NEW YORK — Prosecutors were given a rest on Friday after seven weeks of providing evidence in the bribery trial against Senator Bob Menendezallowing the Democrat and two New Jersey businessmen to begin calling their own witnesses next week to support the defense’s claims that no crimes were committed and no bribes were paid.
Before serving their sentences, prosecutors attempted to obtain details about the senator’s financial records through an interrogation by an FBI forensic accountant.
Prosecutors say gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash found in a 2022 raid on Menendez’s home were bribes paid by three businessmen between 2018 and 2022 in exchange for favors Menendez performed for them using his political power.
Defense attorneys claim the gold belonged to his wife and that Menendez had a habit of stashing cash at home after his family lost almost everything in Cuba before moving to New York, where Menendez was born.
Menendez, 70, is on trial with two businessmen after a third pleaded guilty in a cooperation agreement with the government and testified at trial. Menendez’s wife, Nadine Menendez is also charged in the case, which was revealed last fall. Her trial has been postponed while she recovers from breast cancer surgery. All defendants have pleaded not guilty.
Menendez’s attorneys plan to spend up to three days presenting testimony from several witnesses to support their argument that Nadine Arslanian kept Menendez in the dark about her financial troubles after she started dating him in early 2018.
They also plan to submit testimony to show that Arslanian, who married Menendez in the fall of 2020, was in close contact with Menendez at the height of the alleged conspiracy in late 2018 and early 2019 because she was being harassed by a ex boyfriend.
Judge Sidney H. Stein ruled Wednesday that defense attorneys can elicit testimony to counter evidence presented by prosecutors that could otherwise be interpreted as suggesting that Nadine Arslanian and Menendez appeared to be closely monitoring each other’s whereabouts because they were involved in the alleged conspiracy.
But he said he would not let the jury hear evidence that she was hospitalized at some point as a result of an abusive relationship with an ex-boyfriend.
“This will not be ‘Days of Our Lives’ or a soap opera,” the judge warned attorneys.