Menendez Seeks to Delay ‘Unprecedented’ Foreign Agent Case

David Voreacos
·3 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- US Senator Bob Menendez asked a judge to delay his criminal trial by two months next year so his lawyers can challenge the “unprecedented” charge that he conspired to act as an agent of Egypt while he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

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The trial should be moved from May 6 to early July to allow the New Jersey Democrat to review “massive” amounts of pretrial evidence and file motions attacking a foreign agent charge that’s never been used before, according to the filing Wednesday in New York federal court.

“Contrary to the government’s overheated statements to the press, this is far from an open-and-shut case,” Menendez’s lawyers wrote. “There are substantial meritorious factual and legal defenses that require defense counsel’s — and the court’s — attention.”

Menendez and his wife are accused of accepting bribes of 13 gold bars, half a million dollars in cash and a new Mercedes-Benz in exchange for corruptly helping Egypt and three New Jersey businessmen indicted with them. Menendez, 69, and the others have pleaded not guilty.

A trial next summer would come after the June 4 Democratic primary. While he’s kept mum on whether he would run for reelection, Tammy Snyder Murphy, wife of Governor Phil Murphy, is running for the party’s nomination, along with US Representative Andy Kim.

Menendez has rebuffed calls to resign, but has temporarily stepped down from his Senate Foreign Relations Committee post.

In their filing, defense lawyers Adam Fee and Avi Weitzman said prosecutors have produced 15 million pages of pretrial evidence, which doesn’t yet include classified material.

Prosecutors allege Menendez secretly worked on behalf of Egypt by giving Egyptian officials “highly sensitive” information about personnel at the US embassy in Cairo; ghostwriting a letter on Egypt’s behalf urging his Senate colleagues to release a hold on US aid; and pushing the US State Department to get involved in stalled negotiations over a dam project on the Nile River.

Constitutional Challenges

Defense lawyers say they expect to ask to dismiss some of the case based on Menendez’s constitutionally protected speech. They’ll also challenge the constitutionality of the foreign agent charge, according to the filing.

They said they based the request on the complexity of the case, including an “unprecedented foreign-agent charge against a sitting senator based on a statute the government has never-before prosecuted,” as well as the volume and timing of the government’s pre-trial disclosures.

A spokesman for Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, declined to comment.

US District Judge Sidney Stein set the May 6 date for the trial, which would be Menendez’s second in seven years. In 2017, jurors deadlocked on corruption charges, a judge declared a mistrial and federal prosecutors later dropped the case.

Read More: Menendez Bribery Defense May Lean on ‘Subtle’ Pitch to NJ AG

The case is US v. Menendez, 23-cr-490, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

(Updates with details of filing in ninth paragraph)

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