‘Whoa, that was gross,’ former NJ attorney general recalls after meeting with Menendez

New Jersey’s chief law enforcement officer and top aide looked at each other after they left a 2019 meeting with Sen. Bob Menendez.

“Whoa, that was gross,” the aide told then-New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal.

That’s how Grewal on Thursday recalled a September 2019 meeting prosecutors say was Menendez’s attempt to disrupt the agency’s work in exchange for bribes. The testimony was some of the most vivid yet in Menendez’s ongoing corruption trial, offering a behind-the-scenes account of a senator seeming to leverage his influence with one of the state's most powerful officials.

Prosecutors allege several men bribed Menendez and his wife in exchange for a series of actions, including Menendez’s attempts to intervene in a state criminal case and investigation.

One of the men accused of bribing the Menendezes, Jose Uribe, has pleaded guilty and is also expected to testify as soon as Friday about his interactions with the senator.

Grewal testified about a pair of 2019 interactions that prosecutors say resulted from Uribe’s bribes, which were allegedly meant to help Uribe’s associates evade scrutiny and punishment by the state attorney general’s office.

Menendez defense attorney Avi Weitzman questioned Grewal about his memory. In initial pretrial interviews with federal prosecutors about the interactions with Menendez, Grewal did not initially recall an earlier phone call he had with Menendez in January 2019.

But on the stand, Grewal had vivid recollection of the way the call came about and is among the most credible witnesses a prosecutor can hope to have on the stand. Grewal, aside from being a former state attorney general, now leads the enforcement division of the federal Securities and Exchange Commission. Grewal’s aide in 2019, Andrew Bruck, who did not testify, would go onto serve as attorney general himself.

Grewal said Menendez asked Grewal’s cousin, who is a friend of the senator’s, for Grewal’s personal cell phone ahead of the January 2019 call.

Grewal said he remembered the senator called during an end-of-day meeting the attorney general had with his staff. Grewal said he stepped out into a side room at his office in Trenton to take the call.

After the senator made small talk, he brought up a concern about how the state Office of Insurance Fraud Prosecutor, which reports to Grewal, was handling Hispanic defendants compared to how it handled non-Hispanic defendants, particularly in the trucking industry.

Then, it became clear to Grewal, that the senator was interested in a specific case or cases.

“He didn’t like how this matter was being handled by our office and wanted it handled differently,” Grewal said.

Grewal asked the senator if he was calling about a specific case and if there was a defense attorney involved already. Yes, the senator told him, Michael Critchley was handling the case.

Grewal said he told Menendez that Critchley — one of the most prominent defense attorneys in the state — was a fine lawyer and if Critchley had concerns, he should raise them but with the appropriate people.

Months later, Menendez’s staff reached out to set up an in-person meeting at the senator’s district office in Newark. When Grewal went in early September 2019, he brought Bruck. When Menendez saw both there, he seemed surprised, Grewal said, as if the senator had expected a one-on-one meeting.

With a folder in front of him, the senator eventually raised the same issue he had during the January call.

Grewal gave a similar reply, saying he didn’t discuss pending cases, and the meeting ended shortly after.

Weitzman pressed Grewal on whether other elected officials had tried to talk about pending cases and brought up a conversation Grewal had with former Sen. Dick Codey where Codey tried to raise a pending matter.

Grewal said it was unusual and only happened one or two other times when he was attorney general.

After the conversation with Codey, the senator introduced a bill that would have limited when attorneys general could run for governor.

Weitzman asked if Menendez ever threatened Grewal with retaliation. Grewal said no and that the senator had remained calm and pleasant during both interactions. But, Grewal said, he knew that the senator was a close political ally of Gov. Phil Murphy, a fellow Democrat.