In his Friday testimony, a businessman from New Jersey claimed to have bribed Sen. Bob Menendez. He told the jury in the bribery trial of the Democratic congressman from New Jersey that he had given the senator’s wife a Mercedes in exchange for his influence.
On the witness stand, Jose Uribe—who entered a guilty plea in March and is assisting the prosecution—was questioned about who he bought off. Uribe said before the jury that he had plotted with Wael Hana, a different businessman, and had bribed Menendez.
Uribe added that Nadine Menendez, the senator’s wife, had taken the bribes he had given. Hana, the senator, and his spouse have all entered not guilty pleas. Fred Daibes, a third businessman, has also entered a not guilty plea.
Menendez and his spouse are accused of taking “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in bribes, some of which came in the shape of gold bars, in return for Menendez’s official actions while serving as a senator.
According to the prosecution, Uribe, who testified that he purchased a car for Nadine Menendez, asked the senator for assistance in preventing the New Jersey state attorney general’s office from conducting a criminal investigation into his accomplices.
Prosecutors claim that Bob Menendez spoke with then-New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal about the issue over the phone.
In his testimony on Thursday, Grewal—who is currently in charge of enforcement for the Securities and Exchange Commission—said that Menendez’s purported attempts to talk about a specific active criminal case were “pretty unprecedented in my experience.”
Menendez is also charged with taking bribes to help the government of Egypt.
“The truth will surface next week,” Menendez declared as he left the courtroom on Friday.
Menendez’s representative declined to comment on trial-related issues. A request for comment on Friday afternoon was not immediately answered by the senator’s attorney.
Menendez, Hana, and Daibes are on trial with him. The trial for Nadine Menendez was postponed until at least July in light of her recent breast cancer therapy.
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At the beginning of the trial last month in New York, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Pomerantz had argued before a panel of twelve jurors and six alternates that the senior senator from New Jersey, a Democrat, had used his position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to “put greed first.”
She also called the senator “powerful” and “corrupt.”
At the beginning of the trial, Pomerantz had also given jurors a preview of Uribe’s testimony, stating that Uribe would give them “an inside look” at the plan.
Menendez’s lawyer, Ari Weitzman, stated in the opening statement of the defense that his client had broken no laws.
“There won’t be a single piece of tangible evidence the senator accepted a bribe. There is an innocent explanation for the gold and the cash,” Weitzman stated.
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Since 2006, Menendez has been a member of the Senate. Not long after being charged in September, he resigned from his position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but he has refused to step aside.
When Menendez was accused in 2015 of improperly taking favors from a Florida eye doctor—a charge he refuted—he was previously facing a federal indictment.
Due to the jury’s inability to reach a unanimous decision and the prosecution’s decision not to seek a retrial, the case ended in a mistrial.
