Liam Conner
washington – When federal investigators executed a search warrant at Senator Bob Menendez’s New Jersey home in June 2022, they discovered more than $480,000 in cash hidden in envelopes and jackets, as well as 13 gold bars worth more than US$100,000.
They also seized nearly $80,000 from his wife’s safe at a nearby bank.
After Menendez was accused of corruption last year, he explained that for 30 years he withdrew thousands of dollars every month from his personal savings account in case of emergencies. The “old-fashioned” habit, he said, has roots in his family’s experience in Cuba.
In a letter released Wednesday, the Democratic senator’s lawyers argued that the habit resulted from “two significant traumatic events” in his life.
A psychiatrist who evaluated Menendez is expected to testify at trial that he “suffered intergenerational trauma stemming from his family’s experience as refugees, who had their funds confiscated by the Cuban government and were left with only a small amount of money they had saved.” at his home,” the senator’s lawyers said last month in a letter to prosecutors.
Psychiatrist Karen Rosenbaum is also expected to testify that she “suffered trauma when her father, a compulsive gambler, died by suicide after Senator Menendez finally decided to stop paying her father’s gambling debts.”
Menéndez developed a mental health problem, which was never treated, in response to the trauma he suffered throughout his life, the letter said. The condition was edited in the public process.
The condition and “lack of treatment resulted in the senator’s fear of shortages and the development of a long-standing coping mechanism of routinely withdrawing and storing cash in his home,” he said.
Department of Justice
Prosecutors, objecting to the proposed testimony, included the letter in a court filing Wednesday and asked the judge to bar the psychiatrist from testifying. They stated that the psychiatrist’s conclusion “does not appear to be the product of any reliable scientific principle or method” and is an attempt to gain the jury’s sympathy.
If the judge allows Rosenbaum to take the witness stand, prosecutors should be able to have Menéndez examined by a separate psychiatrist, they said.
Menéndez’s trial is scheduled to begin on May 13.
The former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was indicted in September 2023 on charges alleging that he and his wife, Nadine, accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes. Prosecutors said they used their power and influence to enrich and protect three New Jersey businessmen and benefit the government of Egypt.
In the following months, superseding indictments alleged that Menendez and his wife conspired to act as a foreign agent for Egypt, accepted expensive gifts in exchange for favorable comments about Qatar and obstructed the investigation into the alleged year-long corruption scheme.
Menendez and his wife have pleaded not guilty to all charges.
In a court filing last month, prosecutors said at least 10 envelopes containing more than $80,000 in cash contained the fingerprints or DNA of one of the New Jersey businessmen, while all of the gold bars may be linked to two from them.
Some of the money that did not bear the associate’s fingerprints “was wrapped with cash bands indicating that it had been withdrawn, at least $10,000 at a time, from a bank at which Menendez and Nadine Menendez had no known deposit account – indicating that the money was provided to them by someone else,” prosecutors said.
Menendez recently indicated that he could frame your wifewho will be tried separately this summer because of a “serious medical condition” that requires surgery. Menendez’s lawyers said in a legal filing that the senator could testify about communications with his wife that would demonstrate “the ways in which she withheld information” from her husband “or otherwise led him to believe that nothing illegal was happening.”
