(Bloomberg) -- With Washington already riveted by looming fights over the budget, immigration, and a possible government shutdown, yet another drama began unfolding some 220 miles north where the bribery trial of Senator Robert Menendez got underway and his lawyer contested charges that the New Jersey Democrat was corrupt.
Menendez's attorney Abbe Lowell denied that the lawmaker used his position to advance the business interests and personal whims of a Florida eye doctor in exchange for lavish trips and hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations. Lowell said Menendez and the doctor, Salomon Melgen, had a warm friendship spanning two decades and that they never agreed to break the law.
“Acting out of friendship is not improper, it's not corrupt and it's certainly not a crime,” Lowell told federal jurors in Newark. The senator's “only relationship with Dr. Melgen was one of friendship. Friends listen to friends and they try to help friends if they think friends are right.”
An attorney for Melgen, who is on trial with Menendez, said he doesn't dispute that the doctor gave the lawmaker gifts, but said prosecutors have mistaken their meaning and falsely accused two innocent men.
“Where's the evidence of why these men did what they did?,” said Melgen's lawyer Kirk Ogrosky. “There's no corrupt agreement.”
The trial began in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, with a prosecutor laying out the accusations first unveiled with the indictment of the two men in April 2015. Menendez reaped steady benefits over seven years from Melgen, a friend who sought his help to get visas for three of his foreign girlfriends, prosecutor Peter Koski said. Melgen also requested the senator's influence when the U.S. accused him of overbilling Medicare by $8.9 million and the Dominican Republic refused to honor a contract to screen shipping containers, Koski said.
Koski said Melgen treated Menendez to trips on his private jet to Florida and the Dominican Republic, and paid for the senator and a girlfriend to stay at a luxury Paris hotel. Melgen also gave more than $750,000 to help the senator's campaign in 2012.
“This case is about a corrupt politician who sold his Senate office for a life he couldn't afford, and a greedy doctor who put him on his payroll,” Koski told the jury of seven women and five men. “Senator Menendez went to bat for Dr. Melgen at the highest levels of the United States government.”
Menendez is fighting to avoid prison as the U.S. Senate enters a critical month in which Congress seeks to advance emergency funds for victims of Hurricane Harvey, avert a default on the nation's debt and avoid a government shutdown. The jury's verdict could have important implications in the Senate, where Republicans hold 52 seats, while Democrats control 46 and count on two independents who caucus with them. If he's convicted, two-thirds of the Senate would have to vote to expel him.
Close Friends
Menendez and Melgen, both 63, have pleaded not guilty to charges of bribery, conspiracy and honest services fraud. The senator also is accused of false statements on his ethics disclosure forms. Melgen was convicted this year on health-care fraud charges in Florida. He chose to go to trial in Newark rather than plead guilty and implicate the senator.
“I have committed my entire adult life, since I was 19, to fighting for the people of New Jersey,” Menendez said, talking to reporters outside the courthouse before the trial began. “Never, not once, not once, have I dishonored my public office.”
The senator may have to decide whether to skip some trial days to be in Washington for crucial votes. He said he'll make the decision based on the “gravity of the situation” and the difference his vote could make. U.S. District Judge William Walls previously denied a request by Menendez to delay the trial when he faces key votes in the Senate.
Lowell acknowledged that Menendez helped Melgen by talking to bureaucrats, senators and a cabinet secretary. But he said none of that was improper because the senator had intervened on behalf of many others and believed in the merits of the policies he advocated. Prosecutors, he said, improperly tried to criminalize a friendship that began 25 years ago and deepened over vacations, marriages, birthdays and other family events.
While prosecutors branded several of the flights as bribes, Menendez actually took 23 trips to the Dominican Republic and paid for 14 himself, Lowell said. In March 2009, Lowell said, Menendez attended the wedding of Melgen's daughter and gave the newlyweds $1,000.
Despite the senator's efforts, Melgen failed to overturn the finding that he owed $8.9 million to Medicare administrators, or succeeded in convincing the Dominican government to honor his cargo screening contract.
“How much did Dr. Melgen profit from Menendez's help?” Ogrosky asked jurors. “Zero, zip, nada, not one dime.”
‘Exception'
The U.S. sought to undermine the defense argument that Menendez was helping Melgen just because they were friends. “Friends can commit crimes together. Friends can bribe each other,” Koski said, noting that a career politician isn't going to accept bribes from a stranger. “There is no friendship exception for bribery.”
New Jersey's other U.S. senator, Cory Booker, also a Democrat, sat behind Menendez in the courtroom to support him.
The case is U.S. v. Menendez, 15-cr-00155, U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey (Newark).
To contact the reporters on this story: David Voreacos in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, at dvoreacos@bloomberg.net, Neil Weinberg in New York at nweinberg2@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider, Peter Blumberg
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