A Manhattan federal jury found U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-New Jersey, guilty of bribery, fraud, extortion and obstruction of justice on Tuesday after 10 hours of deliberation in the tenth week of a trial in the Southern District of New York.
The jurors also found two of Menendez’s co-defendants, New Jersey businessmen Fred Daibes and Wael Hana, guilty of bribery, fraud and conspiracy charges.
Sentencing has been scheduled for Oct. 29 for all defendants.
“This wasn’t politics as usual, this was politics for profit,” said Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, immediately after the verdict was read. “His years of selling his office to the highest bidder are finally at an end.”
Menendez declined to say if he would resign or seek reelection as he left court Tuesday.
“I have never violated my public oath,” he said.
All parties remain out on bond. U.S. District Court Judge Sidney Stein, who oversaw the case, modified Hana’s bond so it was further secured by approximately $237,000 in gold bars and his luxury watch collection.
Menendez, his wife and three New Jersey businessmen were indicted in September after federal law enforcement officials discovered gold bars and cash stashed around the Menendezes’ New Jersey home.
During closing arguments lasting more than three full days, attorneys for the prosecution and defense focused on the origin of those valuables, whether Menendez knew they were there and what, if anything, he was expected to do in return for receiving them.
In what white-collar experts have described as a risky strategy, Menendez’s attorneys Adam Fee and Avi Weitzman urged jurors to consider whether Menendez’s wife Nadine schemed without his knowledge.
Nadine Menendez, who married the senator in 2020, has pleaded not guilty to bribery, fraud, extortion and obstruction of justice; she was severed from the trial because she is undergoing treatment for breast cancer.
“There are times when Nadine invokes Bob’s name to get people to do stuff, period,” Fee said.
The senator’s attorneys argued that Nadine Menendez faced financial difficulties and at times struggled to pay the mortgage for the New Jersey house, where she raised her children from her first marriage.
Fee described the case against Menendez himself as “painfully thin.”
“You have heard a story from the prosecution that ignores and asks you to ignore evidence that does not support the story,” Fee said.
Fee urged the jury to remain skeptical of the testimony of Jose Uribe, a New Jersey businessman indicted alongside Menendez. Uribe pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate in March.
Uribe testified that he arranged to pay for a Mercedes-Benz for Menendez’s wife in exchange for the senator using his influence to prevent a criminal investigation from proceeding against a woman whom Uribe considered to be like a daughter.
Fee emphasized that Uribe testified that he and Menendez “never spoke about the car nor the payment for the car,” but prosecutors argued it was unlikely that Menendez was not aware of the car’s origins.
“You kept hearing he didn’t know about the Mercedes. … Do you have any doubt he knew about the Mercedes in his own driveway, the Mercedes he knew she couldn’t afford?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Richenthal said during his rebuttal argument Thursday.
Richenthal argued that it was unlikely Nadine Menendez was “duping” her husband or that a “secret conspiracy” surrounded the senator without his knowledge.
“You think she could have even pulled that off if she tried? You don’t have to answer that question because she didn’t even try. There was no effort to hide from him,” Richenthal said.
Menendez previously faced corruption charges in the District of New Jersey, which were dropped in 2018 after the jury deadlocked.
As the defendants left court, counsel for both Daibes and Hana said they were “disappointed” in the verdict and would appeal.
In a sharply worded statement, Fee, Menendez’s counsel, said his team felt there were “grave appellate problems” with the case.
“We will pursue all appellate avenues aggressively,” he added.
Katharine Lee provided some of the reporting for this report.
