FACE OF BRIBERY, FEDS SAY
Menendez corruption trial begins
The corruption trial of New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez opened Wednesday with a federal prosecutor’s blunt assessment, “This is what bribery looks like.”
“These two defendants corrupted one of the most powerful offices in our country. The defendants didn’t just trade money for power, they also tried to cover it up,’’ Assistant US Attorney Peter Koski told jurors in Newark federal court.
Menendez is on trial for accepting all-expense-paid luxury vacations, free private-jet jaunts and more than $750,000 in campaign donations from his co-defendant, Dr. Salomon Melgen, a wealthy eye doctor from West Palm Beach who was recently convicted of Medicare fraud in Florida.
In exchange, Menendez, 63, used his influence to help Melgen with his personal and business affairs, including the allegations that the doctor ripped off Medicare to the tune of $8.9 million, Koski said.
“Senator Menendez went to bat for Dr. Melgen at the highest levels of the United States government because Melgen gave Menendez access to a lifestyle that read like a travel brochure for the rich and famous,” Koski said.
Both Menendez and Melgen have said their trips together were evidence only of their friendship. “There’s no friendship exception to bribery,’’ Koski said. “Make no mistake about it, Robert Menendez was Salomon Melgen’s personal United States senator.”
Koski told the jury that Menendez was so confident Melgen would get him whatever he wanted that he once asked the doctor to book him a $1,500-a-night room at a hotel in Paris by specifying it must have a “limestone bath with soaking tub and . . . views of courtyard or streets.”
The senator also used his influence to help Melgen with a contract dispute in the Dominican Republic — and to help secure travel and student visas for three of Melgen’s foreign girlfriends, Koski said.
At least some of the girlfriends are expected to take the stand at the trial, according to Melgen’s lawyer, who complained that the government could “trot his girlfriends in front of you [the jury] just so you can see them.”
“He was not always the best husband,” lawyer Kirk Ogrosky told the jury.
Menendez, meanwhile, choked up during a short speech before he entered the courthouse.
“Never — not once, not once — have I dishonored my public office,” Menendez said, flanked by his adult son and daughter. “I have always acted in accordance with the law.”
In a show of support for his fellow Garden State Democrat, Sen. Cory Booker took a front row seat right behind Menendez as federal prosecutors told the jury about the senior senator’s years of alleged corruption.
If Menendez is convicted he could be forced out of the Senate by a two-thirds majority vote, which would allow outgoing Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, to pick his successor. Currently, Republicans hold 52 Senate seats compared with 46 for the Democrats.