When Sen. Robert Menendez was charged with corruption last year after investigators found $486,000 in cash stashed around his New Jersey home, he offered a simple, “old-fashioned” explanation: He was in the habit of withdrawing cash from a personal savings account , to stay home, a habit he learned from his Cuban immigrant parents.
But federal prosecutors, in documents filed late on Friday, presented new details that they said undermined Mr. Menendez’s claim. Some of the money was wrapped in tapes showing that it had been withdrawn, at least $10,000 at a time, from a bank where Mr. Menendez and his wife had “no known deposit account.” According to prosecutors, this shows that “the money was provided to them by another person.”
Mr. Menendez’s lawyers recently asked a judge to exclude much of the money found in the home as evidence when the senator’s trial in Manhattan begins next month, arguing there was no evidence the money was linked to a crime. The prosecutor’s statement Friday was in response to that request.
The money issue boils down to a critical theme of the government’s case: that the senator and his wife, Nadine Menendez, lived a lifestyle that was beyond their means and financed by bribes.
A federal indictment says the money, along with gold bullion and other valuables, were the “fruits” of a bribery scheme. Much of the money found in the couple’s home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, was found in a bedroom closet, prosecutors said in their filing. Additional cash was found in a bag in an office, in a bag on a shelf above a hanger in the basement, in pockets of men’s jackets hanging on the hanger, and inside shoes under the jackets. In addition, more than $70,000 was found in a safe maintained by Ms. Menendez, the government said.
Menendez, 70, and his wife are accused of accepting bribes in exchange for the senator’s willingness to use his political influence to thwart criminal investigations in New Jersey and help the governments of Egypt and Qatar. The Menendez family and two New Jersey businessmen charged in the scheme have pleaded not guilty.
Mr Menendez, the former chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the two businessmen are expected to go on trial together starting on May 6 in Federal District Court in Manhattan. The senator rejected widespread calls for his resignation and said he hoped to run for re-election in November as an independent if exonerated.
Prosecutors said at least 10 envelopes of money found in the search of the senator’s house and a safe containing more than $80,000 bore the fingerprints or DNA of one of the businessmen also charged in the case. They said gold bars were also tied to the businessmen.
Lawyers for Mr Menendez had no comment on Saturday. But in court documents, they said they were trying to prevent prosecutors from telling the jury only about money that had no clear connection to an alleged co-conspirator. “The government should not be allowed to attempt to influence the jury with a dramatic presentation of valuables bearing only a speculative connection to any charged crime,” they wrote.
Judge Sidney H. Stein ruled Thursday that Ms. Menendez, 57, would be tried separately after her lawyers said she had a newly diagnosed illness that would require a surgical procedure and possibly a lengthy recovery. The judge set a tentative trial date for July.
Last September, Mr. Menendez, who was born in the United States, offered an explanation for at least some of the money found in their home, linking it to his family’s roots in Cuba in the years before Fidel Castro took control.
For 30 years, Menendez said, he withdrew thousands of dollars in cash from his personal savings account, saving it “for emergencies.” He said the habit stems from “my family’s history of facing confiscation in Cuba.”
“This may sound old-fashioned,” he added, “but it was money withdrawn from my personal savings account based on the income I’ve legally drawn over those 30 years.”
The following month, in an interview with PBS, Mr. Menendez explained that he had been withdrawing $400 in cash every week for “the better part” of three decades.
