Squirreling away boatloads of money — it’s all within the Menendez familia.
Sen. Bob Menendez’s hoarding of money in his New Jersey house isn’t proof of against the law — however merely an harmless a part of his Cuban household’s custom, the embattled Democrat’s sister is anticipated to inform jurors at his federal bribery trial.
The Backyard State senior senator’s older sister plans to testify to his “private and household historical past of storing money outdoors of banks” quickly after his protection case kicks off Monday in Manhattan federal court docket, Menendez’s attorneys stated.
The veteran lawmaker’s kin is anticipated to elucidate that Menendez had a behavior of stashing money in his house and workplace due to a household custom of distrusting banks after their dad and mom left Cuba and misplaced their life financial savings earlier than elevating them in a Union Metropolis tenement, a court docket submitting reveals.
Menendez’s sister might testify as early as Monday.
Prosecutors rested their case Friday after detailing an alleged scheme through which the senator, 70, and his spouse Nadine Menendez are accused of accepting greater than $150,000 in gold bars, $566,000 in money funds and different presents in trade for favors to native businessmen and the governments of Egypt and Qatar.
Jurors on the trial noticed pictures of stacks of payments and gold bars — together with some stuffed inside a well-worn Timberland work boot — stashed across the couple’s cluttered Englewood Cliffs home when the FBI raided it in June 2022.
Witnesses referred to as by federal prosecutors through the six-week trial included New Jersey insurance coverage dealer Jose Uribe, who testified that he purchased Nadine a brand new Mercedes in trade for assist killing a state prison probe.
“I saved your ass, not as soon as however twice,” Bob Menendez bragged to the businessman throughout certainly one of a number of conferences at swanky New Jersey eating places, Uribe advised jurors.
Menendez’s legal professionals have tried to shift blame for the alleged scheme away from the senator and towards his “dazzling, tall” spouse, who they claimed in final month’s opening statements stashed the gold bar trove away in her closet with out his figuring out.
Protection attorneys had additionally deliberate to name an knowledgeable witness psychiatrist to the stand to testify that Menendez stored massive piles of money in his house due to finances-related “intergenerational trauma” rooted in his father’s suicide over playing money owed, court docket papers present.
However Decide Sidney Stein dominated earlier than the trial kicked off that Dr. Karen Rosenbaum couldn’t testify.
As of Friday afternoon, it was unclear whether or not Menendez would take the stand.
“The federal government has not confirmed its case,” the senator huffed on his means out of the Decrease Manhattan courthouse Friday afternoon.
Menendez, who has pleaded not responsible, stepped down from his put up chairing the Senate’s International Relations Committee within the wake of his September 2023 indictment, however has refused to resign from Congress.
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