NEW YORK (AP) — A prosecutor accused Sen. Bob Menendez in a closing argument at his bribery trial Monday of putting his power up for sale to benefit three New Jersey businessmen who bribed him with gold, cash and a luxury car.
The presentation by Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Monteleoni that will continue on Tuesday prompted the Democrat to scoff as he left the courthouse, saying: “The government is intoxicated with their own rhetoric.”
Minutes earlier, Monteleoni urged the Manhattan federal court jury to follow a trail of hundreds of emails and text messages between the businessmen and Menendez and his wife to see the link between the businessmen and the bribe proceeds found in an FBI raid on the Menendez residence in June 2022.
He said they'll also be able to match fingerprint evidence linking the businessmen and Menendez to the bribes, including fingerprints on the tape that bound thousands of dollars in cash hidden in coat pockets, boots and boxes found at the Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, home owned by his wife, Nadine Menendez.
Monteleoni said the senator “put his power up for sale.”
The prosecutor said it wasn't enough that the senator was one of the most powerful people in Washington as the ranking member and later the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he could block or approve hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to nations such as Egypt.
“He also wanted to use it to pile up riches for himself and his wife,” Monteleoni said.
Monteleoni's closing as the trial enters its ninth week in Manhattan federal court was about half finished when court concluded for the day.
As he left the courthouse, Menendez mocked the prosecutor's closing, saying the government had “spent two hours on charts, not witnesses that came before the jury.”
He added that Monteleoni had spent “two hours telling jurors about what they believe conversations should be that they never heard.”
Monteleoni cited a “clear pattern of corruption” and told jurors to closely review communications between the Menendez couple and the businessmen to see evidence of bribes along with proof that they were trying to cover up their schemes.
Prosecutors say gold bars, over $480,000 in cash and a Mercedes-Benz discovered during the FBI raid are the proceeds of bribes paid to get Menendez to help the men in their business dealings.
Monteleoni said defense claims that gold in the house had mostly been inherited by Nadine Menendez was belied by serial numbers on gold bars that showed they had come from the businessmen who paid bribes.
“All this talk about Nadine having family gold is a distraction,” he said.
In return for bribes, prosecutors say, the senator took actions from 2018 to 2022 to protect or enhance the business interests of the businessmen — including protecting Wael Hana's monopoly over the certification of meat exported to Egypt from the U.S. to ensure it conformed to Islamic dietary requirements.
Besides charges of bribery, extortion, fraud and obstruction of justice, Menendez has also been charged with acting as a foreign agent of Egypt.
Monteleoni said Menendez took bribe-driven actions to benefit Egypt, including speedily clearing nearly $100 million in military aid and demanding that a top U.S. agriculture official stop interfering with Hana's meat-certification monopoly, causing the official to reassure U.S. Embassy workers in Egypt “that he has their back.”
The prosecutor said Menendez also shared sensitive nonpublic information about the number of Americans at the U.S. Embassy in Egypt and the number of Egyptians who worked there, knowing it would reach the Egyptians, and helped the Egyptian government prepare its response to U.S. senators critical of its policies.
All the while, Monteleoni said, Menendez was sometimes speaking vaguely in his communications with his wife and the businessmen because, as she knew, he “wants his fingerprints off it” and “they don't want to get caught.”
“He was acting like a bribed man because that's what he was,” the prosecutor said.
Menendez, 70, along with Hana and real estate developer Fred Daibes, have pleaded not guilty and are on trial together. A third businessman, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty in the case and testified against the others during the trial, the second the senator has faced in the last decade. None of the defendants testified.
An earlier trial against Menendez in New Jersey ended in 2017 with a deadlocked jury. After the charges were lodged last fall, Menendez was forced to give up his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Nadine Menendez, 57, the senator's wife, is also charged in the case, but her trial has been postponed while she recovers from breast cancer surgery. She also has pleaded not guilty.
As part of his defense, Menendez's lawyers have argued that tens of thousands of dollars in cash found in Bob Menendez's boots and jackets resulted from his habit of storing cash at home after hearing from his family how they escaped Cuba in 1951 with only the cash they had hidden in their home.
Menendez’s lawyers have also asserted that his wife, who began dating the senator in 2018 and married him two years later, kept him in the dark about her financial troubles and assistance she requested from the businessmen.
Menendez was born in Manhattan after the family moved to New York City, though he was raised in the New Jersey cities of Hoboken and Union City, according to testimony by his sister.
Menendez has held public office continuously since 1986, serving as a state legislator before serving 14 years as a U.S. congressman. In 2006, then-Gov. Jon Corzine appointed Menendez to the Senate seat he vacated when he became governor.
Several weeks ago, Menendez filed to run for reelection this year as an independent.
United States Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., center right, leaves federal court following the day's proceedings in his bribery trial, Monday, July 8, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Larry Neumeister)
United States Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., leaves federal court following the day's proceedings in his bribery trial, Monday, July 8, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Larry Neumeister)
FILE - U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., leaves Manhattan federal court, May, 14, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — In what appears to be a sophisticated, remote attack, pagers used by hundreds of members of Hezbollah exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria Tuesday, killing at least nine people — including an 8-year-old girl — and wounding thousands more.
A U.S. official said Israel briefed the U.S. on the operation — in which small amounts of explosive secreted in the pagers were detonated — on Tuesday after it was concluded. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the information publicly.
The Iran-backed militant group blamed Israel for the deadly explosions, which targeted an extraordinary breadth of people and showed signs of being a long-planned operation. Details on how the attack was executed are largely uncertain and investigators have not immediately said how the pagers were detonated. The Israeli military has declined to comment.
Here's what we know so far.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah previously warned the group’s members not to carry cellphones, saying they could be used by Israel to track the group's movements. As a result, the organization uses pagers to communicate.
A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press the exploded devices were from a new brand the group had not used before. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press, did not identify the brand name or supplier.
Nicholas Reese, adjunct instructor at the Center for Global Affairs in New York University’s School of Professional Studies, explains smart phones carry a higher risk for intercepted communications in contrast to the more simple technology of pagers.
This type of attack will also force Hezbollah to change their communication strategies, said Reese, who previously worked as an intelligence officer, adding that survivors of Tuesday's explosions are likely to throw away "not just their pagers, but their phones, and leaving their tablets or any other electronic devices.”
Even with a U.S. official confirming it was a planned operation by Israel, multiple theories have emerged Tuesday around how the attack might have been carried out. Several experts who spoke with The Associated Press explained how the explosions were most likely the result of supply-chain interference.
Very small explosive devices may have been built into the pagers prior to their delivery to Hezbollah, and then all remotely triggered simultaneously, possibly with a radio signal.
By the time of the attack, “the battery was probably half-explosive and half-actual battery," said Carlos Perez, director of security intelligence at TrustedSec.
A former British Army bomb disposal officer explained that an explosive device has five main components: A container, a battery, a triggering device, a detonator and an explosive charge.
“A pager has three of those already,” explained the ex-officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he now works as a consultant with clients on the Middle East. “You would only need to add the detonator and the charge.”
After security camera footage appeared on social media Tuesday purporting to show one of the pagers explode on a man’s hip in a Lebanese market, two munitions experts offered opinions that corroborate the U.S. official's statement that the blast appeared to be the result of a tiny explosive device.
“Looking at the video, the size of the detonation is similar to that caused by an electric detonator alone or one that incorporates an extremely small, high-explosive charge,” said Sean Moorhouse, a former British Army officer and explosive ordinance disposal expert.
This signals involvement of a state actor, Moorhouse said. He adds that Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, is the most obvious suspect to have the resources to carry out such an attack.
N.R. Jenzen-Jones, an expert in military arms who is director of the Australian-based Armament Research Services, notes that Israel had been accused of carrying out similar operations in the past. Last year, AP reported that Iran accused Israel of trying to sabotage its ballistic missile program through faulty foreign parts that could explode, damaging or destroying the weapons before they could be used.
It would take a long time to plan an attack of this scale. The exact specifics are still unknown, but experts who spoke with the AP shared estimates ranging anywhere between several months to two years.
The sophistication of the attack suggests that the culprit has been collecting intelligence for a long time, Reese explained. An attack of this caliber requires building the relationships needed to gain physical access to the pagers before they were sold; developing the technology that would be embedded in the devices; and developing sources who can confirm that the targets were carrying the pagers.
And it's likely the compromised pagers seemed normal to their users for some time before the attack. Elijah J. Magnier, a Brussels-based veteran and a senior political risk analyst with over 37 years experience in the region, said he has had conversations with members of Hezbollah and survivors of Tuesday's pager attack. He said the pagers were procured more than six months ago.
“The pagers functioned perfectly for six months," Magnier said. What triggered the explosion, he said, appeared to be an error message sent to all the devices.
Based on his conversations with Hezbollah members, Magnier also said that many pagers didn’t go off, allowing the group to inspect them. They came to the conclusion that between 3 to 5 grams of a highly explosive material were concealed or embedded in the circuitry, he said.
Jenzen-Jones also adds that “such a large-scale operation also raises questions of targeting" — stressing the number of causalities and enormous impact reported so far.jenzen
“How can the party initiating the explosive be sure that a target’s child, for example, is not playing with the pager at the time it functions?” he said.
Hezbollah issued a statement confirming at least two members were killed in the bombings. One of them was the son of a Hezbollah member in parliament, according to the Hezbollah official who spoke anonymously. The group later issued announcements that six other members were killed Tuesday, though it did not specify how.
“We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression that also targeted civilians,” Hezbollah said, adding that Israel will “for sure get its just punishment.”
People donate blood for those who were injured by their exploded handheld pagers, at a Red Cross center, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
