Menendez and his wife want luxury lifestyle barred at trial
U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and his wife don’t want jurors at their upcoming corruption trial to learn about the couple’s luxurious lifestyle, which included cigars, handbags and jewelry.
Lawyers for Menendez and his wife, Nadine, objected Friday to prosecutors’ seeking to offer such evidence in federal court in New York. They are accused of accepting bribes of cash, gold bars and a car in exchange for political favors for three businessmen.
Jurors shouldn’t be told about their “preference for expensive luxury items” including his preference for Bombay Sapphire Gin, cigars and upscale meals on a limited salary and her handbags and jewelry while desiring a Mercedes-Benz, according to separate filings by the couple’s lawyers.
“There is no yacht or vacation home that was draining Senator Menendez’s finances,” lawyers for the New Jersey Democrat wrote in the filing. “He lived well within his means as a federal government employee.”
Menendez’s lawyers ridiculed prosecutors as trying to brand routine purchases as luxury items.
Nothing about a bottle of Bombay Sapphire Gin, which sells for $23.99, “smells of excess,” they said.
But in the flurry of filings Friday, prosecutors also included new details about their investigation of Menendez’s relationship with a medical testing company that hired his wife. The judge had previously said the company’s owner was “an alleged beneficiary of the bribery scheme,” one filing said.
The new filings identified the company and its owner, neither of which have been charged with a crime and are not referred to in the indictment.
Robert Menendez is charged with crimes including bribery, fraud, extortion, obstruction and acting as a foreign agent of Egypt. His wife has also been charged along with two businessmen. They all pleaded not guilty. A third businessman pleaded guilty and is cooperating with prosecutors.
Menendez, 70, has seen his popularity plummet since he was indicted in September and stepped down as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Defense lawyers responded to a letter by prosecutors saying the government wanted to introduce the evidence to show the couple’s motive or because it’s “inextricably intertwined” with the charges. But defense lawyers say it would unfairly prejudice the couple at a trial set to begin
May 6.
“Evidence of a criminal defendant’s specific purchases or possessions that the government touts as ‘lavish’ or ‘luxurious’ is particularly pernicious in arousing emotions of the jury,” the lawyers wrote in one of several late-night filings.
The most explosive evidence against Menendez includes gold bars and about $500,000 of cash seized at the couple’s house. In one filing, his lawyers said prosecutors are likely to “seek to inundate the jury with references to cash, gold bars, jewelry and other items of value purportedly seized from the Menendez home.”
Prosecutors should be limited to introducing only an envelope of cash that allegedly bore the fingerprints of Fred Daibes, a real estate developer indicted with Menendez, according to the filing. Defense lawyers said they also won’t object to evidence of gold bars or home furnishings that Daibes allegedly provided.
“But other than a single envelope with some cash in it that purportedly bears Daibes’ fingerprint, there is not evidence linking any of the other cash, jewelry seized from the senator’s home to any alleged co-conspirator,” according to the filing.