A New Jersey businessman testified Friday that he bribed Sen. Bob Menendez, telling jurors within the Backyard State Democrat’s federal corruption trial that he offered the lawmaker’s spouse with a Mercedes-Benz to close down a felony probe.
“She agreed to the phrases,” Jose Uribe told the Federal District Court in Manhattan of Nadine Menendez’s response to his March 2019 provide to purchase her a $60,000 luxurious convertible if she may get her 70-year-old senator husband to scuttle an investigation into two of his associates by the state legal professional common’s workplace.
The phrases of the deal concerned hooking Nadine Menendez up with the new Mercedes-Benz C-300 in alternate for gaining “the ability and affect” of the six-term senator “to do something attainable to cease and kill” the probe, Uribe testified.
Uribe, 57, pleaded guilty in March and is the star witness within the authorities’s sprawling corruption case in opposition to the Menendezes, by which the embattled lawmaker and his spouse stand accused of accepting the automobile, greater than $150,000 in gold bars, $566,000 in money funds and different lavish items in alternate for favors to Uribe, businessmen Wael Hana and Fred Daibes and the governments of Egypt and Qatar.
“I knew that giving a automobile in return for influencing a United States senator to cease a felony investigation was mistaken,” Uribe instructed the courtroom when he entered his plea.
“I deeply remorse my actions.”
Uribe instructed the jury Friday that he conspired with Hana to repay the couple to stave off investigations into the trucking enterprise of a pal, Elvis Parra, and his personal insurance coverage enterprise, which insured Parra’s vehicles.
Former New Jersey Lawyer Basic Gurbir Grewal testified Thursday that Menendez tried to stress him into discussing the trucking enterprise investigation with him in 2019 and that he shortly shut the senator down.
Each Bob and Nadine Menendez are dealing with 18 felony counts within the bribery case.
The senator faces as much as 45 years in jail for every rely if discovered responsible.
