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Lawyers for Menendez prepare to prove prosecutors wrong

Defense beings in trial that started in maid-May [2024]

By: Dana DeFilippo
New Jersey Monitor

..... On Friday, [06/28/2024] the 26th day of the federal corruption trial of Senior Bob Menendez, prosecutors, rested their case against New Jersey's senior senator and two of his co-defendants.
..... The trail began in mid-may [2024] and has seen more than two dozen witnesses testify in front of U.S. district Judge Sidney H. Stein at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan federal courthouse in Manhattan, including U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger, former state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, two former Menendez advisers, and more.
..... Prosecutors hope they can convince the jury that Menendez accepted lavish bribes in exchange for his interference in foreign policy matters and domestic criminal investigations. Menendez's lawyers have argued his actions were that of a U.S. senator doing his job.
..... As the defense prepares to present its case, here are key moments in the prosecution's case against Menendez and co-defendants Wael "Will" Hana and Fred Daibes. Menedez's wife, Nadine, is also charged and is expected to be tried later this year. [2024]

Cash everywhere

..... FBI agents found so much cash in Menendez's home in Englewood Cliffs that they had to get someone to bring an automated cash counter to add it all up.
..... "The sheer volume of bills that we encountered was too much to count by hand," said Aristoltelis Kougemitros, the FBI special agent who led the search.
..... The money - $486,461 in cash, along with 13 gold bars - was jammed into jackets and boots and crammed into bags and boxes around the couple's cluttered home.

Hana's meat monopoly

..... Prosecutors allege Hanna's monopoly on exporting halal meat to Egypt wasn't because of Hana's business acumen, but because of bribes he gave Menendez and the senator's favors to benefit the Egyptian government at Hana's behest.
..... U.S. Depart4emnt of Agriculture officials James Bret Tate testified that he wanted to push back against Egypt's decision to make Hana's company their sole importer of halal-certified meat, but Egypt wouldn't meet with him. And that was unusual, he said.
..... When the American embassy requests a meeting, we get meeting," Tate said.

'The love email'

..... Menendez lost a bid to keep jurors form seeing what has been dubbed the "love email," a text he sent Nadine Menendez telling her to inform Hana that the senator was signing off on arms to Egypt.
..... The senator's lawyers argued that the speech and debate clause of the U.S. constitution - which provides immunity to lawmakers performing official legislate acts - applied here, but Stein said a promise to preform an act is itself not a legislative act.
..... Prosecutors say releasing aid and arms to Egypt - which historically has received the most military aid from the U.S. of any other country except Israel - is one of the things Menedez did to help Hana protect his monopoly.

Keeping Nadine happy

..... Prosecutors say Nadine Menendez was a go-between linking her husband with the businessmen accused of bribing him.
..... Attorney Howard Dorian, who represented Hana, made this clear in a text he sent to one man involved in one of the alleged bribery schemes.
..... "It is extremely important that we keep Nadine happy," Dorian wrote.
..... Texts also show how Nadine Menendez suggested talking points to Senator Menendez at Hana's direction.
..... In your speech, could you please say Egypt now in the right direction with the new government now. with the International Monetary Fund and all the new developments, new capital and the new Suez canal. Egypt is important to the United States," she texted Senator Menendez.

'Stop interfering'

..... A former U.S. Department of Agriculture official told jurors Menendez called him when the department was looking into why Egypt chose to get halal meat from just Hana's company.
..... "Stop interfering with my constituents," Menendez said, according to the ex-official, Ted McKinney.

The Mercedes-Benz

..... When Nadine Menendez needed a new car after totaling hers in a crash that killed a pedestrian in Bogota, businessman Jose Uribe stepped in to help.
..... Uribe had an associate facing prosecution by the state Attorney General's Office, and a related expanding investigation threatened to ensnare Uribe's own business. So he made :a deal" with Nadine Menendez - a car in exchange for her husband's help in squashing his criminal troubles, he told jurors. he provided a down payment and made monthly payments for Nadine;s new car for almost three years, testimony showed.
..... After Nadine Menendez signed paperwork for the Mercedes-Benz, she texted her husband.
..... "The car is home," she wrote.
..... "Woopy!!" the senator texted back.
..... To Uribe, she texted: "you are a miracle worker who makes dreams come true. I will always remember that."
..... Uribe was charged along with the Menendezes but pleaded guilty in March [2024] in a cooperation deal with prosecutors.

'Gross'

..... Grewal, the former New Jersey attorney general, told jurors that Menendez tried to speak to him three times about the charges facing Uribe's associate
..... The last time was at Menendez's Newark office, where Grewal and colleague Andrew Bruck met with the senator. Afterward, Grewal testified, Bruck had this to say: "Whoa, that was gross."
..... Grewal conceded Menendez made no "explicit ask" during the meeting or phone calls and was "polite" throughout their interactions.
..... "What I understood the upshot of this conversation to be was that he didn't like how this matter was being handled by our office and wanted it handled differently," Grewal said.

'Yes, I did'

..... Uribe took the stand to say he did indeed bribe Menendez hoping the senator would kill the investigation that focused on his associate and business.
..... "I agreed with Nadine Menendez and other people to provide a car for Nadine in order to get the power and influence of Mr. Menendez," Uribe said.
..... Uribe also testified that Menendez acknowledged his interference.
..... "I saved your little (expletive deleted) not once, but twice," Uribe said the senator told him in Spanish.

Former Friends

..... Sellinger said while Menendez was considering him to be New Jersey;s new U.S. attorney in 2020, Menendez told Sellinger that the office's prosecution of Daibes, a real estate developer charged with bank fraud, was unfair.
..... "Senator Menendez hoped that if I became U.S. attorney, I would look at it carefully," Sellinger told jurors.
..... When Sellinger said he might be recused from the Daibes case because of a conflict of interest, Menendez chose another candidate, Hudson County Prosecutor Ester Suarez, Sellinger said. When that fell through, Sellinger got the job - and then, when his new bosses ordered him off the Daibes matter, Menendez ended their friendship, he testified.

Behind-the-scenes

..... Michael Soliman, a former Menendez adviser, explained how he helped Menendez shield Suarez's pot4enitla nomination as U.S. attorney from public scrutiny by falsely claiming there were other candidates and by planting fake stories in the press.
..... "It was my job to protect the senator, so I just cared about his optics," said Soliman.
..... Soliman also said he met with Sellinger after he became the U.S. attorney - Menendez had asked Soliman to tell Sellinger to give Deibes "all due process" - but Sellinger warned him at the start of the meal not to bring up any pending criminal matter or Sellinger would have to alert the Department of Justice.

Qatar

..... Prospectus allege Daibles bribed Menendez to score investments form a Qatari royal, and that the deal almost went south because the royal learned of Daibes' bank fraud case. Menendez stepped in to meet with Sheikh Sultan bin Jassim Al Thani, whose brother is Qatar's emir, and other Qatari royals to smooth things over, prosecutors say.
..... "I hope that this will result in the favorable and mutually beneficial agreement that you both have been engaged in discussing," Menendez wrote to bin Jassim in an encrypted WhatsApp message in January 2022.
..... Four months later, Daibes and a firm the sheik founded singed a $190 million deal.

Egypt

..... Sarah Arkin, a former foreign policy adviser to Menendez, told jurors Menendez started acting "weird" regarding Egypt at about the time prosecutors say Hana was bribing him to keep his lucrative halal deal
..... Arikin said Menendez started meeting with Egyptian officials without her, contrary to their usual protocol.
..... "A critical part of my job is preparing him for those meetings," Arkin said. "I didn't know exactly who he was talking to or what information he had or didn't have or who he might want to meet or where information was coming from."

Gold bars

..... Jeweler Vasken Khorozian said Nadine Menendez cashed in about $250,000 worth of gold bars in 2022, just weeks before the FBI searched the Menendez home and found more gold bars and cash.
..... Khorozian said she came to his Edgewater store three times that spring, [2022] initially telling him she was trading in the bars because she had a "financial situation."
..... Prosecutors cant's say whether those gold bars were given to the Menendezes by Daibles or Hana - Khorozian did not take down their serial numbers.
..... "If I know what I know now, I would do things differential," Khorozian said

Disclosures

..... A Senate ethics director said income, assets, gifts, and liabilities of both senators and their spouses smut be disclosed, so that constituents can see for themselves their representative's financial situation.
..... but if the gold bars, cash, and other valuables the Menendezes took from Daibes, Hana and Uribe were indeed loans and gifts as the defense team contends, the senator should have reported them on mandatory annual disclose forms, said Shannon Kopplin, chief counsel and staff director of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics.
..... He did not, Kopplin said.
..... In February 2022, about 16 months after he got married, Kopplin said she got a calla from the senator, who had questions about how to report gold bars he said belonged to his wife.
..... The next month, he officially disclosed his wife;s gold, Kopplin said three months late, FBI agents seized it as evidence.

..... Editor's note: This story was originally published by the new Jersey Monitor, for which Dana DeFilippo is a staff writer. The New Jersey Monitor is part of States Newsroom, the nation's largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

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