NEW YORK — On the same day that Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) announced in the midst of his corruption trial that his wife has advanced breast cancer and will undergo surgery and possibly radiation treatment, an FBI agent testified that he had to call in reinforcements to count all the cash seized during a 2022 search of the couple’s home.
The news about Nadine Menendez’s specific diagnosis and the details about the FBI raid made for a kind of split screen on Thursday. Her actions will figure prominently in the senator’s case, with a defense attorney telling the jury in opening statements that she had kept her husband in the dark about her personal finances and about where she obtained gold bars and other luxury items that the FBI seized.
Prosecutors say those were bribes from several businessmen in exchange for the senator’s help on ventures involving Egypt and Qatar. Though Nadine Menendez, 57, is a co-defendant in the case, she is scheduled to be tried in July because of her legal team’s previous disclosure of her “serious medical condition.” Her attorney declined to comment Thursday.
“Nadine is suffering from Grade 3 breast cancer, which will require her to have mastectomy surgery,” Menendez said in a four-paragraph statement released by his office. “We are, of course, concerned about the seriousness and advanced stage of the disease. … We hope and pray for the best results.”
Menendez’s statement said she had asked him to disclose her diagnosis “as a result of constant press inquiries and reporters following my wife.” It portrayed the couple as more united than the picture painted in court by the defense a day earlier.
The FBI special agent who led the team executing two warrants on the Menendez home in June 2022 took the stand late Thursday morning as the prosecution’s first witness.
Aristotelis Kougemitros testified that the search team’s initial plan was to lay out all the cash they found in the Englewood Cliffs, N.J., residence and photograph it with serial numbers visible. That soon became untenable, he said, so he decided the cash would be seized as potential evidence of bribery. The FBI sent two more agents equipped with cash-counting machines.
The search team found $100,000 in a Burberry drawstring bag, which the agent opened and displayed in court to a rapt jury and judge. The FBI also seized $100,000 in a brown paper bag, $95,000 in a yellow plastic bag, $67,300 in five jackets, $33,220 in a small black duffel bag, $7,500 in a reddish-brown boot, and tens of thousands of dollars more in envelopes found in several rooms.
All told, Kougemitros said, the agents seized more than $486,000, as well as 11 one-ounce gold bars and two one-kilogram ingots.
“The sheer volume of bills that we encountered, which you can see in some of the photographs, was too much to count by hand,” he said. The Menendezes were not home during the raid, he noted.
In his opening, defense attorney Avi Weitzman had said the couple “largely lived separate lives” after they married in 2020 and did not share bank accounts, credit cards or cellphone plans.
“She kept him in the dark on what she was asking others to give her,” Weitzman said. “She was outgoing; she was fun-loving. But she wasn’t going to let Bob know that she had financial problems. So what did Nadine do? She tried to get cash and assets any which way she could.”
According to the defense, she “sidelined” her husband from conversations she was having with the New Jersey businessmen who are alleged to have supplied her with gold, cash, a Mercedes-Benz convertible and other items — all in exchange for his assistance on deals with Egypt and an investment fund run by a member of the Qatari royal family.
Prosecutors say a trace of serial numbers on several of the ingots found in the home showed they came from New Jersey real estate developer Fred Daibes, a co-defendant in the trial.
Attorneys for Daibes and the final co-defendant, Wael “Will” Hana, told the jury Thursday that prosecutors would not be able to prove their clients had a corrupt agreement to provide cash and luxury items in exchange for official acts by Menendez to benefit their businesses.
Lawrence S. Lustberg, an attorney for Hana, said his client and Nadine Menendez had been friends for 15 years by the time they were indicted, sharing the same circle of friends, traveling together and supporting each other “like brother and sister.”
They traded gifts — exercise equipment, wine cases, tequila, carpeting, an air purifier, Key lime pies — and “Will’s gifts got nicer as his business succeeded,” Lustberg said, acknowledging that Hana had given her two of the smaller gold bars found in the Menendez home.
“Don’t let them say that every gift is a bribe,” he said.
César de Castro, the attorney for Daibes, acknowledged that he gave the couple gold bars and cash but maintained that those were not bribes. He described Daibes as an evangelist for investing in gold — “he loves gold” — who had a friendship with the senator spanning more than three decades.
“Yes, gold bars were given by him. Yes, cash was given by him,” de Castro said, noting that Daibes’s DNA and fingerprints were found on items seized from the Menendez residence. “Possessing and using cash and gold is not a crime.”
Menendez’s defense began to cross-examine the FBI agent late Thursday afternoon. He is expected to complete his testimony Friday.
The trial is expected to last at least six weeks. Menendez, 70, faces 16 felony counts. If convicted on all, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
