Sen. Bob Menendez’s sister says he stashed cash for decades: ‘It was normal. He’s a Cuban.’
New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez’s decades-long practice of storing stacks of cash in his home is a “normal” part of his Cuban heritage, his sister testified on his behalf Monday at his federal bribery trial.
“It’s normal. He’s a Cuban,” Caridad Gonzalez, 80, said while explaining why she was not surprised that her “baby brother” — the embattled veteran Democrat — once asked her to fetch $500 in cash from a shoebox in his closet in the 1980s, when she worked for him as a legal secretary.
Menendez, 70, who was born in Manhattan, inherited a distrust of banks from his father, who ran a successful bowtie business in Cuba before running afoul of local authorities, she testified in Manhattan federal court.
“He would always say, ‘Don’t trust the banks, you must always have money at home,'” Gonzalez said of their dad.
“Every Cuban that came to the US, you would find that they would have cash in their home, because in Cuba they can take everything away from you, whether you like it or not,” she added.
The senator and his wife Nadine Menendez face federal charges of accepting more than $566,000 in cash, $150,000 in gold bars and other gifts while he leveraged his powerful post as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to dole out favors to local businessmen and the Egyptian and Qatari governments.
FBI agents raiding the Menendez’s cluttered Englewood Cliffs house in June 2022 discovered troves of cash — including stacks of bills stuffed inside his official Senate windbreaker and a well-worn Timberland work boot, trial evidence has shown.
The senator’s older sister was the first witness called by Menendez’s defense attorneys in their bid to counter the government’s case, which included a New Jersey insurance broker testifying that he bought Nadine a new Mercedes for her husband’s help killing a state criminal probe.
Testifying for just over an hour Monday morning, Gonzalez described how she was “very close” to the senator and helped raise him as a child growing up in Union City and Hoboken.
“Is it fair to say you love your brother?” prosecutor Lara Pomerantz asked her just before she left the stand.
“Yes, I do,” she responded.
After stepping down, Gonzalez grinned at Menendez, who sat at the defense table in a dark gray suit and pink-and-blue striped tie. The siblings later exchanged a hug after stepping into a courthouse side room.
Menendez’s lawyers then called Nadine’s sister, Katia Tabourian, who testified that Nadine’s history with gold bars dates back years before she was hit with bribery charges in September 2023.
Decades earlier, Nadine was given her grandmother’s treasured gold bar stash after her death, her sister said.
“I got the gold coins, and my sister got my grandmother’s gold bars,” Tabourian told jurors. “My sister was my grandmother’s favorite out of five grandkids.”
Tabourian added that Nadine’s practice of having a safe in her closet was typical of people of Lebanese heritage, including their mother.
“Everybody had a safe,” she testified.
The senator’s lawyers have claimed that the gold bars found in the Menendez home all belonged to Nadine, who they claimed “sidelined” her hubby from the alleged bribery scheme.
Nadine’s case will be tried separately from her husband’s as she recovers from breast cancer, court records show. She has not attended his trial.
Menendez has refused to step down from office with the case pending and has announced plans to run again as an independent after losing June’s Democratic Primary to Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ) in a landslide.
