Convicted New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez asked a judge to throw out his bribery conviction or grant him a new trial on the eve of his last day in office.
In papers filed just before midnight Monday, Menendez asked Manhattan federal court Judge Sidney Stein to reverse his convictions, arguing they were based on “a surprisingly thin reed of evidence” and that he’d never pressured a public official to do anything.
“Adding insult to injury, Senator Menendez, a 50-year public servant and committed patriot, was convicted of acting as a foreign agent for Egypt — despite the complete lack of evidence that the Government of Egypt or its officials … directed any of his activities or provided him any instructions whatsoever,” Menendez’s attorney, Adam Fee, wrote. “There is no email, conversation, or text message reflecting any directions from the Government of Egypt to Senator Menendez.”
Menendez, 70, was found guilty on July 16 of 16 counts alleging he raked in more than half a million dollars in bribes, gold bars valued at $150,000, a luxury convertible, flashy watches, and Formula 1 tickets to abuse his power position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by secretly acting as a foreign agent for the Egyptian government from 2018 to 2023.
Throughout the two-month trial, the feds argued that Menendez “put his power up for sale” in exchange for coercing state and federal prosecutors to aid his associates in their criminal cases, provide intelligence to Cairo, pressure officials in the U.S. government to help his codefendant Wael Hana to maintain a monopoly over halal meat imports from Egypt and worked to advance Qatari business interests.
The stunning verdict made him the first sitting senator to be convicted of conspiring to act as a foreign agent. The longtime lawmaker is set to step down from his seat Tuesday and faces a potential decades-long term when sentenced on Oct. 29.
Menendez’s codefendants also asked for their convictions to be thrown out. New Jersey businessman Hana was found guilty of six charges, and Fred Daibes was convicted of seven.
“If sustained on such a surprisingly thin reed of evidence, these convictions will make terrible, dangerous law. All of Senator Menendez’s convictions must be reversed,” Menendez’s attorneys wrote.
The outgoing senator argued that the feds’ case was based on speculation and that the feds trampled on the speech and debate clause granting elected officials some immunity.
“[Despite] a 10-week trial, the government offered no actual evidence of an agreement, just speculation masked as inference. Worse, the government walked all over the Senator’s constitutionally protected Speech or Debate privilege in an effort to show that he took some official action, when in reality, the evidence showed that he never used the authority of his office to do anything in exchange for a bribe,” his lawyers wrote.
“Simply put, the government did not show any use of Senator Menendez’s official powers to benefit any of the supposed bribe givers, let alone an agreement to do so in exchange for bribes.”
