Jurors at Menendez corruption trial hear about a boozy dinner and an unusual offer

The night Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife Nadine met three Egyptian men at a ritzy steakhouse in Washington, D.C., Terrie Williams-Thompson was sitting nearby, straining to hear.

The dinner companions were talking “low,” barely above a whisper, said Williams-Thompson, an undercover FBI investigator spying on them. But the conversation grew louder as the wine flowed, and before long, Williams-Thompson heard one thing clearly.

“What else can the love of my life do for you?” Nadine Menendez said.

On the 13th day of Menendez’s bribery trial in Manhattan, that proclamation was, in one way, the most damning of the day — federal prosecutor Lara Pomerantz‘s questioning of Williams-Thompson suggested it was a bald offer to foreign officials on behalf of Menendez, then one the most powerful politicians in the U.S. as ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

But Williams-Thompson told jurors she otherwise couldn’t hear what the men were talking about. And neither Williams-Thompson nor FBI special agent Chase Hunter Mills, who was secretly surveilling the gathering from a van parked on the street, knew the identities of the Menendezes’ guests during that May 21, 2019, dinner at Morton’s The Steakhouse, a posh eatery on D.C.’s famed K Street, where many lobbyists and special-interest groups are located.

So while Menendez’s meetings at Morton’s were briefly mentioned in previous testimony, it’s unclear if Tuesday’s testimony packed the punch prosecutors hoped it would.

Still, Williams-Thompson and her partner secretly recorded a video showing Menendez refilling the men’s wine glasses and the couple laughing and talking animatedly with the men, showing the dinner party was a friendly one, despite defense attorneys’ insistence otherwise.

Edgewater businessman Wael Hana, who’s Egyptian-American; Gen. Ahmed Helmy, a top Egyptian intelligence official; and another man were the three men at the Morton’s dinner.

Hana was one of three businessmen indicted alongside the Menendezes last September. Prosecutors say Hana secured exclusive rights to certify beef exports to Egypt by persuading the senator — through bribes of cash and gold bars given to Nadine — to release millions in military aid and arms to Egypt and share sensitive staffing details about the U.S. embassy in Cairo.

On cross-examination, defense attorneys said no one at the dinner party showed any concern they’d be seen or overheard, suggesting nothing nefarious was underway.

Attorney Adam Fee told jurors the senator ate at Morton’s “about 250 times” a year, indicating it was a routine outing for him. He also sought to deflate the “love of my life” comment by showing jurors there was an eight-day delay between the dinner and an official FBI report on the surveillance mission, where the comment was first documented.

A fortune in the bank

Jurors also heard Tuesday from FBI special agent Anna Frenzilli, who led a search of Nadine Menendez’s safe deposit box at an Englewood bank.

A locksmith pried the 10-by-10 box open at the FBI’s command, and inside, agents found 10 envelopes packed with $79,760 in cash, several passports, and piles of jewelry, Frenzilli testified. Agents seized the cash and other contents and sent it to the FBI’s headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, for forensic testing, she added.

Defense attorneys tried to distance the senator from the box, trotting out what has become their favorite strategy in the trial’s three weeks so far — blaming his wife.

Defense attorney Avi Weitzman, through questioning, pointed out that Nadine and her father, Garbis Tabourian, first leased the box in May 2016 — two years before she began dating Menendez. Frenzilli conceded that the bank had no record of the senator accessing the box. And several envelopes bore Nadine’s name, while much of the trinkets appeared to be women’s jewelry.

“Do you see the name Bob on any envelope?” Weitzman asked Frenzilli. “Do you see the name Menendez on any envelope?”

Next up was Charity Davis, a forensic data examiner who works at Quantico. She testified for over two hours in questioning that was so dry that at least five jurors and several spectators nodded off, while others fidgeted or doodled in notebooks.

Ultimately, prosecutor Catherine Ghosh showed through questioning that Davis and her evidence technicians found that two envelopes bore the DNA of Edgewater real estate developer Fred Daibes, a co-defendant who’s accused of bribing the Menendezes with cash and gold bars to help him land the investment of a member of Qatar’s royal family.

Disputes and delays

The day started and ended with arguments between the attorneys about exhibits and late filings.

Prosecutors last week warned Judge Sidney H. Stein that the trial was running behind schedule; Stein initially told jurors he expected it would not go beyond the first week of July.

But plenty of things have slowed it down since then. Jurors have arrived late, got stuck in the elevator, and temporarily relocated to a farther jury assembly room after a sink left running over the weekend flooded theirs. Bickering between the attorneys has prompted daily interruptions for the judge to call private “sidebar” huddles to settle conflicts at the bench, while mini hearings often bookend each day for Stein to decide disputes outside jurors’ earshot.

Tuesday started with prosecutors complaining to Stein about defense attorneys’ lengthy cross-examinations and tendency to ignore Stein’s three-day advance deadline for new court filings by either side.

It ended with a small victory for prosecutors when Stein agreed they could introduce evidence showing that the Menendezes traded thousands of emails, including on the day Nadine Menendez was at a car dealership picking up a new $60,000 Mercedes Benz convertible, which prosecutors say co-defendant Jose Uribe gave her as a bribe. Uribe, who pleaded guilty in March, is expected to testify against the couple.

“I’m still here,” she texted the senator from the dealership.

That exchange, along with the couple’s frequent emails and texts, belie defense attorneys’ contention that the couple largely led separate lives and that the senator wasn’t aware of the valuables his wife took or her related activities.

“This shows how they were in constant contact on rather quotidian issues,” Stein said in allowing prosecutors to introduce such messages.

The jury, though, will not hear that the reason Nadine Menendez needed a new car was because she wrecked hers by fatally hitting a pedestrian in Bogota. The judge agreed that was prejudicial and ordered attorneys to avoid detailing the crash or showing photos of her damaged car.

The trial is scheduled to resume at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, with testimony from another FBI agent.

An earlier version of this story misidentified one of the people who attended the May 21, 2019, at Morton’s as an Egyptian diplomat.