New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez’s strategy of blaming his wife in bribery trial may have pitfalls

washington — During the first five weeks of Sen. Bob Menendez’s bribery trial, his lawyers peppered government witnesses with questions designed to shift blame to the New Jersey Democrat’s wife, Nadine.

Legal experts say Menéndez’s strategy is not unique, but it could backfire on jurors.

“An empty chair defense when a spouse is involved is somewhat risky because some jurors may view the defendant as blaming their spouse unfavorably, and this can potentially affect the overall perception of the defense,” said Luke Cass, a former federal prosecutor who managed corruption investigations into government officials.

Scott Hulsey, a former federal prosecutor, said blaming his wife “carries a whole different kind of baggage” for Menendez than if he blamed someone else.

“Blaming the person you’re married to for something that went wrong can offend some people’s notion of what marriage is and is about,” Hulsey said.

Both the senator and his wife have pleaded not guilty to more than a dozen charges related to a wide-ranging bribery scheme. Nadine Menendez’s trial was postponed to August because she is recovering from breast cancer surgery. The jurors were not informed of the diagnosis, which the senator released to the public a day after his lawyers pinned the blame on his wife.

Menéndez’s lawyers tried to portray the couple as living largely separate livesclaiming that the senator was unaware of his wife’s financial challenges and her dealings with the three New Jersey businessmen accused of bribing them with cash, gold bars, mortgage payments and a Mercedes-Benz convertible in exchange for its political influence.

The couple does not share bank accounts or credit cards, and Menendez never paid or received statements for the mortgage on his wife’s former home after moving in with her in recent years, according to his attorney Avi Weitzman. Her lawyers also said that Nadine Menendez has a separate – and locked – closet.

“She hid things from him,” Weitzman said during opening statements. “She kept him in the dark about what she was asking others to give her. She was outgoing. She liked to have fun. But she wasn’t going to let Bob know she had financial problems.”

Weitzman said Nadine Menendez tried to “obtain money and assets any way she could” and kept the senator “sidelined from these conversations.”

At the beginning of the trial, an FBI agent testified about the discovery of hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gold bars in the couple’s New Jersey home. The agent was certain that there was a men’s blazer hanging inside a locked closet full of women’s clothing where the gold bars were found. Menendez’s lawyers claim that the senator did not have the key to his wife’s closet and questioned the agent’s memory against a photo showing the blazer hanging outside the closet. The next day, the agent said he wanted to correct his statement after analyzing photos of the search. The blazer, he said, was hanging outside the closet.

Weitzman asked another FBI agent who testified about the discovery of nearly $80,000 in a safe belonging to Nadine Menendez at a nearby bank about the visitor log.

“Each time it says client access with the client listed as Nadine Arslanian, right?” said the lawyer, using his previous surname.

“Yes,” the FBI agent confirmed.

“And every time it says no guest, correct?” Weitzman asked.

“That’s what it says, yes,” said the agent.

The moments were of small victories for the defense. But the prosecution’s main witness, José Uribe, complicated Menendez’s strategy of blaming his wife when he testified this week that he asked the senator directly for help by stopping a criminal investigation involving two people close to him and the senator said he would “look into the matter.”

Uribe, who pleaded guilty to trying to bribe the senator and is cooperating with prosecutors, said he assumed Menendez knew he had made a deal with his wife to buy her a Mercedes in exchange for the senator’s help, because Nadine Menendez repeatedly tried arrange a meeting between them. Men I never discussed the car payments, but they also didn’t tell him to keep that a secret, Uribe testified.

“You have a witness who is saying, well, it wasn’t your wife I was dealing with, I was dealing with you,” Hulsey said. “It’s another thing he’ll have to explain as he tries to shift the blame to someone else.”

After his meeting with Uribe, the senator met with then-New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, who testified last week that Menéndez indicated he wanted to discuss concerns about a pending criminal matter. “I can’t talk to you about this,” Grewal recalled telling Menendez.

“You put these things together and it becomes, from my perspective, much more complicated for Senator Menendez,” Hulsey said.

Jonathan Kravis, a former federal anti-corruption prosecutor, thinks there is a greater risk of Menendez’s strategy backfiring with the six female jurors than with the six men.

“A lot of it depends on the execution and how you present it, and whether you’re able to do it in a way that doesn’t feel sexist or condescending or like you’re just trying to guilt her,” Kravis said. .

Menendez’s lawyers are probably debating if he will testify in the coming weeks, which would make him vulnerable to lines of questioning that could undermine the characterization of his relationship with his wife and how complicated their lives were, Kravis said.

“The prosecution has begun trying to present evidence of communications between Menendez and his wife that do not directly relate to the conduct in question, but merely attempt to establish that they are deeply involved in each other’s lives,” he said.

These communications include text messages about Nadine Menendez running errands for the senator and doing laundry. The senator also verified it using the “Find My Friends” iPhone app.

A lawyer for Nadine Menendez declined to comment on her husband’s strategy.

It’s a strategy similar to that used by former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell, who stood trial with his wife a decade ago on charges of accepting tens of thousands of dollars in loans and gifts from a dietary supplement executive in exchange for political favors. .

In blaming his wife, McDonnell claimed that their marriage was so dysfunctional that they could not have conspired to accept the bribes.

The Supreme Court overturned McDonnell’s conviction in 2016, narrowing the definition of what types of conduct could serve as the basis for public corruption charges. McDonnell filed for divorce in 2019.

Cass said public corruption cases are some of the most difficult cases to prove. But in Menéndez’s case, he said, some jurors “may find it difficult to believe that a sitting U.S. senator had no knowledge of events under his own roof.”