Bob Menendez trial: Co-defendants’ lawyers argue gifts were non-criminal

New Jersey real estate developer Fred Daibes and businessman Wael Hana might have given Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) expensive gifts, including a car, cash, and gold bars, but they weren’t bribes, a New York jury heard on Thursday.

There is “nothing criminal about being generous,” Daibes’s lawyer, César de Castro, said.

He added that the senator and real estate developer had known each other for more than 30 years and that prosecutors had twisted the facts to paint his client in a negative light.

Hana’s attorney, Lawrence Lustberg, said prosecutors had built their case on “innocent acts.”

Menendez, Daibes, and Hana are accused of being players in an international bribery scheme that includes a halal meat monopoly, a sheikh, and a Qatari investment. The case also underscores the enormous influence and power a U.S. senator wields.

Menendez has been charged with bribery, fraud, extortion, obstruction of justice, and acting as a foreign agent of Egypt. He has pleaded not guilty.

U.S. prosecutor Laura Pomerantz accused Menendez of putting “greed first” and said he sold out his constituents, during opening arguments.

Defense attorney Avi Weitzman countered the prosecution’s characterization of Menendez, calling the New Jersey lawmaker an “American patriot” who has been a “lifelong public servant.”

Menendez’s wife of nearly four years, Nadine Menendez, was also charged, but her trial was delayed until July for health reasons.

On Thursday, Nadine Menendez revealed she has breast cancer and will undergo surgery for a mastectomy and “possibly radiation treatment.”

“We are, of course, concerned about the seriousness and advanced stage of the disease,” he said, adding that he was revealing his wife’s diagnosis after repeated inquiries from the media.

A courtroom confrontation between husband and wife would have been awkward at best, as the majority of Bob Menendez’s defense is expected to place blame on Nadine Menendez. They have already portrayed her as being a femme fatale and “go-between” who duped her lovestruck husband.

The first witness called Thursday for the prosecution was Aristotelis Kougemitros, the FBI agent who led the 2022 raid at the Menendez home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

Kougemitros testified a team of agents found gold bars and more than $400,000 in cash, as well as cellphones and jewelry during the raid. His testimony was used by prosecutors to cut Bob Menendez’s claims that the infamous gold bars were found in his wife’s closet.

Kougemitros testified that one gold bar was found on the floor inside the same closet as a Navy blazer that contained handwritten notes on Senate Democratic Caucus stationery. Other gold bars were found in a safe in the Menendez home that contained an airline ticket with the senator’s name on it.

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The trial is expected to last seven weeks. It is unclear whether Bob Menendez will testify in his own defense.

Bob Menendez stepped down as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but has refused to resign from the Senate.