Democrat Sen. Bob Menendez, after being caught with gold bars, explained the situation by blaming the administration in Cuba.
Menendez, a Cuban American, attributed his cash-hoarding tendencies to wealth confiscation in communist Cuba. Big, if true!
Now, Menendez is reportedly planning to make an even more eyebrow-raising defense: blaming his wife.
According to court papers unsealed Tuesday, Menendez may seek exoneration by accusing his wife of keeping secrets about her dealings with New Jersey businessmen. The senator has pleaded not guilty to bribery, and he’s set for a trial in May.
Menendez’s defense attorneys made the court filing in January, but they kept the documents under seal until this week.
Some news organizations, including NBC News, successfully asked for several sentences to be unredacted, and the newspeople saw their wish granted Tuesday.
The defense voiced concerns about this revelation’s potential to sway the jury, and so they tried to keep their trial strategy a secret.
What’s more, the senator’s lawyers wrote about this strategy’s potential to “exonerate Senator Menendez” but “inculpate Nadine,” his wife. They plan to disclose correspondence from the senator’s household, but they declined to specify what kind.
“These explanations, and the marital communications on which they rely, will tend to exonerate Senator Menendez by demonstrating the absence of any improper intent on Senator Menendez’s part,” the defense attorneys wrote. “They may inculpate Nadine by demonstrating the ways in which she withheld information from Senator Menendez or otherwise led him to believe that nothing unlawful was taking place.”
A sitting senator is all but planning to throw his own family under the bus.
Menedez denies all wrongdoing. His lawyers argue that none of the crimes alleged in the indictment have implicated the senator, and they’ve also stressed that a crime may not have occurred at all.
The court is allowing Nadine Menendez her own trial, rather than trying the Menendezes together. Given her need for surgery within the next six weeks, the court has severed the two trials and delayed the latter one until at least July.
According to the indictment, the Menendezes took bribes to land one meat inspector a deal with Egypt’s administration. The senator is facing charges of bribery and acting as an unregistered foreign agent.
The Menendezes and two businessmen have pleaded not guilty to charges that they participated in a bribery scheme in which prosecutors say cash and gold bars were given to the couple in return for the senator carrying out political favors. Bob Menendez chaired the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee until he stepped down from the role in September because of the allegations.
One associate, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty to bribery charges and agreed to testify against the others at trial. Uribe confessed to conspiring with Nadine Menendez to give her a luxury Mercedes-Benz in exchange for access to Sen. Menendez, the onetime chair of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee.
The Horn editorial team