New Jersey senator Rob Menendez is to launch a “Discovering Your Roots” protection in his federal corruption trial — claiming his Cuban heritage has given him PTSD.
The indicted Democrat will declare he suffers from “intergenerational post-traumatic stress dysfunction” due to his dad and mom’ expertise in Cuba earlier than he was even born, federal court docket papers say.
The declare will type a key a part of his protection as soon as a jury is sworn in at Manhattan federal court docket, the place jury choice started Monday.
Menendez, 70, is accused of 16 felony counts, together with wire fraud, extortion, obstruction of justice, and conspiring to behave as a international agent for Qatar and Egypt — with prosecutors saying he was bribed with gold bars, practically $500,000 in money and a luxurious Mercedes convertible.
The senator is accused of stashing the spoils within the Englewood Cliffs, NJ, dwelling he shares together with his second spouse, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, who he married in 2020 and who can also be indicted however will go on trial individually in July.
Menendez, Arslanian and their co-defendants, New Jersey businessmen Fred Daibes and Wael Hanna all vehemently deny all fees. If discovered responsible he would face expulsion from the Senate and a sentence of as much as 200 years.
US District Choose Sidney Stein warned potential jurors Monday that the trial is prone to take as much as seven weeks.
It’s unclear if Menendez himself will take the stand however he has already revealed elements of his potential plan to safe an acquittal.
Jurors are anticipated to listen to from a minimum of two knowledgeable witnesses who’re poised to testify that his dad and mom fleeing Cuba within the early Fifties formed Menendez’s life — despite the fact that he was born in New York in 1954.
Psychiatrist Karen Rosenbaum, one of many two knowledgeable witnesses, is predicted to testify that Menendez skilled two “important traumatic occasions” that led to “intergenerational submit traumatic stress dysfunction,” court docket papers say.
The occasions associated to Menendez’s household’s “expertise as refugees, who had their funds confiscated by the Cuban authorities and had been left with solely a small amount of money that they’d stashed away of their dwelling,” court docket papers say.
However Menendez himself has provided apparently shifting accounts of why his dad and mom — each now lifeless — left Cuba.
Whereas he was a rising political star in Union Metropolis, NJ, in 1980, he advised the Jersey Journal that his father, Mario, was a authorities minister in Cuba who moved to the US when he foresaw political hassle in pre-revolutionary Cuba.
However in 2014 he advised the Jewish Normal that it was his mom who pushed to depart, and stated nothing about his household being politically related.
Within the 2014 interview he claimed his dad and mom had been “peculiar working folks” and that his father ran a manufacturing facility for a New York-based necktie producer.
Menendez stated his father was hesitant to depart, however Evangelina, who already had two younger youngsters, was decided to depart, a number of years earlier than revolutionary Fidel Castro got here to energy and started expropriating native corporations.
“My mom didn’t like [Fulgencio] Batista,” he stated, referring to the dictator who took over in 1952. “She didn’t like what she noticed within the mountains, with the cattle barons, and he or she didn’t like what she was afraid was coming.
“They didn’t have a lot – however what they’d was in Cuba. And she or he stated, ‘Both you include us or we go away you behind.’”
Neither account stated his dad and mom’ money had been taken. Public paperwork affirm that his mom, Evangelina Lopez Menendez, whom he has usually described as an impoverished immigrant, left Cuba within the early Fifties.
The potential protection means prosecutors should dig down into Menendez’s origin story if he sticks with the plan to make use of it, a authorized knowledgeable on the College of Chicago Regulation Faculty advised The Submit.
“I’m positive that the federal government goes to need to show that all the pieces Menendez is saying is right,” stated Sharon Fairley, a professor of follow on the legislation college.
Menendez has additionally indicated he might declare that he’s traumatized by his father’s demise. In court docket paperwork, his attorneys stated that Mario, “a compulsive gambler,” dedicated suicide when Menendez determined to cease paying his playing money owed.
The mixture of his dad and mom fleeing Cuba and his father’s playing led him to stockpile money at dwelling as a “coping mechanism” to his “worry of shortage,” he has stated he might argue.
Based on public information, a person named Mario Menendez died in Hoboken on June 1, 1978 when he was 63 years outdated.
Fairley stated that Menendez’s attorneys are utilizing the trauma protection prone to show that he didn’t have evil or corrupt intentions when he hoarded the money or allegedly accepted bribes.
Menendez may additionally blame his spouse for introducing him to their co-defendants, in response to court docket paperwork unsealed final month. Her attorneys didn’t reply to a request for remark when the paperwork had been unsealed.
He might argue that his spouse “withheld info,” main him to imagine that nothing unlawful befell after they accepted the gold bars and money in change for political favors.
Menendez final confronted a federal corruption trial in 2017, accused of taking lavish journeys to the Caribbean on the non-public aircraft of benefactor Salmon Melgen, a Palm Seashore eye physician, who was additionally indicted on bribery and corruption fees.
The case led to a mistrial, and the Division of Justice dropped the fees after the Supreme Court docket narrowed the definition of bribing a public official. Melgen was individually convicted of Medicare fraud and later pardoned by then Pres. Donald Trump.
Supply hyperlink
