Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat, went on trial in Manhattan federal court Monday, accused of accepting bribes of gold and cash to use his influence to deliver favours that would help three New Jersey businessmen.
Menendez, 70, sat with his lawyers and listened as Judge Sidney H Stein told several dozen prospective jurors about the charges against Menendez and two of the businessmen.
The judge told them the “sitting US senator from the state of New Jersey” had been charged in a conspiracy in which he allegedly “agreed to accept bribes and accepted bribes”.
After he warned them that the trial was expected to last up to seven weeks, Stein let jurors raise their hands if they believed they could not serve for that length of time. Then, he took them one at a time into a separate room to ask them why.
Menendez did not speak to reporters who were kept behind barricades as he entered a security pavilion where everyone entering the courthouse is scanned.
Opening statements were possible, but unlikely, before Tuesday for a trial that has already sent the senator’s political stature tumbling. After charges were announced in September, he was forced out of his powerful post as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The three-term senator has announced he will not be seeking re-election on the Democratic ticket this autumn, although he has not ruled out running as an independent.
It is the second corruption trial for Menendez in the last decade. The previous prosecution on unrelated charges ended with a deadlocked jury in 2017.
Besides charges including bribery, extortion, fraud and obstruction of justice, Menendez also is charged with acting as a foreign agent of Egypt.
Among evidence his lawyers will have to explain are gold bars worth more than US$100,000 and over US$486,000 in cash found in a raid two years ago on his New Jersey home, including money stuffed in the pockets of clothing in wardrobes.
The Democrat’s wife, Nadine Menendez, was also charged in the case, but her trial has been postponed for health reasons. She is still expected to be a major figure. Prosecutors say Nadine Menendez often served as a conduit between the men paying the bribes and Menendez.
The senator’s lawyers in court papers have said they plan to explain that Menendez had no knowledge of some of what occurred because she kept him in the dark.
The indictment also said Menendez did things benefiting Egyptian officials in exchange for bribes from Hana as the businessman secured a valuable deal with the Egyptian government to certify that imported meat met Islamic dietary requirements.
In pleading guilty several weeks ago, businessman Jose Uribe admitted buying Menendez’s wife a Mercedes-Benz to get the senator’s help to influence criminal investigations involving his business associates.