The first day of U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez’s bribery and extortion trial ended with an unsuccessful mistrial motion from his attorney Adam Fee of Paul Hastings, who argued that Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Pomerantz of the Southern District of New York violated the judge’s rulings on the Speech or Debate Clause in her opening statement.
Fee argued that Pomerantz’s statement implicated Menendez’s official acts when she said that his co-defendant Fred Daibes bribed him to act in support of Qatar, including by supporting a Senate resolution praising the country, and when she referenced a text from Menendez to his wife saying he would sign off on a sale of military items to Egypt.
