When Senator Robert Menendez used to be charged endmost life with taking part in a posh bribery scheme, information headlines highlighted a odd quality: Investigators had found out greater than $480,000 in money and 13 bars of gold throughout a seek of his area in Untouched Jersey.
Days after, the senator presented an cause of the money, pronouncing he automatically withdrew massive sums of cash from his financial savings account, a customized he stated he had discovered from his Cuban immigrant oldsters.
Now, Mr. Menendez’s legal professionals have long gone additional, announcing that the addiction used to be rooted in deep mental injury join to his father’s suicide and a nation historical past of confiscated quality in Cuba.
They would like a psychiatrist who has evaluated Mr. Menendez, 70, to testify on the senator’s federal corruption trial about what they have got described as “traumatic experiences in his past associated with cash and finances.”
Mr. Menendez’s father used to be a compulsive gambler who died by way of suicide next Mr. Menendez “eventually decided to discontinue paying off his father’s gambling debts,” the senator’s legal professionals stated in a contemporary letter to the federal government describing the psychiatrist’s findings.
The psychiatrist’s conclusions had been disclosed in quality for the primary age overdue Wednesday in a central authority courtroom submitting that integrated the letter. Within the submitting, the administrative center of Damian Williams, the U.S. lawyer for the Southern District of Untouched York, requested a pass judgement on to bar the psychiatrist, Karen B. Rosenbaum, from attesting.
The dispute over Dr. Rosenbaum’s attainable testimony comes lower than two weeks sooner than the beginning of Mr. Menendez’s extensively expected trial in Long island.
Dr. Rosenbaum would testify that Mr. Menendez’s father’s demise and his oldsters’ historical past as Cuban refugees left him with a “fear of scarcity” that ended in a “longstanding coping mechanism of routinely withdrawing and storing cash in his home,” the senator’s legal professionals, Adam Charge and Avi Weitzman, wrote.
The prosecutors, in asking the pass judgement on, Sidney H. Stein of Federal District Courtroom, to bar the testimony, stated Dr. Rosenbaum’s opinion “does not appear to be the product of any reliable scientific principle or method.”
In addition they argued that having the psychiatrist testify gave the look to be an “impermissible attempt” by way of Mr. Menendez to put together positive that the jury hears concerning the nation historical past he shared with the physician, with out subjecting himself to cross-examination by way of attesting.
The prosecutors often known as it an unsuitable struggle to “engender sympathy based on his family background, in the guise of expert testimony.”
They stated that, at a minimal, if Pass judgement on Stein had been susceptible to permit Dr. Rosenbaum to testify, the prosecution will have to be capable to have the senator tested by way of a psychiatrist retained by way of the federal government.
Mr. Menendez, a Democrat and previous chairman of the tough Senate Overseas Members of the family Committee, is accused of accepting bribes in change for his willingness to worth his affect to support allies in Untouched Jersey and to support the governments of Egypt and Qatar.
He’s going to be attempted with two Untouched Jersey businessmen who additionally had been accused of taking part within the bribery conspiracy. The senator’s spouse, Nadine Menendez, used to be charged as neatly however granted a detached trial, in July, next her legal professionals stated she had a significant clinical situation that will require surgical treatment and a longer duration of medication.
All 4 defendants have pleaded now not to blame.
The indictment, which runs 66 pages, outlines quite a lot of schemes. However in all probability not anything has stuck the folk ocular up to its descriptions of the money, gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz convertible discovered throughout a June 2022 seek of the senator’s house in Edgewood Cliffs, N.J.
Investigators found out a lot of the money crammed into envelopes and undisclosed in clothes, shoes, a duffel bag and a shield, in step with felony filings.
Upcoming being charged in September, Mr. Menendez presented what he known as an “old-fashioned” clarification for no less than one of the money found out within the seek. He stated that for 30 years he had withdrawn cash every age from his financial savings account for “emergencies.”
He informed journalists that he did this “because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba.”
Prosecutors, alternatively, have stated that one of the money found out in the home used to be wrapped in bands appearing it have been withdrawn, no less than $10,000 at a age, from a reserve the place neither Mr. Menendez nor his spouse had an account. This used to be a sign “that the money had been provided to them by another person,” they wrote in courtroom papers.
Mr. Menendez used to be born in Untouched York Town in 1954 to folks who had fled Cuba within the years sooner than Fidel Castro seized keep an eye on of the rustic. He has talked and written about rising up in a tenement condominium in Union Town, a densely packed nation in northern Untouched Jersey that was a magnet for refugees of the Cuban diaspora.
His mom used to be a seamstress, and his father, a chippie, died when Mr. Menendez used to be 23, he informed The Untouched York Instances in 2005.
Dr. Rosenbaum, a forensic psychiatrist based totally in Long island, has testified in alternative high-profile prison circumstances in Untouched York. Reviews filed with the Interior Income Provider indicated that Mr. Menendez had old his felony protection charity to pay Dr. Rosenbaum $4,200 in overdue March.
