Menendez, the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who is accused of acting as a foreign agent for Egypt, declined Wednesday to take the witness stand in his own defense. Closing arguments in the case are expected to begin Monday.
Five people — his sister, sister-in-law, a prominent New Jersey lawyer and two forensic accountants — testified on his behalf. One accountant told the jury that Menendez withdrew cash from a credit union account in increments of around $400 on more than 300 occasions during a 14-year stretch.
“Daddy always said don’t trust the banks,” the lawmaker’s sister, Caridad Gonzalez, told jurors as the defense’s initial witness. Their father, mother and aunt, she recalled, all had a habit of storing cash around the house after the family fled persecution in Cuba in 1951, before Menendez was born in New York.
It became part of the family lore, Gonzalez testified, and Menendez has been keeping cash at home since at least the 1980s. Federal prosecutors said the FBI seized more than $486,000 in bribes from his house in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., during a court-authorized search in June 2022.
“He doesn’t take cash for anything,” Gonzalez said in a testy moment under cross-examination, denying that her “baby brother” would have accepted bribes from businessmen with ties to Egypt and Qatar. His motivation for holding public office? “He does it because that’s what he does; he serves people,” she said.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan concluded their case Friday after seven weeks. They narrated emails, photos, text messages, voicemails, bank records and other pieces of evidence linking both Menendez and his wife, the former Nadine Arslanian, to businessmen who were seeking the lawmaker’s help lining up deals with Egyptian and Qatari officials or hoping to have Menendez quash several criminal investigations by authorities in New Jersey.
Menendez is charged with bribery, extortion, wire fraud, obstruction of justice and acting as a foreign agent for Egypt. He could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted on all counts. He and the two New Jersey businessmen on trial with him, Fred Daibes and Wael “Will” Hana, have pleaded not guilty. Nadine Menendez also has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to be tried later.
On Wednesday, the senator told U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein that he had decided not to testify after mulling it over “at length” with his lawyers. Later in the afternoon, he elaborated briefly outside the courthouse.
“From my perspective, the government has failed to prove every aspect of its case,” Menendez told reporters.
His attorneys argue that he was broken up with Arslanian for part of 2018 after discovering she was still seeing an ex-boyfriend. They say the couple could not have been operating a bribery scheme during that pause in their romance.
But prosecutors contend the two were hard at work beginning in early 2018 and continuing through 2022, meeting with Egyptian intelligence officials and assisting them with policy priorities in Congress while expecting that Hana would settle the bill later on with bribes.
Defense attorney Avi Weitzman portrayed the ex-boyfriend as controlling and ever-present in Arslanian’s life, even after the senator entered the picture. A witness testified that Arslanian obtained a temporary restraining order against him in May 2018, months after she began dating Menendez.
“I worry about your safety and well-being,” Menendez wrote to her in a 2018 text message. “My disappointment, however, does not change my love for you. You are the love of my life and hopefully we can live in peace and happiness the rest of our lives.”
At one point the judge complained that the defense was turning the trial into a “bad soap opera.” The ex-boyfriend, lawyer Doug Anton, has said Nadine Menendez’s accusations against him are false.
Katia Tabourian, who is Nadine Menendez’s younger sister, testified Monday that it was not uncommon within their family — which has roots in Armenia, Cyprus and Lebanon — to give gold, jewelry and cash as gifts. Nadine Menendez inherited their grandmother’s gold bars and was also given gold by their father, Tabourian said.
The Menendezes married in the fall of 2020. Prosecutors allege that Nadine had cash and gold bars from Daibes and Hana in her bedroom closet when the FBI search took place.
Under cross-examination by prosecutors, Gonzalez and Tabourian said they were close to Menendez and did not want to see him in trouble. The senator’s daughter, MSNBC anchor Alicia Menendez, sat in the front row of the courtroom gallery as Gonzalez testified. Afterward, the two women embraced and walked together out of the courtroom, followed by a beaming Menendez.
The trial is breaking for Independence Day and will resume Monday.
Amanda Smith is a dedicated U.S. correspondent with a passion for uncovering the stories that shape the nation. With a background in political science, she provides in-depth analysis and insightful commentary on domestic affairs, ensuring readers are well-informed about the latest developments across the United States.
