colleague of Hana’s, also testified during the trial that he bought the senator’s wife a new Mercedes convertible in exchange for her husband’s help killing a state criminal probe, as part of a plot hatched over glasses of Cognac and dinners at swanky Garden State eateries.
“I saved your ass, not once but twice,” Menendez allegedly bragged to Uribe during one such dinner, at the upscale Spanish restaurant Segovia in north Jersey — in a scene that appeared pulled straight out of a mediocre mob movie.
Lawyers for Menendez, who are expected to deliver their closing statement Tuesday, have said that the gold bars all belonged to his wife Nadine, who they claimed “sidelined” her hubby from the alleged bribery scheme.
But Monteleoni argued Monday that trial evidence shows that the senator was the one pulling the strings, and that his wife served as his “go-between” connecting him with the men paying the bribes.
“You don’t get to be the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by being clueless,” he told jurors.
Menendez sat Monday at the defense table in a dark blue suit and light blue tie, tapping the side of his chair with his right hand, as the prosecutor spoke for two-and-a-half hours.
“The government is intoxicated by their own rhetoric,” the senator said as he left court before stepping into a waiting car.
His attorneys called five people to the stand, including the senator’s older sister, who testified that it was “normal” for her brother — and all people of Cuban heritage — to hoard stacks of cash.
“It’s a Cuban thing,” said 80-year-old Caridad Gonzalez, adding that her “baby brother,” who was born in Manhattan, inherited a distrust of banks from his father, who ran a successful bowtie business in Cuba before it was destroyed by local authorities.
Nadine Menedez’s sister, Katia Tabourian, testified that it was normal for members of her family, which hails from Lebanon, Armenia and Cyprus, to exchange gold bars and other jewelry as gifts.
The senator did not testify. He claimed outside court last week that prosecutors “had failed to prove every aspect of their case.”
Menendez has refused to step down from office with the case pending and is running as an independent after losing June’s Democratic Primary to Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ) in a landslide.
The case is Menendez’ second time facing federal corruption charges, after a prior case tried in New Jersey ended with a hung jury in 2017.
