Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., is heading to trial in May on charges of bribery, and he seems to be anticipating a win.
Menendez has refused to resign from the Senate, argued for his innocence during a floor speech, and even filed to run for re-election this year.
Now, Menendez is seeking to exploit a technicality in court. He’s asking for the court to separate his trial from his wife’s.
The New Jersey Democrat and his wife, Nadine, were each charged with bribery in the fall with aiding three New Jersey businessmen in return for cash, gold bars and a luxury car.
The couple and the businessmen, who also face charges, have all pleaded not guilty.
Nadine Menendez’s lawyers asked in papers filed late Monday for the severance on the grounds that the senator may want to testify at the upcoming trial at a trial and may divulge marital communications that she plans to keep secret.
Lawyers for Bob Menendez wrote that each spouse should face separate trials so that the senator does not provide information about marital communications during cross-examination that might be damaging to his wife’s defense.
They asked the trial judge not to force “him to choose between two fundamental rights: his right to testify in his own defense and his right not to testify against his spouse.”
The defense attorneys said that Menendez faces “an impossible and prejudicial choice between testifying on his own behalf and exercising his spousal privilege to avoid being converted through cross-examination into a witness against his spouse.”
A court is usually prohibited from compelling witnesses to testify against their spouses. However, people can — and often do — choose to testify against their spouses, anyway.
The requests for separate trials were made as part of several pre-trial submissions late Monday by lawyers for defendants in the case.
Several days earlier, the senator’s lawyers had asked that charges in the case be dismissed. They added to those requests Monday, calling charges against him a “distortion of the truth.”
“Senator Menendez isn’t just ‘not guilty’ — he is innocent of these charges. Senator Menendez has never sold out his office or misused his authority or influence for personal financial gain,” they wrote.
Menendez made similar remarks during his speech on the Senate floor.
Since the senator was first charged in September, he has been forced to relinquish his powerful post leading the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Now, he’s facing a well-connected challenger: New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy.
Take a look at the Senator’s floor speech —
Democratic Senator Bob Menendez calls his multiple indictments a "persecution" on the Senate floor: pic.twitter.com/54pA7TKpGs
— Conservative War Machine (@WarMachineRR) January 9, 2024
Prosecutors have added to the bribery charges too, saying that he conspired with his wife and one businessman to secretly advance Egypt’s interests and that he acted favorably toward Qatar’s government to aid a businessman.
“Over and over again, the Indictment distorts or ignores evidence reflecting the Senator’s conduct in favor of American — and only American — interests and his decades of appropriate constituent services,” the lawyers said.
“Worse yet, the government knows it. The government has buried evidence proving Senator Menendez’s innocence, including evidence that directly undercuts the allegations in the Indictment. And the defense is prohibited from disclosing any of it to the public — necessitating a redacted filing under seal — even as the government has gone on its own media blitz to advance its false narrative,” the lawyers said.
The prosecution has remained silent so far. Prosecutors are set to address all the pre-trial motions with arguments of their own in several weeks.
The defense also tried to exploit another technicality. They said the trial should not be in New York since almost everything alleged to have occurred happened in New Jersey or outside New York.
“This case belongs in New Jersey,” they said.
The defense noted that Menendez won an earlier corruption case in New Jersey with “at least 10 jurors voting to acquit the Senator on the government’s hyped-up corruption charges.”
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article.