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By: Ellen Cans
The federal bribery trial of long-time New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez is underway.
As reported by the NY Post, on Monday, his sister testified on his behalf saying that it is common practice for him to stash cash at home. “It’s normal. He’s a Cuban,” Caridad Gonzalez, 80, said of her “baby brother”. Menendez, 70, who was born in Manhattan, inherited a distrust for banks from his father, who ran a successful bowtie business in Cuba before falling into conflict with local authorities, his sister said as she testified in Manhattan federal court. “He would always say, ‘Don’t trust the banks, you must always have money at home,’” Gonzalez said of their father.
“Every Cuban that came to the US, you would find that they would have cash in their home, because in Cuba they can take everything away from you, whether you like it or not,” Gonzalez added.
Menendez, the embattled Democrat, has served as the senior U.S. senator from New Jersey since 2006. Menendez is accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of cash, gold and a new Mercedes in exchange for political favors. The trial is not in NJ, but in Manhattan, as it was brought by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. The September 2023 indictment alleges a bribery scheme that lasted for nearly five years, and which also charges two NJ businessmen— Fred Daibes and Wael Hana. All three men have pleaded not guilty. His wife, Mrs. Nadine Menendez, who has also pleaded not guilty, will be tried separately, in July. Investigators who had searched Menendez’ Englewood Cliffs, N.J. home, in June 2022 discovered wads of cash in coat pockets, boots and a safe, per the Post.
The senator is charged with accepting over $566,000 in cash, $150,000 in gold bars and other gifts in exchange for using his powerful post as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to dole out favors to local businessmen and the Egyptian and Qatari governments, the Post reported.
On Monday, Menendez’s defense attorneys called up the senator’s older sister as the first witness. The defense hoped Gonzalez’s testimony would normalize the cash found in the senator’s home. Her testimony lasted for about an hour with Gonzalez describing how she was “very close” to the senator and helped raise him as a child growing up in Union City and Hoboken. “Is it fair to say you love your brother?” prosecutor Lara Pomerantz asked her just before she left the stand. “Yes, I do,” she responded.
The next witness called up by the defense was Nadine’s sister, Katia Tabourian, who testified that Nadine’s history with the gold bars dates back years before the bribery allegations. Tabourian testified that Nadine inherited her grandmother’s treasured gold bar stash, decades ago, after her death. “I got the gold coins, and my sister got my grandmother’s gold bars,” Tabourian told jurors. “My sister was my grandmother’s favorite out of five grandkids.” Tabourian also noted that Nadine’s practice of having
a safe in her closet was very normal for people of Lebanese heritage, including their mother. “Everybody had a safe,” she testified.
Menendez’s lawyers have called the charges against him a “distortion of the truth.” “Senator Menendez isn’t just ‘not guilty’ — he is innocent of these charges..
