Judge orders separate corruption trials for Sen. Bob Menendez and wife

A federal judge in Manhattan has ordered Sen. Bob Menendez to stand trial starting May 6 as scheduled on corruption charges, but agreed to try his wife — who’s indicted along with him in a wide-ranging bribery scheme — separately this summer because of her sudden health crisis.

Prosecutors wanted U.S. District Court Judge Sidney H. Stein to delay everyone’s trial if he agreed to Nadine Menendez’s request for a postponement, so that they could avoid two trials. Three businessmen — Fred Daibes, Wael Hana, and Jose Uribe — have been charged alongside the couple, although Uribe has already pleaded guilty.

But Stein said “substantial uncertainty” over when Nadine Menendez would be fit for trial forced him to sever the cases. Her attorneys this week asked the court to delay her trial because she needs surgery soon for an undisclosed ailment, as well as time to recover. Stein set her new trial date for July 8, with a status hearing on June 3, but acknowledged any lingering health issues could result in further delays.

“The trial is going forward without Mrs. Menendez. It’s unfortunate,” Stein said. “But in order to give some stability — and certainty, is the word I’m looking for — we’re going to trial on May 6 … everyone, including the government, deserves some certainty here.”

Menendez’s attorneys welcomed the May trial start, despite asking for a delay — which Stein denied — weeks ago. A later trial would imperil Menendez’s bid to retain his Senate seat, which he has held since 2006, in the November election, when the longtime Democrat plans to run as an independent, said his attorney, Adam Fee.

“We don’t need it anymore, and we don’t want it,” Fee said. “Every day of delay is prejudicial to him … we are asserting our right to a speedy trial. We think an adjournment to July is really an adjournment beyond July.”

Hana also wanted to keep the May date because he has a wife and children in Egypt and fears the trial and surrounding publicity will destroy his halal meat business, his attorney said.

Prosecutors say Menendez, New Jersey’s senior senator, and his wife took gold bars, cash, a luxury car, and other bribes from Hana, Uribe, and Daibes starting in 2018 in exchange for using his influence in various ways to help them as well as the governments of Egypt and Qatar.

Many motions

Stein decided a slew of other motions Thursday during a two-hour hearing at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan federal courthouse in Manhattan. None of the defendants were present, as all waived their appearances.

“A lot has been happening in the past couple of days,” Stein said before reading his rulings into the court record.

Most of his decisions were bad news for the defendants.

Stein denied defense requests to move the trial to New Jersey, saying attorneys failed to prove a New York trial would be too costly, inconvenient, unfair, or otherwise problematic for him, his co-defendants, witnesses, and others. He rejected the senator’s contention that a case “tied so closely to the democratic interests of New Jersey residents should not be determined by a New York jury.”

The Menendezes live in Englewood, “which, according to the internet, is 20 miles” away, Stein noted.

“These distances are trivial, regardless of the fact there may be heavy traffic in and out of New York,” he said.

He also denied defense requests to dismiss parts of the indictment and to compel prosecutors to give defense attorneys more information about their case.

“The government has put substantial meat on the bones of the S-4 indictment through discovery,” Stein said.

Stein gave Nadine Menendez 30 days to obtain new attorneys after her current lawyers begged off the case because of an undisclosed conflict. Prosecutors have indicated they could call at least one of her lawyers as a witness, alleging he has knowledge of their claim that Nadine Menendez tried to obstruct justice during their investigation.

The judge denied a request by Menendez’s attorneys to allow them to prescreen potential jurors using a written questionnaire before calling them to court for in-person jury selection. They blamed “intense pretrial publicity” and said such prescreening would help uncover disqualifying biases and protect Menendez’s right to an impartial jury.

He directed attorneys to come to a consensus on questions to guide jury selection. The defense offered about 75 questions, ranging from potential jurors’ understanding of halal food to their thoughts on keeping cash at home instead of in a bank account to their perceptions of New Jersey residents, politicians, wealthy people, immigrants, Coptic Christians, Egypt, and more.

As the hearing wrapped up, Stein joked that he was boring attorneys, who were “staring into the middle distance.”

“I’m sorry I did not read it more theatrically,” he said.

The trial is expected to take four to six weeks. And Stein made it clear Thursday he won’t tolerate time-wasting or “gamesmanship.”

“It’s kumbaya time,” he told the crowd of attorneys in attendance. “Let’s not go the other way.”