Fred Daibes, an Edgewater developer, right, leaving the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse in Manhattan after pleading not guilty to federal corruption charges on Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2023. (Aristide Economopoulos for New Jersey Monitor)

Sen. Bob Menendez saw his fortunes climb even before Fred Daibes snagged a $95 million investment from a Qatari royal for a planned development along the Hudson River, according to testimony Thursday in his federal bribery trial in Manhattan.

Over several months in 2021 and early 2022, New Jersey’s senior senator researched the value of gold and luxury watches online while his wife scheduled tours of multimillion-dollar mansions for sale in Alpine and Englewood Cliffs and accepted a gifted lounge chair and Formula 1 race tickets for her son.

At the center of it all was Daibes, acting so much like Santa Claus that Nadine Menendez texted him: “Thank you. Christmas in January.”

On the 21st day of Menendez’s trial Thursday, prosecutors focused on Daibes and their claims that he schemed to hook Qatari investors by bribing Menendez to publicly praise the small Arab country on the Persian Gulf.

Jurors heard from FBI special agent Paul Van Wie, who laid out a timeline of texts, calls, encrypted messages, and other communications that show Menendez connected Daibes with Sheikh Sultan bin Jassim Al Thani, whose brother is Qatar’s emir, and Ali Al Thawadi, the sheikh’s chief of staff. The sheikh heads the largest construction and real estate company in Qatar and advises the emir on investments in the U.S., testimony showed.

When the sheikh’s investment adviser learned Daibes had been federally charged in a 2018 bank fraud case and urged the sheikh to reconsider, Menendez called and met with the sheikh and other Qatari officials in what prosecutors suggested was an attempt to smooth things over.

“I hope that this will result in the favorable and mutually beneficial agreement that you both have been engaged in discussing,” Menendez wrote to bin Jassim in an encrypted WhatsApp message in January 2022.

To sweeten the deal for the Qataris, prosecutors say Menendez shepherded a resolution praising Qatar’s humanitarian work through the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which he then chaired, and issued a related press release that he forwarded to Daibes first, texts showed.

“You might want to send it to them. I am just about to release,” the senator told Daibes.

Daibes did just that, assuring the Qatari officials “our mutual friend” would issue it within days.

“At last,” the sheikh responded.

“It’s very good,” his chief of staff agreed.

In May 2022, Daibes and Heritage Advisers, a London-based investment firm the sheikh founded, signed a $190 million deal, with the sheikh footing half of it, according to documents Van Wie presented.

Many of the messages and documents Van Wie presented Thursday, under questioning by prosecutor Paul Monteleoni, seemed intended to prove the quid pro quo part of their argument — revealing the bribes the Menendezes allegedly accepted for the senator’s intervention and influence.

One exchange showed Daibes connected Nadine Menendez with the Tenafly real estate agent who scheduled tours for her of two homes priced at over $4 million.

Another showed that Menendez himself asked Al Thawadi for the Formula 1 tickets, saying Nadine Menendez’s son and his fiancee wanted them.

“Thank you. He is thrilled and so is his mother,” the senator texted Al Thawadi after receiving the tickets.

Defense attorney Avi Weitzman cast doubt on some testimony, like prosecutors’ claim that Daibes gave Menendez a new recliner as a bribe when the senator struggled to heal from a shoulder injury. Van Wie acknowledged under Weitzman’s questioning that prosecutors didn’t show jurors all of the Menendezes’ messages with others involved, including one text suggesting the recliner was a used loaner or hand-me-down.

“That chair has saved so many people in our family!” Daibes’ sister texted Nadine Menendez.

As for the luxury watches, Daibes shared screenshots of Patek Philippe watches ranging in price from about $10,000 to almost $30,000 with Menendez in 2021, asking which he liked, Van Wie testified. But prosecutors offered no receipts or messages proving a purchase occurred, and investigators found no such watches during a June 2022 search of the couple’s Englewood Cliffs home, testimony showed.

Earlier Thursday, prosecutors focused on Menendez’s effort to derail the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s 2018 bank fraud probe of Daibes.

“He is FIXATED on it,” Nadine Menendez assured Daibes by text.

Philip Sellinger, New Jersey’s U.S. attorney, previously told jurors that Menendez asked him to “look at” prosecutors’ handling of Daibes’ case and ended their longtime friendship when Sellinger reported he had a conflict of interest, prompting his Department of Justice bosses to recuse him from the case in December 2021. The recusal left Sellinger’s first assistant, Vikas Khanna, in charge of Daibes’ case.

Thursday, Van Wie presented documents and messages showing that Menendez subsequently researched and communicated with Khanna. The documents also showed that Menendez admonished Daibes’ attorney on a January 2022 phone call for being a “wuss” and not pushing the U.S. Attorney’s Office aggressively enough to dismiss the case, and that Daibes rejected two plea offers before prosecutors agreed in February 2022 to Daibes’ request for probation.

“He is an amazing friend, and as loyal as they come,” Daibes gushed about the senator in an email to Nadine Menendez.

The trial is expected to resume Monday morning, with cross-examination of Van Wie continuing and Khanna and Sarah Arkin, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer, taking the stand.

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NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 11: Fred Daibes arrives for trial at Manhattan Federal Court on June 11, 2024 in New York City. Jose Uribe, who is cooperating with federal prosecutors in their case against Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) testified on Monday. He will continue his testimony regarding a backyard meeting with the senator in September 2019. Menendez along with his wife Nadine are facing bribery charges. The indictment is the second in eight years against Menendez. The indictment also includes charges for Wael Hana, Fred Daibes, and Uribe who are cooperating with federal prosecutors in hopes of a lenient sentence. Nadine Menendez's trial is expected to take place later this summer. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

The U.S. Attorney for New Jersey told jurors in Manhattan Wednesday that Sen. Bob Menendez complained to him about the criminal prosecution of his friend and asked him to “look at it carefully.”

Philip Sellinger is the second top enforcement official from New Jersey to testify during Menendez’s corruption trial, which is now in its fifth week, that the senator asked for special treatment in a specific criminal matter. Former state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal testified last week that the three-term Democrat asked him about an insurance fraud investigation threatening to ensnare a friend’s company.

Sellinger told jurors he was a private attorney angling to become New Jersey’s new U.S. attorney at the time of his December 2020 conversation with Menendez in the senator’s Washington, D.C., office.

New Jersey’s senior senator told Sellinger that his friend Fred Daibes “was being treated unfairly,” according to Sellinger.

“Sen. Menendez hoped that if I became U.S. attorney, I would look at it carefully,” Sellinger told jurors.

Daibes’ name didn’t ring any bells, so Sellinger assured the senator he would regard all cases carefully as U.S. attorney, he testified. But he called the three-term Democrat the next day to inform him that he discovered he’d been involved in a 2017 lawsuit against the borough of Edgewater that implicated Daibes, a real estate developer and bank founder there. If he became U.S. attorney, he told Menendez, he’d have to alert his bosses at the Department of Justice about it as a potential conflict of interest and they would decide if he should recuse himself from the case, he testified.

That didn’t end the matter. Sellinger recounted in court several other calls and meetings — by Menendez and his associates — where they brought up the Daibes case.

Sellinger said the senator’s ask was unusual. The U.S. attorney is the top federal law enforcement official in New Jersey, overseeing all operations, including 1,500 criminal and 2,500 civil cases a year, as well as investigations and appeals, Sellinger told jurors. That means the person in that position rarely gets personally involved in specific cases, he added.

Sometime later, Menendez told Sellinger that he wouldn’t suggest President Biden nominate him to be New Jersey’s next U.S. attorney, saying the White House had requested multiple candidates to consider. Menendez instead named Esther Suarez — now Hudson County’s prosecutor — as his pick.

When her appointment later fell through, Sellinger reached back to Menendez to tell him he was still interested, and by December 2021, he had the job. On his first day as U.S. attorney, he reviewed the office’s major cases and alerted his new supervisors of four cases where potential conflicts of interest might warrant his recusal — including Daibes, he testified.

The next week, Sellinger’s bosses ordered him off the Daibes case.

A friendship ended

Sellinger told jurors he first met Menendez about 20 years ago, when he began supporting his campaign fundraisers. They became so close that Sellinger attended the Menendezes’ October 2020 wedding, and the two couples socialized.

But it didn’t take long after Sellinger’s recusal from Daibes’ case for him learn the senator was irked, testimony showed. Sellinger told jurors he called Menendez in March 2022 to see if he’d speak at the formal ceremony recognizing his appointment.

“He said, ‘I’m going to pass. The only thing worse than not having a relationship with the United States attorney is people thinking you have a relationship with the United States attorney, and you don’t,’” Sellinger testified.

Prosecutor Lara Pomerantz asked Sellinger what he thought the senator meant.

“That we no longer had a relationship,” Sellinger responded.

Prosecutors have accused Daibes of giving the Menendezes cash and gold bars in exchange for his help in squashing his criminal troubles. Daibes has long been accused of using money to expand his influence in Edgewater, schemes the State Commission of Investigation revealed last year.

As Wednesday wound to a close, defense attorney Avi Weitzman began his cross-examination. He focused on Sellinger’s reputation and self-perception as someone whose integrity and good name are of paramount importance. Weitzman asked: Had he made those “core values” known to Menendez?

“I never believed him to be asking me to do something unethical or improper,” Sellinger said.

Jose Uribe cross continued

Earlier Wednesday, defense attorneys finished cross-examining Jose Uribe, the failed insurance broker who became the prosecution’s star witness when he agreed to plead guilty and testify against his co-defendants.

Uribe has said he gave Nadine $15,000 for a down payment for a new Mercedes-Benz convertible and paid her monthly $900 payments for almost three years in a “deal” that required her to connect him with the senator, who he expected to “stop and kill all investigation.”

The New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, at that time, had indicted Uribe’s friend Elvis Parra and Uribe worried investigators’ continuing, expanding probe would reach a company, Phoenix Risk Management, that he was running illicitly after he was barred from the business because of his own 2011 insurance fraud conviction.

Through questioning by defense attorney Adam Fee, Uribe acknowledged that he never mentioned money or the Mercedes to Sen. Menendez, spelled out the terms of his deal with Nadine Menendez to the senator, or discussed details about the senator’s calls and meeting with Grewal.

While Fee spent Tuesday trying to depict Uribe as a chronic liar and criminal, he spent Wednesday morning attacking his memory, accusing Uribe of regular intoxication and Xanax use.

“Sir, have you driven drunk before?” Fee asked Uribe, prompting an objection from prosecutors that Judge Sidney H. Stein sustained.

Uribe denied he was drunk or otherwise incapacitated when he met with Menendez.

“I am not sitting with a U.S. senator to discuss a serious matter when I am intoxicated,” he said.

Wednesday also brought some ping-ponging testimony from prosecutors and defense attorneys about some of the more salacious moments of Uribe’s testimony.

Fee suggested during cross-examination that Uribe made up his “super weird” claim that Menendez rang a little bell to summon Nadine when the men needed paper so Uribe could write down the names of the people and companies he wanted the senator to inquire about.

But Pomerantz showed jurors a text Nadine sent Fred Daibes in August 2019 that read: “I am looking for the perfect bell. I have not found it yet, but I will.”

Earlier, Fee tried to cast doubt on Uribe’s claim that Menendez told him in Spanish during a dinner when Nadine Menendez had disappeared to the bathroom: “I saved your little a** not once but twice.”

Pomerantz then showed jurors a text Menendez sent his wife during that dinner that read: “Can you go to bathroom.”

Also on Wednesday, Stein held a closed-door hearing about Nadine Menendez’s trial date, which had been scheduled for July 8. He pushed it to Aug. 5 but requested additional information from her doctors about the state of her breast cancer, her prognosis, and a projection for when she might be able to assist in her defense in hopes of setting “a more realistic trial date.”

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