Jury to begin deliberations Friday in bribery trial of New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez

NEW YORK — A New York City jury was told Thursday it will begin deliberating on criminal charges against Senator Bob Menendez Friday during his bribery trial, after hearing instructions about the law.

Judge Sidney H. Stein began reading instructions after 4 p.m. to jurors who had heard and viewed evidence for more than two months ahead of a week of oral arguments in federal court in Manhattan.

Prosecutors allege that between 2018 and 2022, the Democrat accepted nearly $150,000 in gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from three New Jersey businessmen to corruptly abuse his power as senator and benefit them.

Menendez, 70, has pleaded not guilty to a host of charges, including acting as a foreign agent for the Egyptian government.

“I look forward to the jury hearing the case tomorrow,” Menendez said as he climbed into a waiting car outside the courthouse.

The New Jersey senator is on trial with two of the businessmen — Fred Daibes and Wael Hana. They also have pleaded not guilty. A third businessman, Jose Uribe, has pleaded guilty and testified against the others.

Menendez’s wife, Nadine, has pleaded not guilty, though her trial was postponed after she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery.

During four days of closing arguments, attorneys spun testimony and hundreds of pieces of evidence, including photos of gold bars and stacks of $100 bills found during a 2022 FBI raid on Menendez’s home. Prosecutors say the gold and cash, along with a Mercedes-Benz convertible in the garage, were kickback proceeds.

Defense attorneys argued that the gold was among the valuables Nadine Menendez had inherited from his family, while the money came largely from Menendez’s habit of keeping cash at home after his family fled Cuba in 1951, before he was born. They had only the money they had hidden in a grandfather clock.

During a rebuttal Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Richenthal mocked Menendez’s attorney’s attempt to suggest that $95,000 in cash found in a plastic bag inches from a rack of the senator’s coats belonged to his wife, calling the claim “absolutely unbelievable.” Cash was found in several of the coats.

He also said Menendez helped Egyptian officials obtain sensitive information about the number of Americans and Egyptians working at the U.S. Embassy in Egypt — “devastating evidence that Menendez put the interests of Egypt above those of the United States.”

Adam Fee, an attorney for Menendez, said Nadine Menendez kept cash in her home because she “lived most of her life outside the banking system” after her family fled a country where their bank accounts and property had been seized.

He also said jurors could infer that Nadine Menendez sold family jewels or gold and kept the money she received in bags in the house.

As for the number of employees at the U.S. Embassy in Egypt, Fee told jurors that the information was public and that everything Menendez did was within his responsibilities as a senator who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a job he had to resign after allegations were made last fall.

“It is not that having diplomatic talks with Egypt is like talking to Darth Vader,” he said.