The defense in the corruption trial of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) is blaming everything on his wife and demanding a mistrial, reports the New Jersey Monitor. Prosecutor Lara Pomerantz outlined the 18-count indictment against Menendez and two co-defendants, businessman Wael Hana and real estate developer Fred Daibes. “For years, Robert Menendez abused his position to feed his own greed and to keep his wife happy,” Pomerantz said. “Menendez put his power up for sale, and Hana and Daibes were more than happy to buy it.”
Defense attorney Avi Weitzman told the jury that there were “innocent explanations” for all of prosecutors’ accusations, and he cut to Menendez’s claim that his wife, Nadine, kept him in the dark about the gold bars, cash, luxury car, and other bribes she allegedly took from Hana, Daibes, and a Jose Uribe, who pleaded guilty in March.
“The real question for you is: What did Bob know?” Weitzman told the jury. U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein postponed Nadine's trial to July because she has a medical issue. Still, she loomed large over the trial Wednesday, with both prosecutors and the senator’s defense team repeatedly referring to her and her role in a bribery scheme that prosecutors say stretched back to 2018, when the couple began dating and a year after Sen. Menendez’s last corruption trial ended with a hung jury. Pomerantz painted her as the insulation Menendez put between himself and his alleged benefactors, saying her role as go-between gave the senator plausible deniability. “Menendez was careful when he was committing crimes,” she said. “He was smart enough not to send too many texts. Instead, he had Nadine do that for him.” Weitzman portrayed her as a greedy manipulator who took gold, cash, and other bribes without her husband’s knowledge. The senator though the gold bars were an inheritance from her family, who had built a fortune in the Persian rug business, he added.
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