Menendez was a ‘bribed man,’ prosecutor says in closing statement
Prosecutors are trying to tie together over two months of testimony and evidence of alleged bribery
Sen. Bob Menendez was a “bribed man” who repeatedly sprang into action for cash and gold, federal prosecutors said Monday in the first hours of their closing arguments.
“It wasn’t enough for him to be one of the most powerful people in Washington,” federal prosecutor Paul Monteleoni said.
The closing argument is a chance for prosecutors to tie together over two months of testimony and evidence that they say puts Menendez at the heart of several overlapping conspiracies to disrupt criminal cases against New Jersey business people and aid the government of Egypt in exchange for bribes.
Prosecutors are expected to take about three more hours to sum up their case before jurors begin their deliberations later this week. The trial of Menendez and two New Jersey business people accused of bribing him began in May. Menendez and his two co-defendants have pleaded not guilty and are expected to give several hours of their closing arguments beginning Tuesday.
“The government is intoxicated with their own rhetoric,” Menendez said as he left the courthouse on Monday.
Monteleoni said the senator engaged in a “clear pattern” of corruption when he accepted bribes and took actions to help those who were bribing him.
His closing argument sought to preempt defense arguments that the senator was kept in the dark about the bribes by his wife or that the bribes were gifts to the couple from long-time friends — arguments that the senator and his co-defendants are likely to lean heavily on.
Monteleoni tried to put Menendez in the center of the conspiracy and called his wife, Nadine, a “go between.” She is also charged but will stand trial separately because of a breast cancer diagnosis.
Monteleoni said evidence showed that Menendez personally accepted a $10,000 check for his wife’s “sham” consulting business from New Jersey real estate developer Fred Daibes, one of the co-defendants. At another point, Monteleoni said Daibes visited the Menendez home to drop off donuts and a gold bar worth nearly $60,000 — an assertion based on a trip to the house by Daibes followed soon after by a Google search by the senator for the price of a kilogram of gold.
In exchange for bribes, prosecutors allege Menendez tried to disrupt a federal criminal case against Daibes and a state investigation of another man who has already pleaded guilty to bribing the senator and Nadine with a luxury car.
Other allegations involving Egypt are among the most serious, since they cover the senator’s time leading the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a time when he was among one of the most influential people in American foreign affairs.
In exchange for bribes, Monteleoni said, Menendez cast aside years of concern about human rights to help the Egyptian government ghostwrite a letter meant for fellow senators pushing back on such concerns and take other actions to aid Egypt.
Monteleoni told jurors Menendez didn’t get to be chair of that committee by being clueless and pointed to numerous texts and phone calls with Nadine and the men accused of bribing them.
“Why is he texting this to his girlfriend?” Monteleoni asked as he showed jurors a text about arms sales from the senator to Nadine before they married.
At another point, he showed jurors text messages and testimony from earlier in the trial where Menendez’s staff talked about the senator acting “weird” toward Egypt.
“Menendez wasn’t acting weirdly, he was acting corruptly,” Monteleoni said.