DAY SEVENTEEN

Government witness Jose Uribe told jurors on Monday that U.S. Senator Bob Menendez told him, in Spanish, “I saved your ass twice. Not once, but twice.” He was referring to an alleged bribe – a Mercedes-Benz – he said he bought for Nadine Menendez in exchange for the senator intervening on his behalf with the New Jersey Attorney General.

HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: Today’s testimony by Uribe appeared to refute Menendez’s defense, that he was just providing constituent service. Cross-examination continues on Tuesday.

DAYS SINCE THE INDICTMENT: 261

DAYS SINCE MENENDEZ’S LAST CRIMINAL TRIAL ENDED: 2,396

MISSED VOTES: 22
There were no recorded votes in the U.S. Senate on Friday.

And in case you’re keeping track: it’s been 43 Years and 38 Days since a United States Senator from New Jersey was last convicted of accepting a bribe.

IT TOLLS FOR THEE
— On Senator Menendez’s Patio, Businessman Says, He Asked Directly for Help from New York Times’ Benjamin Weiser and Tracey Tulley: “Jose Uribe, the businessman who has said he bribed Senator Robert Menendez in return for his help in quashing a criminal investigation involving two people close to him, testified on Monday that he had asked the senator directly for his help and that Mr. Menendez had said he would ‘look into it.’ Mr. Uribe said that on Sept. 5, 2019, the night before Mr. Menendez met with New Jersey’s attorney general to discuss the matter, he was invited to the senator’s girlfriend’s home in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., where he and Mr. Menendez sat on a backyard patio, with the senator smoking a cigar. Mr. Menendez rang a little bell that he had on the table, calling out ‘mon amour’ — French for “my love” — and summoning Nadine Menendez, the woman he married the next year, Mr. Uribe testified. He said she brought him a piece of paper and went back into the house. At the senator’s request, Mr. Uribe wrote down the names of two friends and two companies he believed were under investigation. Mr. Menendez then took the paper, folded it and placed it in his pants pocket.”

QUID PRO QUO?
— Businessman describes asking Sen. Menendez for help in killing criminal probe from New Jersey Monitor’s Dana DiFilippo: “Under a two-part arrangement first forged with co-defendant Wael Hana in the spring of 2018, Uribe said, he and his friends wanted the senator to accomplish two things for them. First, kill the state’s insurance fraud prosecution of Elvis Parra, Uribe’s friend and a trucking company owner. And two, end the related, expanding investigation that threatened Uribe’s own business, Phoenix Risk Management. In exchange, Uribe, Parra, and Parra’s business partner Bienvenido Hernandez were to pay Hana $200,000 to $250,000, while Hana would buy Nadine a Mercedes-Benz convertible, Uribe testified. Uribe testified he had spent more than two years trading texts and calls about the scheme with Nadine Menendez and had so many restaurant meetings — with the Menendezes and others associated — that the courtroom erupted in laughter when Judge Sidney H. Stein interrupted Uribe’s retelling of one rendezvous to say: ‘Another restaurant?’ Monday, he shared the tawdry details of the alleged schemes, telling jurors that Nadine Menendez arranged for Uribe to meet the senator in September 2019 in the backyard of her Englewood Cliffs home, where the two men talked for about an hour over glasses of Grand Marnier about an insurance fraud probe by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, Uribe testified.”

More from the New Jersey Monitor: “Uribe spent most of Monday under direct questioning by Pomerantz. Hana’s attorney Ricardo Solano Jr. started cross-examining him as the dinner hour approached, underscoring Uribe’s admissions that Uribe — not Hana — reached out to Nadine Menendez directly, hosted a fundraiser for the senator’s re-election campaign that raised $50,000, and bought Nadine Menendez the car.”

DIRECT ASK TO MENENDEZ
— New Jersey businessman Jose Uribe tells jury that bribes paid off with Sen. Bob Menendez from Associated Press’ Larry Neumeister: “Uribe said he brought up the subject of investigations directly with the senator at an Aug. 7, 2019, dinner with Bob Menendez and Nadine Menendez, the senator’s girlfriend at the time. They married in 2020. He said he told Bob Menendez that he was concerned that a probe of a friend’s trucking business was causing investigators to look at his insurance business and the senator said he would look into it.”

THAT THING YOU DO
— Star witness Jose Uribe testifies Menendez was all in on bribery deal from Washington Post’s Salvador Rizzo: “’I saved your ass twice, not once but twice,’ Jose Uribe recalled Menendez telling him at a Spanish restaurant in Moonachie, N.J., in August 2020. By that point, Uribe said, Menendez had assured him that the insurance fraud investigations by the state attorney general’s office, which Uribe worried would ensnare him, had been put to bed. ‘That thing you asked me about, it’s nothing there. I give you your peace,’ Uribe said Menendez told him over the phone on another occasion.

CARCASS TALK
— Bob Menendez’s Hail Mary: Just keep running from Axios’ Stephen Neukam: “Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) appears to be looking for a way to hold influence over the Democratic Party, even as he’s on trial on federal corruption charges. Micah Rasmussen … told Axios that Menendez’s independent campaign was him ‘extending his sell-by date, at least until August,’ referring to the Aug. 16 deadline for Menendez to remove his name from the ballot. ‘If he is a carcass, then there’s no point in anyone helping him, going easy on him or lifting a finger for him.’”

IT WAS A LOAN
— Menendez prosecutors’ star witness describes bribery scheme over brandy and cigars from POLITICO’S Ry Rivard: “In summer 2022, FBI agents visited the senator, Nadine and Uribe with search warrants, subpoenas and lots of questions. At one point, Uribe said Nadine came to visit him after the search and she asked what he planned to tell authorities about the car. He said he would describe it as a loan, though he said it was never meant to be. Just before Christmas 2022, Nadine would write him a check for $21,000 that said ‘personal loan’ but didn’t cover everything he’d paid toward the car, Uribe testified.

* Businessman testifies: NJ Sen. Menendez said he ‘saved your little a–‘ after ‘bribes’

* Sen. Bob Menendez allegedly bragged to NJ businessman who bought wife Mercedes: ‘I saved your ass’

* Courtroom Sketch Artist: “Uribe started to get emotional on the witness stand Monday as he recounted his worries over the threats posed by a state criminal investigation into his business in New Jersey.” (Elizabeth Williams/AP): Click HERE.

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