The bribery trial of Senator Robert Menendez begins Monday with the embattled New Jersey Democrat potentially blaming his wife for his predicament and seeking to call a psychiatrist to defend why he hoarded the $480,000 in cash and 13 gold bars FBI agents found in his house.
Jury selection begins Monday in New York federal court for the New Jersey Democrat and two businessmen accused of bribing him. Prosecutors charged Menendez, 70, and his wife, Nadine, with accepting cash, gold, and a Mercedes Benz in return for favors. He’s also charged with illegally helping the government of Qatar and acting as an agent of Egypt. He faces 20 years in prison on the most serious charge.
Menendez, a senator since 2006, has seen his political support vaporize in the Senate and New Jersey, where he’s derided as “Gold Bar Bob.” In a March video, he said: “I am innocent and will prove so.” He said he hopes to be exonerated and may run as an independent Democrat in November.
He stepped down as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a powerful post that prosecutors say was central to Menendez corruptly using his clout to help Egypt. Prosecutors say that Menendez gave Egyptian officials “highly sensitive” information about personnel at the US embassy in Cairo and helped Egypt obtain arms sales and other military aid from the US.
### Influence of Menendez’s Wife
Menendez’s wife was key to Egypt making inroads with him, prosecutors say. They began dating in 2018, when she and Wael Hana, an Egyptian-American businessman also facing trial, introduced Menendez to Egyptian intelligence and military officials seeking influence, the US alleges. Menendez has suggested he may blame Nadine Menendez, who will face a later trial because she has an undisclosed illness and needs surgery. If he testifies, his lawyers wrote in a court filing, the senator may discuss communications about their dinners with Egyptian officials and her explanations of why businessmen gave her “certain monetary items.” Those explanations and communications “will tend to exonerate Senator Menendez” by showing he had no corrupt intent – a key element in a bribery case, his lawyers wrote. They’ll also incriminate “Nadine by demonstrating the ways in which she withheld information from Senator Menendez or otherwise led him to believe that nothing unlawful was taking place,” according to the filing.
### Psychological Explanation
Prosecutors said they found cash stuffed in envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe. Some envelopes bore the fingerprints and DNA of another co-defendant, New Jersey developer Fred Daibes, and his driver, prosecutors say. Menendez has offered various explanations for the cash. His lawyers said in a court filing that the cash reflected “decades of documented withdrawals by the senator from his own bank account.” They also said that the gold bars would “be shown to be entirely unrelated to any actions” by the senator. Menendez also wants jurors to hear from a psychiatrist about other explanations for the senator’s cash.
One involves the “intergenerational trauma” stemming from his parents fleeing Cuba after having their funds confiscated by the Cuban government, a court filing shows. The psychiatrist, Karen Rosenbaum, would also testify that he “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.” Menendez’s lack of treatment over these traumas “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 senator’s lawyers wrote.
### Additional Legal Challenges
Menendez is also accused of trying to interfere in a criminal investigation conducted by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, and trying to interfere in a separate federal prosecution of Daibes. Businessman Jose Uribe has pleaded guilty, admitting he conspired to bribe Menendez with a Mercedes Benz convertible in exchange for favors. He agreed to testify against Menendez. The trial is expected to last several weeks.
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