Sen. Bob Menendez may have a few more months to wait before his federal corruption trial starts.
Though it is currently scheduled to begin May 6, the senator’s attorneys — Adam Fee and Avi Weitzman — filed a letter with the judge Wednesday asking for the trial to be pushed back “at least two months to early July 2024” because of the “complexity of this case” as well as the “volume and timing of the government’s disclosures.”Contrary to the government’s overheated statements to the press, this is far from an open-and-shut case,” the letter states. “There are substantial meritorious factual and legal defenses that require defense counsel’s — and the court’s — attention. But defendants cannot meaningfully prepare for trial on the timeline the court set at the initial conference, before the government produced a single page of discovery.”
Menendez wants ‘unprecedented’ trial pushed after feds turn over trove of evidence
By
- S.P. Sullivan | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez is asking a federal judge to push his scheduled May corruption trial by at least two months after prosecutors dumped a trove of evidence collected in their probe into the powerful senator’s alleged actions on behalf of New Jersey business associates and the Egyptian government.“We do not make this request lightly,” attorneys for New Jersey’s senior senator wrote U.S. District Court Judge Sidney H. Stein in a Wednesday filing.
We are compelled to do so, however, given the complexity of this case — which includes, for example, an unprecedented foreign-agent charge against a sitting Senator based on a statute the government has never-before prosecuted — the volume and timing of the government’s disclosures, and the significant motion practice ahead.”Menendez was indicted in September on federal corruption charges that ensnared his wife and three others in a shocking case that alleged bribes paid out with gold bars and envelopes stuffed with cash, payments toward a home mortgage, no-show jobs and a $60,000 Mercedes-Benz.Prosecutors said in exchange, the senator conspired to use his political influence to benefit his friends and associates. One of those associates was also accused of working on behalf of the Egyptian government, leading to the unusual charges of “conspiracy as public official to act as a foreign agent” against Menendez.It’s a case that launched a thousand Jersey jokes on social media and late night television, as well as an increasingly crowded race for Menendez’s once-safe Senate seat.
Menendez, a Democrat, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to the charges.In their Wednesday letter, attorneys Adam Fee and Avi Weitzman said despite “the government’s overheated statements to the press, this is far from an open-and-shut case.”They also cite a “simply massive” amount of discovery — the evidence turned over by prosecutors ahead of a trial — provided by the government in their case, some of it very recently, “without sufficient metadata.”The trove of records includes 6.7 million documents that took up 735 terabytes of data — a size, the senator’s attorneys claimed, larger than the book collection at the Library of Congress. Prosecutors still haven’t provided “classified discovery,” the filing states, and some defense attorneys are still in the process of obtaining security clearances to review classified material.Menendez is currently scheduled for a May 6 trial. His attorneys requested postponement to “a date convenient for the court in July 2024.”
The filing also provides a preview of Menendez’s defense strategy, which his lawyers are still developing as they comb through prosecutors’ disclosures. It says the senator “expects to file substantial motions” challenging the constitutionality of the foreign agent charge, which has not been previously prosecuted.They are also targeting the “sufficiency of the indictment” and are considering looking for a change of venue from the Southern District of New York, where U.S. Attorney Damian Williams brought the charges, according to the letter.A July trial date would still put the case in front of a jury ahead of the 2024 election, when New Jersey’s senate seat is next on the ballot. But it would push the trial until after the Democratic primary, scheduled for June 4.Menendez, who has resisted calls from his own party to step down, has not said whether he will seek re-election.“The government presented this in the most salacious way possible, the most sensational way possible, in order to have the desired effect that they have temporarily achieved,” he said during an October interview aired on NJ Spotlight News. “The reality is that I’m innocent and I’m going to prove it.”
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Federal judge rejects Menendez request for delay in corruption trial