A key witness in Sen. Bob Menendez’s corruption trial said Friday that he bribed the New Jersey Democrat and gave his wife, Nadine Menendez, a new Mercedes-Benz convertible in order to “get power and influence.”
In March, Jose Uribe, a New Jersey insurance salesman arrested alongside Menendez, entered a guilty plea and acknowledged his purchase of a $60,000 luxury automobile with the intention of influencing the senator. He’s collaborating with prosecutors. The senator has denied accepting bribes.
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On Friday, Uribe stated that he had agreed to present Nadine Menendez with a car in exchange for the senator’s assistance in ending criminal investigations into two of his associates by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office. He testified that he bribed the senator with Wael Hana, the founder of a halal certification company that authorities claim was used to pay bribes to the couple.
Throughout the senator’s corruption trial, which is now in its fourth week, prosecutors have used text messages, emails, voicemails, and financial records to portray him and his wife as participants in a complex bribery scheme involving a halal meat monopoly, the Egyptian and Qatari governments, and attempts to influence several criminal investigations.
The senator is on trial alongside two New Jersey businessmen, Hana and Fred Daibes, a real estate developer. All three have pleaded not guilty. The postponement of Nadine Menendez’s trial until later this summer is due to her ongoing treatment for breast cancer. She’s also pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors provided text messages as evidence that Nadine Menendez complained to Hana about her lack of a car after being involved in an automobile accident that killed a pedestrian in December 2018. Authorities did not charge Nadine Menendez with the fatality.
Meanwhile, Uribe was frantic to assist a business friend charged with insurance fraud and an employee under investigation, according to authorities.
“I was f****d,” Uribe admitted Friday.
According to Uribe, Hana assured him he could resolve the difficulties for $200,000 to $250,000 and connected him with the Menendezes.
According to prosecutors, in January 2019, the senator contacted New Jersey’s attorney general, Gurbir Grewal, in an attempt to disrupt the insurance fraud prosecution. The claimed meddling was unsuccessful, and Uribe’s business associate finally pleaded guilty. However, the probe into Uribe’s employee, whom he considers a family member, continues.
He told jurors that Uribe and Nadine Menendez agreed that he would buy her the automobile she wanted and that the senator, whom she would marry the following year, would try to get the probe dropped.
According to the accusations, Nadine Menendez got her new car by early April 2019, after meeting Uribe in a restaurant parking lot and receiving $15,000 in cash as a down payment.
“Congratulations, mon amour de la vie! We are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes,” she allegedly texted the senator.
Uribe later arranged car payments, texting an acquaintance, “I don’t want to use anything with my name on it,” according to communications shown to jurors.
Months later, prosecutors allege Uribe texted Nadine Menendez about the employee. “Please help,” the text said.
“I will not let you down,” Nadine Menendez allegedly said.
“We need to make things go away,” Uribe added, according to prosecutors.
A few days later, the senator contacted the attorney general, Grewal, to arrange a meeting. Grewal testified about the January 2019 phone discussion with Menendez and the September 2019 visit to the senator’s Newark office.
Menendez “raised a concern about my office’s handling of matters involving Hispanic defendants as compared to non-Hispanic defendants—in particular, matters handled by the office of the insurance fraud prosecutor,” Grewal said, adding that he asked Menendez if the concern was “about a pending criminal manner, to which he responded, ‘yes.'”
Grewal summoned another attorney from his office to the September meeting, and Menendez brought up the subject again, according to his testimony.
“I can’t talk to you about this,” Grewal remembered telling Menendez.
When the two departed the meeting with Menendez, Grewal stated the other attorney turned to him and said, “Whoa, that was gross.”
When asked by Menendez’s attorney if the senator had threatened him, Grewal said, “No.”
After the FBI searched the Menendezes’ home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, in June 2022 and discovered stacks of cash, gold bars, and the Mercedes, Nadine Menendez and Uribe met to discuss what he would say if asked about the car payments, according to his plea agreement.
“I told her that a dear friend of mine was in a financial predicament, and I was assisting that friend in making auto payments, and that when she was financially sound, she would repay me. Nadine says, ‘That sounds good,'” Uribe informed the judge in March, according to the AP.
Prosecutors allege that the senator then issued a check to his wife, who subsequently wrote one to Uribe, describing it as a loan. Prosecutors said the depiction was a falsehood intended to conceal the prior bribe.
Menendez’s defenders have attempted to transfer blame to his wife, claiming they led separate lives and that he was mostly unaware of her connections with the three businessmen accused of bribery.
“She kept Bob out of those conversations,” his attorney, Avi Weitzman, said.
