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

Follow our live coverage of Menendez’s bribery trial.

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.

Mr. Menendez alone faces 16 felony charges: bribery, conspiracy, honest services fraud, obstruction of justice, extortion, acting as an agent for Egypt and other counts.

Ever since he was charged last year, Mr. Menendez has proclaimed his innocence, saying he would be exonerated and had no intention of resigning.

The senator’s colleagues in Washington are waiting warily for a verdict in his trial. A conviction would create tremendous pressure on him to resign, or for his fellow senators to hold an expulsion vote. If he is found not guilty or the jury cannot reach a verdict, Mr. Menendez, a Democrat, has said he will run for re-election as an independent, potentially hurting his own party’s candidate, Representative Andy Kim, in November.

Mr. Menendez is the first U.S. senator to be tried twice on federal bribery charges. In an unrelated matter, Mr. Menendez was tried in New Jersey in 2017, a case that ended in a mistrial after the jury said it could not reach a verdict.

On Monday, the courtroom was packed to capacity with spectators, including Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, whose office is prosecuting the case. Others, including a group of some 40 interns from the U.S. attorney’s office, were sent to a separate courtroom where they could watch on a live video feed.

As Mr. Monteleoni spoke, Mr. Menendez, seated beside his lawyers at the defense table, appeared focused and calm. He crossed his left leg over his right and kept his eye on the prosecutor, taking notes as Mr. Monteleoni methodically moved through the complex list of charges.

The prosecutor displayed various visual aids to the jury, including some materials with user-friendly headings, like “The Sham Job.” In describing the alleged bribe payments, he told the jury: The thing of value “doesn’t have to go to Menendez directly.”

The “sham job” was a $10,000-a-month position Mr. Hana promised to Ms. Menendez, Mr. Monteleoni said. “Did Menendez know about this job? Of course he did,” he added.

Indeed, Mr. Monteleoni took direct aim at a key aspect of Mr. Menendez’s defense — shifting blame to his wife. The senator’s lawyers have argued that Ms. Menendez kept her husband “in the dark” about money she was receiving from others.

Mr. Monteleoni argued that the evidence showed Mr. Menendez had direct knowledge of myriad payments and other benefits his wife was accruing. “You don’t get to be the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by being clueless,” he said.

Mr. Monteleoni displayed texts Ms. Menendez sent, saying they showed the senator knew she was brokering deals for the couple. “Bob called me today to find out if everything’s been taken care of,” Ms. Menendez texted one of the businessmen charged in the case.

Mr. Monteleoni displayed another message in which Ms. Menendez told her husband, “Love of my life, PLEASE, could you fix this letter and send it back to me?” The letter was for an Egyptian official who was asking other U.S. senators to release $300 million in aid that had been held up because of concerns over Egypt’s human rights record. Mr. Menendez formulated a ghostwritten response within hours of receiving the text message, Mr. Monteleoni said.

“Quid pro quo,” Mr. Monteleoni said, speaking slowly and deliberately as he urged the jury to look at the timeline of events that he said showed the senator using his office to help his wife and himself. “When Menendez hears Nadine is going to get paid, he springs into action again and again,” the prosecutor said.

Mr. Monteleoni also displayed text messages that he said showed Ms. Menendez sought “permission” and “instructions” from her husband as they conspired. “Menendez wants his fingerprints off it,” Mr. Monteleoni said, because he didn’t “want to get caught.”

He delved into the mortgage payments prosecutors say Mr. Daibes made for Ms. Menendez — what Mr. Monteleoni called “bribe checks.” When Ms. Menendez wanted to get paid, she would ask her husband if it was OK to reach out to Mr. Daibes.

“Let me know if I should text Fred,” Ms. Menendez texted her husband in September 2019. “No, you should not text or email,” the senator replied. Again, Mr. Monteleoni said, jurors could see evidence of Mr. Menendez’s state of mind, his knowledge that he had to cover his tracks.

Jurors have a mountain of testimony and evidence to sort through, and Mr. Monteleoni appeared to be trying to connect the dots to prove what he called “a clear pattern of corruption.”

Mr. Menendez, leaving the courthouse, mocked Mr. Monteleoni’s summation. “The government is intoxicated with their own rhetoric,” he told reporters before stepping into a waiting black Lincoln sedan. “They spent two hours on charts.”

Adam Fee, a lawyer for the senator, is expected to follow the government’s presentation on Tuesday with a summation on the senator’s behalf, followed by lawyers for Mr. Hana and Mr. Daibes and a government rebuttal. (Ms. Menendez was also indicted in the alleged conspiracy, but her trial was postponed by the judge, Sidney H. Stein, because she is being treated for breast cancer. She has pleaded not guilty.)

The government appeared to have made it through about half of its closing argument on Monday. After focusing initially on charges Mr. Menendez and his wife aided Egypt in exchange for lucrative bribes, the prosecutor led the jury through other key counts, including those related to Menendez’s alleged attempt to interfere in prosecutions that touch Mr. Daibes and Mr. Uribe.

“There’s so much more, that it might make sense to do it tomorrow,” Mr. Monteleoni told the jury as he stopped at 5 p.m.

Maia Coleman contributed reporting.