Judge Sidney Stein gaveled Sen. Bob Menendez’s (D-NJ) bribery and corruption trial into action on Monday. By Wednesday, a jury — six men and six women — was seated for opening arguments. On Thursday morning, jurors got to hold one-kilo gold bars the FBI seized from a bedroom closet during a search of the Englewood Cliffs home Menendez shares with his wife, Nadine.

An FBI special agent, the prosecution’s first witness, showed the jury a duffel bag stuffed with $100,00 in cash taken from the senator’s home office. And jurors also saw wads of $100 bills that were hidden in the senator’s jackets and boots.

“They started off by getting some of the most impactful evidence admitted … literally, gold at the end of the rainbow, like, as something that the jurors can touch and feel and see and understand readily,” said former federal prosecutor Chris Gramiccioni. He said the prosecution scored big points, with flashy evidence to corroborate a strong opening statement.

“This was not politics as usual. This was politics for profit,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Pomerantz told jurors, saying that “for years, Robert Menendez abused his position to feed his own greed and to keep his wife happy; that Menendez put his power up for sale.”

The Menendez defense team blamed his wife, Nadine, saying she fell behind on her mortgage and had crashed her car. “She kept him in the dark on what she was asking others to give her,” attorney Avi Weitzman told jurors. “She tried to get cash and assets any which way she could. As the evidence will show, she asked family, she asked friends,” including their co-defendants. The defense argued that Sen. Menendez didn’t have access to the gold in the closet.

Nadine Menendez will be tried separately, due to a medical issue that her husband disclosed Thursday is “grade three breast cancer” that will require a mastectomy.

Lawyers for co-defendants Wael Hana and Fred Daibes — both New Jersey businessmen who’ve known Nadine Menendez for years — told jurors their clients did give her cash and gold, but “none of the things found in Nadine Menendez’s home can be connected to any official acts of the senator.”

The trial continues on Monday.