Bob Menendez corruption trial: Everything you need to know

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), once one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress, is expected to get personal in his second corruption trial, which began Monday with jury selection.

The longtime Democratic senator from New Jersey is expected to dig deep and reveal his penchant for hoarding big gold bars and his wife’s alleged lies and blame his father’s gambling problem and death for decisions that led him down a path that ended in a sprawling 18-count federal indictment, according to court documents. 

Menendez is accused of receiving bribes from 2018 to 2022. 

In exchange, he handed out political favors for the governments of Qatar and Egypt, as well as for co-defendants Wael Hana, Fred Daibes, and Jose Uribe, prosecutors claim.

Hana, an American citizen who emigrated from Egypt, had a string of failed business deals in New Jersey less than a decade ago, including a truck stop, an Italian restaurant, and a limo service, and had a friend who started dating Menendez. Soon thereafter, Hana’s fortunes started to turn around. He was introduced to a growing circle of top Egyptian officials by Menendez, who was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Hana won sole control over certifying all halal food being imported into Egypt. He had gone from being in debt and unable to pay medical bills to an international power broker who bragged about his luxury watch collection.  

He earned so much money that he was able to use some of it to buy gold bars and bribe Menendez for other things, prosecutors allege. 

The real rub was whether Hana was an agent of the Egyptian government all along or just a very unlucky guy who suddenly hit the jackpot after meeting Menendez.   

In 2017, the 70-year-old dodged conviction on a laundry list of other corruption charges, but legal experts claim this case, which was brought by the Justice Department, presents a bigger threat to Menendez and the country. 

“Any time an individual is indicted two times in a row for, let’s call it, public corruption, the odds are not in his favor,” Chris Adams, a defense attorney at the New Jersey law firm Greenbaum Rowe, which was part of Menendez’s 2017 legal team, told the Washington Post. “My view as a defense attorney is that this is a much stronger case for the government.”

The Washington Examiner will break down some of the most pressing questions about the trial, what’s at stake, key players, and what his colleagues in Congress are saying about it. 

What are the charges?

Menendez faces 16 criminal counts, including bribery, fraud, and foreign-agent offenses. Prosecutors allege he took bribes of cash, gold, and a luxury car in exchange for using his considerable political influence to help secure military sales for Egypt and to promote Qatari interests.

He is also charged with accepting gold, cash, and gifts, including a Mercedes-Benz convertible for his wife, from a New Jersey real estate developer in exchange for the senator to have unrelated federal bank charges against the real estate agent go away. 

Menendez has since stepped down as chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 

Menendez, who may take the stand, has accused prosecutors of misrepresenting the normal work of a congressional office and predicted he would be exonerated. 

He has pleaded not guilty. 

If he wins, he has left open the possibility of running for reelection in November. 

Who are the key players?

Wael Hana

Prosecutors claim Hana was a central figure in the scheme to ensnare one of the country’s top politicians. They claimed he capitalized on his relationship with Menendez not only to benefit himself but also to steer aid and weapons to Egypt. 

He has pleaded not guilty.

Nadine Menendez

Menendez’s wife of less than five years is accused of being a go-between between her husband, Egyptian intelligence officials, and the men who were looking for political favors from the senator, according to prosecutors. Her trial was supposed to start on Monday but was postponed after she had surgery and needed time to recover. 

It is now slated to get underway in July. 

She has pleaded not guilty.  

Jose Uribe

The former New Jersey insurance broker pleaded guilty to seven criminal counts, including conspiracy to commit bribery, honest-services fraud, and obstruction of justice.

He admitted to seeking the senator’s help to make state insurance fraud investigations that involved his friends disappear. 

“I knew that giving a car in return for influencing a United States senator to stop a criminal investigation was wrong, and I deeply regret my actions,” Uribe said. 

Fred Daibes

Prosecutors claim the New Jersey real estate developer gave Menendez gold, cash, and furniture in exchange for the senator to have unrelated federal bank charges against Daibes go away. 

Some of the money was allegedly used to get the senator to help line up financing for a stalled real estate project. 

Investigators found 11 gold bars linked to Daibes during a June 2022 search of Menendez’s home. They also found Daibes’s fingerprints and DNA on 10 envelopes containing more than $80,000, according to court records. 

Three months before the search, Nadine Menendez sold two 1-kilogram bars of gold that were also traced back to Daibes and worth about $120,000. 

Daibes has pleaded not guilty. 

How long is the trial supposed to last?

Several weeks, until at least July.

What is Menendez’s defense?

Recent court filings indicate that Menendez’s defense strategy includes blaming his wife and claiming that the large amounts of cash and gold he had in his New Jersey home were a “coping mechanism” that can be traced back to his father. 

When federal investigators searched his home in June 2022, they found more than $480,000 in cash that had been stashed in envelopes and coats. They also found 13 gold bars worth more than $100,000. 

They also seized another $80,000 from Nadine Menendez’s safety deposit box at a nearby bank.

According to the senator, he had a “habit” of withdrawing thousands in cash each month from his savings account in case of emergencies.

He claimed it was due to his family’s experience as Cuban refugees who had their money and possessions confiscated by the Cuban government and were only left with a small amount of cash they had managed to stash in their house. 

Psychiatrist Karen Rosenbaum, who is expected to testify, claimed in a letter sent to prosecutors that Menendez “experienced trauma when his father, a compulsive gambler, died by suicide after Senator Menendez eventually decided to discontinue paying off his father’s gambling debts.” 

She claimed Menendez developed a mental condition that was left untreated and “resulted in a fear of scarcity for the senator and the development of a longstanding coping mechanism of routinely withdrawing and storing cash in his home.” The name of the mental condition was redacted. 

Menendez may also throw his wife under the bus, arguing she was the mastermind behind the allegations of bribery.

“Senator Menendez intends to present a defense arguing [in part] that he lacked the requisite knowledge of much of the conduct and statements of his wife, Nadine, and thus lacks scienter and did not agree to join any of the charged conspiracies,” his attorneys wrote in a court filing. 

Who is representing him?

Menendez dropped his previous criminal defense team at Winston and Strawn and hired its rivals at Paul Hastings, Reuters reported. Menendez’s new lawyers include Adam Fee, who spent five years as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and Avi Weitzman, who spent nearly seven. Weitzman is a partner at Paul Hastings. 

What are Menendez’s colleagues saying?

Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ), Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), and other high-ranking Democrats have called on Menendez to resign. 

He has refused.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) hasn’t held his tongue, referring to Menendez multiple times as a “sleazeball.”

When asked by CNN what it says about the upper chamber of Congress that Menendez is still in office, Fetterman quipped, “I don’t know what it says other than they guess they’re just OK with having a sleazeball in the Senate.” 

Menendez is the only senator to be indicted in two unrelated criminal investigations. 

CLICK HERE FOR MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Only 12 U.S. senators have been indicted while in office. 

Six were convicted.