Sen. Menendez corruption trial set to begin
Federal prosecutors will face off Wednesday against Sen. Robert Menendez in a courtroom in Newark, where opening arguments are scheduled in the first trial in almost a decade of a sitting U.S. senator.
Menendez, a senior New Jersey Democrat, has labored under the shadow of his indictment on corruption charges for more than two years. Federal prosecutors said he became a senator “on retainer” to a wealthy Florida eye doctor who plied him with luxury hotel stays, private jet flights and hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations. In exchange, prosecutors said, Menendez repeatedly used his office to try to help the doctor.
That help, according to the indictment, ranged from trying to resolve an $8.9 million billing dispute for medical procedures, to seeking visas for the doctor’s girlfriends so they could visit him in the United States.
Prosecutors plan to call a wide range of witnesses — including jet pilots, former public officials and even members of Menendez’s staff — to paint a picture of what they say is a seven-year scheme between Menendez and the eye doctor, Salomon Melgen.
“Although Menendez did not pay Melgen back for the lavish gifts in money, he did pay him back using the currency of his Senate office to take official action to benefit the South Florida doctor,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing last week.
In response, Menendez’s lawyer called the prosecutors’ filing a “lengthy, lurid and one-sided narrative of the case” that could improperly influence jurors and urged the judge overseeing the case to question jurors about it.
The senator and the doctor have long denied wrongdoing, saying what prosecutors see as corruption were vacations taken by two friends.
The benefits of that friendship, according to the indictment, included stays at exclusive spots in the Dominican Republic, and a stay at a Paris hotel that cost more than $1,500 a night.
Menendez allegedly returned those favors by lobbying to help Melgen win a multimillion-dollar billing dispute with Medicare, pressuring U.S. diplomatic officials to assist the doctor in a contract dispute he was having with the government of the Dominican Republic, and getting visas for women dating Melgen to enter the United States.
Melgen was convicted in April of defrauding Medicare, but prosecutors say they don’t plan to tell the Newark jury about that conviction “unless the defense opens the door.”