NEW YORK (Reuters) -A federal prosecutor portrayed Democratic U.S. Senator Robert Menendez at the start of his corruption trial as a greedy politician willing to help foreign governments and disrupt local criminal probes in exchange for bribes, including gold bars.
The prosecutor, Lara Pomerantz, told jurors on Wednesday that New Jersey’s senior senator used his wife as a go-between, as he tried to help Egypt secure billions of dollars of U.S. military assistance, and aid the business and legal interests of two businessmen from his state linked to local criminal cases.
“For years, Robert Menendez betrayed the people he was supposed to serve by taking bribes,” Pomerantz said in the prosecution’s opening statement in Manhattan federal court.
“This case is about a public official who put greed first, who put his own interests about the duty to the people, who put his power up for sale,” Pomerantz added. “This was not politics as usual. This was politics for profit.”
Prosecutors have called Menendez the central figure in a five-year scheme in which he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for political favors and aiding the governments of Egypt and Qatar.
Bribes received by Menendez and his wife Nadine Menendez included cash, gold bars, mortgage payments and a Mercedes-Benz convertible, according to prosecutors.The 70-year-old, three-term senator has pleaded not guilty to 16 criminal charges including bribery, fraud, acting as a foreign agent and obstruction. Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, the two New Jersey businessmen being tried alongside him, also have pleaded not guilty.
The defendants’ lawyers will also give opening statements.
Nadine Menendez, 57, also has been charged and pleaded not guilty. She faces a July 8 trial, with the delay resulting from what her lawyers called a serious medical condition.
The senator’s trial could last until early July. It is the senator’s second trial on bribery charges, and cost him the leadership of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Menendez’s previous trial ended in 2017 in a mistrial after jurors deadlocked.
Earlier in the day, U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein seated 12 jurors and six alternates, including an investment banker, a commercial litigator, a retired economist, a doctor and multiple therapists. They were chosen during 2-1/2 days of jury selection from a pool of 150 prospective jurors.
INTERFERENCE
Pomerantz detailed what prosecutors consider a complex and sordid array of corruption lasting from 2018 to 2023, with the Menendezes accepting bribes from Hana, Daibes and an associate of Hana, the insurance broker Jose Uribe.
Pomerantz said that in return, the senator helped Hana obtain a lucrative monopoly on certifying that meat exports to Egypt conformed to Islamic law, and tried to help Daibes secure millions of dollars from a Qatari investment fund.
Menendez has also been accused of trying to interfere in a federal criminal case against Daibes in New Jersey, including by recommending a candidate to be the top federal prosecutor there, and in state criminal cases involving two of Uribe’s associates.
Pomerantz said Menendez tried to cover his tracks by having his wife communicate about the bribes, but that she kept him apprised.
Prosecutors have said FBI agents found more than $480,000 of cash in the Menendezes’ home, much stashed in clothing, closets and a safe.
They also said Hana and Daibes provided more than $100,000 of gold bars to the Menendezes, while Uribe helped the couple buy the Mercedes. Pomerantz said money for that purchase was disguised as a loan.
Uribe pleaded guilty in March to bribery and fraud, and is expected to testify against Menendez.
While Nadine Menendez is not yet on trial, her husband’s lawyers have suggested his defense might include an effort to blame her, for withholding information and making him believe his activities were lawful.
Robert Menendez became a senator in 2006. Before being indicted, he would have been favored in his Democratic-leaning state to win a fourth full Senate term in November.
But any re-election bid now would be a long shot, reflecting recent polls of voters that show overwhelming disapproval of Menendez’s job performance.
Menendez has suggested that he would try if acquitted to run as an independent. Only 9% of voters polled in March by Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill said they would prefer him to another Democrat or a Republican.
The senator has resisted calls to resign made from across the political spectrum.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by David Gregorio and Will Dunham)
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