A prominent US senator is on trial for corruption after thousands of dollars in cash and gold bars were discovered at his residence. Jury selection for the trial started on Monday.
The 70-year-old Democratic senator from New Jersey, Robert Menendez, and his spouse, Nadine, are charged with extortion, obstructing the course of justice, and taking bribes to carry out favors for businesspeople connected to Qatar and Egypt.
In a federal court in Manhattan, Menendez, the former head of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is on trial with two of the businessmen, Wael Hana, an American-Egyptian businessman, and Fred Daibes, a real estate developer.
Jose Uribe, an insurance broker, is a third businessman who entered a guilty plea to bribery charges in March and has been cooperating with the investigation.
The 57-year-old Nadine Menendez will face a separate trial in July.
Tuesday is the second day of jury selection. The judge presiding over the case has estimated that the trial will go five to six weeks.
The most serious offenses have a maximum sentence of 20 years in jail if found guilty.
Menendez is charged in the case pertaining to Egypt with taking bribes in order to utilize his position of authority and influence to benefit the Egyptian government and his fellow accomplices.
Menendez, who has turned off requests for his resignation, is said to have assisted Hana in preserving his monopoly on US exports to Egypt of halal food items.
Additionally, the senator is charged with assisting in the transfer of US military aid to the Cairo government.
Menendez is accused of accepting bribes in the Qatar case in order to help Daibes, who was looking to invest millions of dollars from a fund connected to the oil-rich nation.
Menendez’s New Jersey home was raided by FBI officers who allegedly discovered nearly $500k in cash stashed throughout the property.
A fancy Mercedes-Benz convertible that belonged to one of the businessmen and gold bars estimated to be worth $150,000 were also found.
Menendez has entered a not guilty plea and said that he kept the substantial quantity of money at his residence out of habit because his family had previously experienced confiscation in Cuba.
Menendez has been a solid Democratic presence in Congress for three decades, serving as a senator since 2006 and, prior to that, as a member of the House of Representatives for fourteen years.
Menendez, whose parents immigrated to the US from Cuba, was charged with corruption and bribery in 2015; however, the case was dismissed in a mistrial in 2017.
November marks Menendez’s reelection contest. Menendez has been encouraged to stand down by several fellow Democrats, including New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, but he has hinted that he would run as an independent.
