Menendez must testify; the voters deserve no less

By: Mike Kelly
Columnist
USA today Network

..... The Bob Menendez trial needs to call a special witness. This witness can clear up the mysteries in the case - most of them, anyway. He might even save himself and his fractured legacy.
..... His name is Bob Menendez.
..... It's time New Jersey's senior U.S. senator explained himself.
..... In an opening statement at the trial on Wednesday [05/15/2024] afternoon in federal court in lower Manhattan, Assistant U.S. attorney Lara Pomerantz, one of the prosecutors, told jurors that Menendez "betrayed the people he was supposed to serve by taking bribes" and that the case is really "about a public official who put greed first" and "put his power up for sale."
..... "This was not politics as usual," Pomerantz said. "This was politics for profit.
..... In his own opening statement, Memendez's attorney, Avi Weitzman, offered an entirely different portrait of what took place. Menedez wasn't taking bribes, Weitzman said.
..... The senator offered "constituent services' and "entirely for the benefit of New Jerseyans." And all those gold bars and cash and the luxury car that Menendez is charged with taking? Well, Menendez is now blaming his wife Nadine. the good senator says Nadine kept him in the dark.