[ad_1]
Jury selection in the corruption trial of Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey was set to continue into a second day on Tuesday, as a judge labored to find the jurors who will weigh some of the gravest charges ever leveled against a sitting federal lawmaker.
The judge, Sidney H. Stein, spent all of Monday questioning prospective jurors, largely in a private chamber outside the federal courtroom in Manhattan. But the day ended without seating any of the dozen jurors he needs to sit for up to two months.
Once jury selection is completed, the trial is expected to move quickly to opening statements. Prosecutors will lay out the details of a sordid bribery case involving more than $100,000 in gold bullion, an Egyptian halal meat monopoly and a Qatari sheikh.
Mr. Menendez, 70, a Democrat, is being tried alongside two New Jersey businessmen, Fred Daibes and Wael Hana.
The senator’s wife, Nadine Menendez, 57, has also been charged in the bribery scheme but will be tried separately in July. A judge granted a delay after her lawyers said that she had a serious medical condition requiring prompt treatment and, possibly, a lengthy recovery.
Mr. Menendez’s lawyers have indicated that his defense, at least in part, will be to blame Ms. Menendez, his wife of less than four years. If he chooses to testify, Mr. Menendez will most likely outline “the ways in which she withheld information” and “led him to believe that nothing unlawful was taking place,” his lawyers told the court in pretrial filings.
A fifth defendant, another businessman, has already pleaded guilty and could be called to testify. At his plea hearing, the man, Jose Uribe, admitted that he gave Ms. Menendez a $60,000 Mercedes-Benz convertible “in return for influencing a United States senator to stop a criminal investigation.”
The case has proceeded to trial relatively quickly. The Menendezes were first charged in September 2023 with conspiring to trade Mr. Menendez’s “influence and power” for an array of bribes, including the luxury car, home mortgage payments, gold bullion and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash.
Mr. Menendez is the first senator in American history to be indicted twice in separate bribery cases. The earlier case ended in a mistrial in 2017.
Here’s what else you need to know:
-
Mr. Menendez, a former leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is accused of steering weapons and aid to Egypt in exchange for bribes. In May 2018, for instance, he secretly helped to write and edit a letter from Egyptian officials who were lobbying other U.S. senators to release $300 million in additional aid, according to the indictment.
-
To help Mr. Hana’s business, IS EG Halal, Mr. Menendez pressured a high-level official at the U.S. Agriculture Department, prosecutors say. The official had objected to Egypt’s plan to make Mr. Hana’s company the sole entity authorized to certify that meat imported to the country from the United States had been prepared according to Islamic law. The official refused to withdraw his objection, but the business arrangement remained in place, enabling Mr. Hana’s business to thrive. The company became a conduit for “the bribes being paid” to Mr. Menendez through his wife, according to the indictment.
-
Mr. Menendez is also charged with trying to use his clout to quash criminal cases in New Jersey — two involving associates of Mr. Uribe’s and one against Mr. Daibes, a real estate developer. Mr. Uribe had been implicated in an insurance fraud investigation by the New Jersey attorney general’s office that involved two of his associates, according to the indictment. Mr. Menendez called and then met with officials from the attorney general’s office in an effort to scuttle the inquiry, according to the indictment.
-
Mr. Daibes is accused of giving Mr. Menendez and his wife bribes that were exchanged, in part, for the senator’s efforts to resolve federal bank fraud charges that Mr. Daibes faces in New Jersey, according to the indictment. Prosecutors have said that Mr. Menendez tried to have a U.S. attorney for New Jersey installed who might be willing to go easy on Mr. Daibes. That effort failed, but Mr. Menendez twice called the federal prosecutor responsible for overseeing Mr. Daibes’s case, according to the indictment.
-
Also according to the indictment, Mr. Menendez introduced Mr. Daibes to a potential investor — a member of the Qatari royal family — for the developer’s high-rise apartment complex along the Hudson River in Edgewater, N.J. Then, as Mr. Daibes was negotiating with the would-be investor, Mr. Menendez issued at least one statement supportive of Qatar, prosecutors said. Mr. Menendez’s comments came at a time when the oil-rich Gulf state was working to repair its image before hosting the 2022 World Cup. Mr. Daibes gave Mr. Menendez “at least one gold bar” after a draft of the real estate deal was firmed up, prosecutors said. Mr. Menendez’s lawyers have said that the allegations related to Qatar are baseless.
[ad_2]
Source link
