Sen. Bob Menendez and wife seek separate trials on bribery charges
Senator Bob Menendez and his wife are seeking a separate bribery trial they are both facing in a New York court.
The New Jersey Democrat and his wife Nadine were each accused in the fall of helping three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for cash, gold bars and a luxury car.
The couple and the businessmen, who are also charged, have all pleaded not guilty.
Nadine Menendez’s lawyers, in papers filed late Monday, asked for the severance package on the grounds that the senator may want to testify at a trial set to start in May and that he wants to make public marital communications that she plans to keep secret to hold.
Lawyers for Bob Menendez wrote that each husband should undergo separate trials so that the senator does not provide information during cross-examination about marital communications that could be detrimental to his wife’s defense.
They asked the judge not to force him to choose between two fundamental rights: his right to testify in his own defense and his right not to testify against his wife.
The requests for separate trials were filed late Monday as part of several pretrial submissions by attorneys for defendants in the case.
Just days earlier, the senator’s lawyers had asked that charges in the case be dismissed. They added to those requests on Monday, calling the charges against him a “distortion of the truth.”
“Senator Menendez is not only ‘not guilty’ – he is innocent of these charges. Senator Menendez has never sold out of office or abused his authority or influence for personal financial gain,” they wrote.
Since the senator was first charged in September, he has been forced to relinquish his powerful post as leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Prosecutors also added to the bribery charges, saying he conspired with his wife and a businessman to secretly advance Egypt’s interests and that he behaved favorably toward the Qatari government to help a businessman.
“Time and time again, the indictment distorts or ignores the evidence that reflects the Senator’s conduct in favor of American – and only American – interests and his decades of appropriate service,” the lawyers said.
‘Worse still: the government knows. The government has buried evidence proving Senator Menendez’s innocence, including evidence that directly undermines the allegations in the indictment. And the defense is prohibited from releasing any of it to the public — necessitating a redacted filing under seal — even as the government has launched its own media blitz to push its false narrative,” the lawyers said .
The lawyers also said the trial should not take place in New York, as almost everything alleged to have taken place took place in New Jersey or outside New York.
“This case belongs in New Jersey,” they said.
The lawyers noted that Menendez had won a previous corruption case in New Jersey, with “at least 10 jurors voting to acquit the senator of the government’s inflated allegations of corruption.”
A spokesperson for prosecutors declined to comment. Prosecutors will respond to all requests in the preliminary investigation within a few weeks with their own arguments.