Menendez asks for guilty verdicts to be thrown out

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and two New Jersey businessmen convicted last month of bribing him have asked a federal judge to toss out their guilty verdicts or grant a new trial.

The Democratic senator claimed the “high-profile” nature of the case precipitated his 16-count conviction on charges spanning bribery and acting as a foreign agent, despite a “surprisingly thin reed of evidence.”

He said the government failed to provide evidence of an agreement to trade his political clout for lavish gifts from Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, the businessmen tried alongside him, and a third businessman who pleaded guilty before the trial, instead presenting “speculation masked as inference.”

And he argued prosecutors “walked all over” protections afforded by the “speech or debate” clause, which gives lawmakers some immunity. The issue could eventually land before the Supreme Court.

“These convictions will make terrible, dangerous law,” Menendez attorney Adam Fee wrote in the 52-page motion filed Monday. “All of Senator Menendez’s convictions must be reversed.”

After a two-month federal corruption trial in Manhattan, a jury found Menendez and his co-defendants guilty of all of the charges against them. The New Jersey senator has maintained his innocence, telling reporters after his conviction that he has “never been anything but a patriot of my country and for my country.”

Once chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Menendez now stares down decades in prison and is expected to resign from the upper chamber Tuesday. Top Democrats including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy called on him to step down after the jury’s guilty verdict.

Murphy is tasked with appointing a temporary replacement for Menendez, whose seat is up for election this year. The senator planned to mount an independent bid to win his seat in November but withdrew his long-shot candidacy last week, after the conviction. The senator is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 29.

Federal prosecutors accused Menendez and his wife, Nadine, of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in the form of cash, gold bars and other gifts from the businessmen, who in turn benefited from the senator’s political power.

In several superseding indictments, he was also accused of conspiring to act as a foreign agent of Egypt, accepting gifts from the Qatari government and conspiring to cover up the bribery scheme as prosecutors worked the case.

Nadine Menendez also faces charges and has pleaded not guilty, but her case was severed after she told the court that she would undergo a surgical procedure for breast cancer. Her trial has been indefinitely delayed.