Federal prosecutors argued Tuesday that Sen. Bob Menendez’s brazen plan to pin the blame for his far-reaching bribery scheme on his wife was simply a “desperate” excuse to avoid his own responsibility.
“There’s no way she could have fooled him into not knowing what she was doing,” prosecutor Paul Monteleone told jurors in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday in the case of Nadine Menendez, the wife of a New Jersey state senator.
The senator is accused of accepting gold bars and cash in return for providing favours to businessmen and the governments of Egypt and Qatar.
“Throughout this trial we’ve heard everyone else being blamed except for Mr. Menendez,” Monteleone added, accusing embattled Democrats of “desperately trying to shift the blame.”
At the end of nearly six hours of closing arguments over two days, prosecutors repeated the phrase “blame the wife” five times, reminding jurors that Menendez’s defense team has argued that Nadine “removed” him from the scheme and hid the gold in a safe without his knowledge.
“He blames his wife for what was in the bedroom closet,” Monteleone said, referring to $150,000 worth of gold bars and envelopes stuffed with cash that FBI agents found in his Englewood Hills, New Jersey, home during a June 2022 raid.
Prosecutors also cited witness testimony that the senator called his wife “mon amour” — French for “my love” — and then rang a small bell to summon her to the patio as evidence that Menendez was the “principal” of the bribery scheme.
“He’s not a puppet controlled by someone who calls him by bell,” Monteleoni said.
Menendez, 70, faces decades in prison if convicted on charges of bribery and acting as an illegal foreign agent for Egypt and Qatar.
Prosecutors called 30 witnesses during the two-month trial, including New Jersey insurance broker Jose Uribe, who testified that Nadine’s husband bought her a new Mercedes convertible in exchange for a promise to intervene in a state criminal investigation affecting friends and relatives.
“If you were a regular person, he wouldn’t do anything,” Monteleone said Tuesday, “but if you promise his girlfriend a Mercedes, all you have to do is give your name to Menendez.”
According to prosecutors, Menendez also pressured the USDA to protect a lucrative “exclusive right” to approve halal meat exports to Egypt for co-defendant Wael Hana, who had no experience with halal certification, in exchange for gold bars and Nadine’s unpaid job with a salary of $120,000 a year.
“Gold Bar Bob” Menendez’s lawyer, Adam Fee, paced back and forth across the jury box Tuesday afternoon, accusing the federal government of “ignoring evidence against their case” and criminalizing the senators’ “ordinary” work.
“The simple truth is that what he did was lawful, it was normal and it was good for his constituents and for the country,” Fee argued.
The lawyers also mocked the federal government’s repeated use of the word “bribery” to describe evidence that the senator used his influence to benefit his cronies, including envelopes of cash found in his home that had their fingerprints on them.
“They mention the word ‘bribery’ a lot,” Fee told jurors.
“That’s a bribe!” he added in a mocking tone.
Menendez, who has pleaded not guilty and did not testify, sat quietly Tuesday in a navy blue suit and pink tie, looking toward the jury as his lawyers spoke.
His daughter, Alicia Menendez, an anchor for MSNBC, watched from the front row of the courtroom behind the defendant.
Fee argued for about three hours Tuesday afternoon before court adjourned.
Defense lawyers are scheduled to finish their closing arguments Wednesday morning before lawyers for Hana and a third co-defendant, real estate tycoon Fred Dibes, give separate statements.
The federal government will then have a chance to make a final rebuttal.
Menendez has refused to resign and has announced plans to run for reelection as an independent, which could rob him of votes from Rep. Andy Kim, a Democrat who defeated Menendez in the June primary.
