Republished with permission from New Jersey Monitor
The federal judge who presided over former Sen. Bob Menendez’s bribery trial has denied a bid he made soon after his July conviction to have the guilty verdicts thrown out.
In a Friday ruling, Judge Sidney H. Stein wrote that jurors heard from more than 30 witnesses, saw 3,000-plus exhibits, and deliberated over three days before convicting Menendez and businessmen Wael Hana and Fred Daibes of 18 crimes.
“The jury’s guilty verdicts were readily supported by the extensive witness testimony and extensive documentary evidence admitted at trial, and there is no manifest injustice requiring a new trial,” Stein wrote.
A judge can’t usurp the jury unless they have a real concern that an innocent person was convicted, he added.
Stein did, though, agree with a claim by Hana’s attorney that two of the conspiracy counts were duplicative and said he consequently would sentence the men on just one of those counts.
He did not address defense attorneys’ filings last month demanding a new trial because of a prosecutorial goof that exposed jurors to evidence Stein had ordered redacted — except to note that his decision on those motions is “forthcoming.”
Menendez’s attorneys didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Attorney Lawrence Lustburg, who represents Hana, said he was “very disappointed” by the ruling and believes Hana will prevail on appeal. Appeals in criminal cases can’t be filed until after sentencing, which is set for Jan. 29.
He applauded Stein’s decision to sentence on just one of two conspiracy counts, saying that would give Hana “very substantial relief.”
It all might be moot if Stein sides with defense attorneys that the conviction can’t stand because of prosecutors’ recently revealed error, in which they uploaded nine documents to a laptop jurors could consult during deliberations that had fewer redactions than Stein had ordered.
Lustberg said he looks forward to Stein’s ruling on that matter, blasting prosecutors’ argument that jurors probably didn’t see the documents, given the sheer volume of evidence they had to consider.
However Stein ultimately decides that dispute, he spelled out in exhaustive detail Friday why he agrees that prosecutors proved their case, accusing defense attorneys several times of “grasping at straws” in their arguments for acquittal.
Over 78 pages, Stein documented evidence and testimony presented over nine weeks showing that Menendez, a three-term Democrat who had helmed the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, took gold bars, cash, jewelry, a Mercedes-Benz convertible, and other valuables in exchange for his influence to help his friends and associates, as well as the governments of Egypt and Qatar.
In one instance, defense attorneys claimed prosecutors presented “zero evidence” that Daibes, an Edgewater real estate developer who sought Menendez’s help in currying Qatari officials’ favor so he could land a big investment, had given Menendez and his wife, Nadine, a gold bar during a visit to their home.
Stein rejected that claim, saying prosecutors showed Menendez Googled the price of gold a day after returning from Qatar, lied about the source of his gold bars on Senate ethics forms, and received a text from Daibes picturing a gold bar and its price — “a most perplexing message to send if the gold bar had been a gift from Daibes, as Menendez contends.”
“Bribes are seldom accompanied by written contracts, receipts, or public declarations of intentions,” Stein wrote, citing a 1988 bribery case. “The jury, however, may make reasonable inferences from the evidence.”
Stein also rejected defense arguments that prosecutors failed to show a single overarching conspiracy and that the case was wrongly tried in the Southern District of New York.
Menendez’s attorneys complained after the verdict — as they had throughout the trial — that prosecutors focused on Menendez’s legislative acts in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s speech and debate clause, which protects legislators from criminal charges and civil lawsuits for things they say and do in the course of their legislative activities.
But Stein said promising legislative acts or merely mentioning legislation — both things that came up in evidence against Menendez — “are simply not legislative acts” and so aren’t protected by that clause.
Menendez resigned from the Senate in August and dropped his bid for reelection as an independent candidate to focus on his appeal. His wife was also charged in the scheme because prosecutors say she orchestrated many of the bribes and acted as a go-between. Stein ordered a separate trial for her, because she was battling breast cancer. That trial now is set for Jan. 21.
Jose Uribe, a fourth co-defendant, cooperated with prosecutors in a plea deal and testified against the Menendezes, Hana, and Daibes.
