Bob Menendez's lawyers embraced a Trump tactic. They tried to sow distrust in the courts

As he completed his closing argument to the federal jury last week, a defense attorney for Sen. Bob Menendez argued that an acquittal would go well beyond salvaging his career.

Acquitting New Jersey's senior senator would restore faith in the United States justice system, the lawyer argued — it could maybe even save democracy itself.

“But this is patriotic," said Adam Fee, the attorney summing up five hours of closing statements Wednesday. “And when you acquit Senator Menendez, the United States wins. The United States of America wins when thin cases brought by overzealous prosecutors are rejected because the evidence isn’t there.”

Appealing to jurors to exercise their civic or patriotic and civic responsibility — and to force them to reckon the broader implications beyond the courtroom — is an age-old strategy used by defense lawyers and prosecutors.

But the Menendez legal team's efforts to sway jurors — who begin their second day of deliberations Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in lower Manhattan — comes amid a nervous zeitgeist about the fate of democracy. It is an unease stirred by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, the former president who is seeking a second term and was convicted on 34 felony counts in a New York state courtroom down the block from the Menendez trial.

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“This is a dark day for America," Trump said in front of the courthouse just after the closing arguments concluded in his “hush money” trial in May.

Why are Bob Menendez's lawyers channeling Donald Trump's strategy?

It has been Trump’s rhetoric and actions — his discrediting of the electoral process by denying his loss in 2020, his admiration of authoritarian leaders, his vow to turn the U.S. Justice Department into a political hit squad aimed at his enemies — have inflamed fears that the democracy will collapse if he is reelected. So, too, have his personal attacks on the integrity of judges and prosecutors and other law enforcement officials who took part in investigations into his past conduct and alleged crimes. Polls show a distrust of legal institutions that has deepened during the era of Trump.

That nervousness is particularly acute in the blue bastions of the country, like blue New York and anti-Trump, liberal Manhattan — site of the trial. So, in a sense, Menendez’s last-second pitch seemed, in a way, to exploit those fears. In effect, Team Menendez was telegraphing to the jury that here was their chance to bolster a bedrock institution — the federal court system — by rejecting the government’s “half-baked, twisted up, jumbled … salacious story about a corrupt politician,” as Fee told jurors.

But the Menendez appeal could also been seen as contributing to the Trumpian era loss of faith by trafficking in some of the Trump’s anti-government tropes — namely the attack on “overzealous prosecutors.” From the moment the indictment outlined charges that Menendez — with his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, acting as a go-between — accepted lavish bribes in the form of a luxury car, gold bars, cash and other personal items to help the Egyptian and Qatari governments, Menendez cast himself as a victim of overzealous government prosecutors who were trying to criminalize acceptable political conduct.

“Legislators must explain their conduct to voters, not overzealous prosecutors," his attorneys wrote in a motion to dismiss the indictment in January.

Trump and his allies have repeatedly taken a similar, desperate stance, claiming that the prosecutors' zeal was also politically motivated. He wielded that argument through all his multiple criminal challenges since the 2020 election and so have his allies, former lawyer Rudy Giuliani and guru adviser Steve Bannon, who is serving a sentence on a contempt of Congress charge.

Lashing out at the prosecutor as politically motivated is the club that Democratic party power broker George E. Norcross III is using to beat back a sprawling 13-count racketeering indictment brought by New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin. Norcross called the charges that he profited from an improper takeover of development rights over the Camden waterfront a “political vendetta” waged by Platkin.

More Charlie Stile: Reaction to George Norcross indictment is muted at best. Why? He remains powerful

Former federal prosecutor: Case against Menendez is strong

These frequent attacks on the integrity and motivations of prosecutors have created an added burden in bringing public corruption cases, which had already been made more difficult by U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have tightened the definition of qui pro quo bribery.

But Eric Gibson, a former federal prosecutor, said the strategy smacks of desperation. Gibson pointed to the strength of the federal case, contending that a mountain of detailed evidence, linked by text messages and showcased by bars of gold bullion found in the couple’s home in Englewood Cliffs, is hard to look past. Nor has the defense provided any proof of an overzealous prosecution, Gibson said.

Gibson, who successfully prosecuted a Philadelphia-area congressman in 2016, also said it's difficult to believe such a notion because Menendez is, of course, a Democrat, being prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department that answers to a Democratic president.

“You're not coming at this from a place where … from an optical standpoint, that it could be political," said Gibson, now a criminal defense lawyer in Philadelphia. “There isn't even a suggestion here that there's some sort of intraparty fight going on.”

The prosecutors, meanwhile, tore into the Menendez narrative that the senator was kept in the dark about his wife’s business dealings. In their closing argument, the government made a detailed case that Menendez was an active and fully aware participant in every stage of the alleged bribery scheme.

During final rebuttals on Thursday, prosecutor Daniel Richenthal singled out the senator’s “blame-my-wife defense,” in which he claimed he didn’t know his wife was taking money and making deals, as especially unbelievable.

“You learned a lot about Nadine Menendez. Now, I’m not trying to make fun of her. But does she strike you as a diabolical genius who concocted a plan with Menendez’s friend and Wael Hana to dupe him for five years, including when they’re living together?” Richenthal said. “Do you think she could have pulled that off if she tried?”

It’s a question that 12 jurors will most certainly debate in private.

Charlie Stile is a veteran New Jersey political columnist. For unlimited access to his unique insights into New Jersey’s political power structure and his powerful watchdog work, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: stile@northjersey.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Bob Menendez trial defense lawyers try sowing court distrust: Stile