Menendez adds lawyer with corruption success at Supreme Court to legal team, seeks dismissal of charges

Indicted New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez has brought Yaakov Roth onto his legal team, adding a young but highly accomplished attorney who has successfully argued some of the country's biggest corruption cases before the Supreme Court.

The addition of Roth, disclosed in court papers Tuesday, seems to reinforce the Democratic senator's forceful denunciations of the criminal charges against him as a prosecutorial "hunting." Roth, a partner at Jones Day, represented former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell in his bribery case and argued on behalf of "Bridgegate" defendant Bridget Kelly and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo aide Joseph Percoco at the Supreme Court — which overturned all three convictions.

On Wednesday, Menendez's lawyers also asked a federal judge to dismiss the charges, saying in court papers that prosecutors portray routine legislative activity as made-for-tabloids corruption or entirely unrelated to his elected office. The attorneys cited the McDonnell case, which narrowed the definition of corruption and was later used in the Bridgegate appeal.

"The government’s accusations in this case — that he sold his office and even sold out his nation — are outrageously false, and indeed distort reality," Menendez's attorneys wrote.

Roth did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment on his hiring by Menendez, but in a "40 under 40" feature by Bloomberg Law in 2021, he said he's "been troubled by the criminalization of politics and prosecutorial overreach in the political sphere." And that is the essence of Menendez's argument in his public comments following indictments alleging he accepted bribes and acted as an unregistered foreign agent.

On Tuesday, Menendez again proclaimed his innocence and said prosecutors' succession of indictments against him — one in September, and two superseding ones since — is a tactic to convict him in the court of public opinion.

"It opens a dangerous door for the Justice Department to take the normal engagement of members of Congress with a foreign government and to transform those engagements into a charge of being a foreign agent,” Menendez said.

Menendez's office did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on Roth's hiring, which was first reported by Law360. The senator is schedule to go on trial in New York in May.

He has resisted calls to resign and has not said whether he'll seek reelection this year. But he's lost critical political support back home, and a primary race to succeed him is gearing up between New Jersey first lady Tammy Murphy and Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.).

This would be Menendez's second federal criminal trial. The first, in 2017, ended in a mistrial following allegations he did favors for a friend and political donor, Salomon Melgen.

In November, Menendez replaced longtime lawyer Abbe Lowell's firm with Avi Weitzman and Adam Fee of Paul Hastings LLP. Fee characterized the latest allegations against the senator — speaking favorably of Qatar in official proceedings to help a developer friend in New Jersey — as professional interactions that show "the lengths to which these hostile prosecutors will go to poison the public before a trial even begins."

In addition to the Qatar allegations, Menendez is accused of accepting cash, gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz for favors that helped three businesspeople, who have also been charged, and the government of Egypt. Menendez is also accused of secretly acting as an agent of the Egyptian government. His wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, has also been charged and, like her husband and the businesspeople, pleaded not guilty.