If the case against U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) sounds familiar, that’s because the 70-year-old Democrat was tried for corruption seven years ago. Menendez was not convicted in the 2017 trial, which involved allegations he accepted bribes from a wealthy Florida eye doctor. Legal experts say the current case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice against New Jersey’s senior senator appears far stronger on its face.
“They came loaded for bear in this particular indictment,” Chris Gramiccioni, a former Monmouth County prosecutor and assistant U.S. attorney for New Jersey, said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News. Gramiccioni said the government’s superseding indictments lay out, in painstaking detail, the government’s evidence for a quid pro quo case.
Physical evidence typically plays a prominent role in criminal trials. Gramiccioni didn’t rule out the likelihood that jurors will be shown the gold bars that prosecutors allege the senator accepted as payment for bribes.
“If I was a prosecutor, I would definitely want those [gold bars] in. I would want the cash, the physical evidence, to be able to be presented to the jury. They don’t necessarily get to take that stuff back to the jury room when they deliberate. But in the course of presenting the government’s case I would want that stuff to be used,” he said.
