NEW YORK — On Wednesday, Bob Menendez requested a judge to overturn the guilty verdicts that compelled his resignation from the U.S. Senate and to grant him a new trial related to bribery charges.
Menendez’s legal team, representing the New Jersey Democrat, filed documents in a Manhattan federal court claiming that a recent disclosure from prosecutors indicated that inappropriate material was accessed on a computer used by the jury during their deliberations, deeming a new trial “unavoidable.”
At 70 years old, Menendez faced conviction in July on 16 charges, including bribery, primarily concerning claims that he accepted bribes to approve military assistance to Egypt.
As he awaits sentencing set for January 29, Menendez had already resigned from his Senate position in August.
During the trial, it was argued by prosecutors that Menendez received gold and cash from three businessmen in New Jersey in exchange for political favors.
Earlier this month, the prosecution informed Judge Sidney H. Stein in a letter that improper factual material, which Stein had previously ruled should be excluded from several trial exhibits, had inadvertently been included on a computer used by jurors to arrive at their decisions.
In their communication, prosecutors mentioned that incorrect versions of nine pieces of government evidence were not redacted as the judge had directed, which was intended to uphold the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, protecting legislative communication.
Prosecutors contended that no further action was needed regarding this mistake, citing reasons such as the absence of defense objections after they reviewed the documents before they were provided to the jury.
Moreover, prosecutors asserted that there was a “reasonable likelihood” that jurors had not seen the incorrectly edited documents and that those files could not have biased the defendants, as they held “secondary relevance” and were cumulative with adequately admitted evidence.
Menendez’s attorneys countered this in their latest filing, arguing that the exhibits in question contained the “only evidence in the record” linking Menendez to the military aid allegations concerning Egypt, which they claimed was a crucial aspect of the accusations against him.
The lawyers asserted that “in light of this serious breach, a new trial is unavoidable, despite all the hard work and resources that went into the first one.”
They lambasted the government’s efforts to transfer blame onto the defense for the oversight, remarking that the defense team only had a limited period to review the nearly 3,000 exhibits on the laptop.
“They had the right to expect that the government had not mischaracterized non-admitted and constitutionally barred exhibits as accepted ones,” they wrote. “If this was treated as a waiver, it would incentivize parties to engage in deceitful practices.”
