Bob Menendez's lawyer asks jurors to avoid speculating when weighing corruption claims

The federal prosecutors trying Sen. Bob Menendez for corruption have repeatedly assured jurors they could “infer” that the cash, gold bars and other riches investigators tied to three businessmen were bribes the men paid New Jersey’s senior senator for favors.

But Menendez attorney Adam Fee told jurors Wednesday that “overzealous” prosecutors’ “painfully thin” case instead requires them to speculate and make a “rolling blob of shifting and evolving inferences” to believe that the senator, a Democrat, took bribes to interfere in domestic criminal matters and act in the interest of foreign officials.

“This is not a boxing match. This is not a political debate. You don’t pick story A or story B. You don’t go with what makes more gut sense about a story you’re being told. Your oath requires you to follow the law,” Fee said. “The prosecutors have to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Bob took official actions in exchange for bribes. They have not done that.”

Fee kicked off a full day of defense closing arguments at the federal courthouse in Manhattan where he and two attorneys for codefendants Wael Hana and Fred Daibes implored jurors to acquit all three men.

They blasted prosecutors’ star witness, Jose Uribe, as a liar, reminding jurors that Uribe — their codefendant, who testified against them in a cooperation deal — admitted he was a liar over multiple days on the stand. Uribe, a convicted insurance fraudster, recounted more than a decade of deception, testifying that he lied to remain in the insurance industry, lied to protect his family, and lied to prosecutors in this case before he decided to plead guilty.

Fee picked apart the testimony of Uribe and several other prosecution witnesses one by one, urging jurors to discard them on a “witness trash pile.”

Defense attorneys also repeated a favorite refrain they’ve made throughout the nine-week trial — that Menendez’s wife, Nadine, hid her financial troubles and subsequent scheming from the senator, not wanting to risk losing him again after a brief breakup early in their relationship. Uribe testified that he bought Nadine a $67,000 Mercedes-Benz convertible in 2019 as a bribe so that the senator would pressure the New Jersey attorney general’s office to “kill and stop” a probe that threatened his own company.

“Nadine and Jose were keeping their bargain from Bob,” Fee said. “This is the opposite of proof showing a scheme involving Bob. This is the opposite of proof showing that Bob conspired with Jose Uribe. This is not proof of a conspiracy. It is the opposite. He was not aware of the bargain.”

Lawrence Lustberg, who represents Hana, told jurors that Hana doesn’t deny he gave the couple valuable items, including $23,000 in mortgage payments, seven gold bars worth almost $13,000, an air purifier, and an elliptical trainer. He also doesn’t dispute that he attended meetings and dinners with Egyptian officials at Menendez’s invitation.

But the federal bribery statute requires corrupt intent, and prosecutors failed to prove that, he argued. Instead, he added, they implied guilt by association and made generosity evil.

“The government’s argument asks of you that you always, always assume the worst,” Lustberg said. “The government consistently asks you over and over and over that you take innocent actions, which the prosecutors are here spinning into something sinister, in an effort to make up for the lack of real evidence, and to convince you it all amounts to a crime.”

He added: “Don’t, as the government asks you over and over again, assume the worst.”

Lustberg told jurors Hana, an Egyptian American, secured a monopoly on exporting halal beef to Egypt because of relationships he had with Egyptian officials — not because of anything Menendez did. The monopoly, he added, wasn’t anything anyone in the U.S. had the power to decide anyway.

“It was entirely Egypt’s choice,” he said.

He also quibbled with prosecutors characterizing Hana’s deal as a monopoly, saying instead that Egypt opted to have a “single certifier” to ensure uniform standards after raising concerns about how previous U.S. certifiers stunned and slaughtered cows.

He insisted that Hana’s interactions with Menendez about military aid and sales to Egypt and other matters were merely his advocacy on behalf of his homeland.

Fee echoed that claim, saying Menendez meeting with foreign officials and issuing press releases about matters in other countries was a routine part of the senator’s work as chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Egypt, he reminded jurors, is a U.S. ally.

“It’s not as though engaging with Egypt on diplomacy is like talking to Darth Vader,” Fee said.

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César de Castro, who represents Daibes, repeated Lustberg’s argument that the valuables prosecutors tied to Daibes were gifts meant to cultivate a friendship and build goodwill, not bribes.

“What you have seen is a case that is reverse-engineered. It was driven by conclusions. They found money that they linked to Mr. Daibes. But they didn’t know what it was for, and they want you to think it was bribes,” de Castro said. “They want you to make the same mistake they did.”

Daibes and Menendez had been friends for 40 years, he added.

“Friends look out for each other. You don’t bribe a close friend,” de Castro said.

De Castro didn’t finish his summation by the end of the day Wednesday. So Thursday was scheduled to start with him wrapping up his closing statement, followed by prosecutors’ rebuttal. Judge Sidney H. Stein was expected to instruct the jury Thursday afternoon, with deliberations set to start late that afternoon or Friday morning.

Leaving court late Wednesday afternoon, Menendez told reporters: “We have stripped the government of their false narratives and exposed their lies.”

Editor's note: This story was originally published by the New Jersey Monitor, for which Dana DeFilippo is a staff writer. The New Jersey Monitor is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Bob Menendez trial: Defense pleads with jurors not to speculate