Menendez corruption trial briefly suspended due to co-defendant's illness
Jurors in Sen. Bob Menendez’s corruption trial got an unexpected day off Thursday because co-defendant Fred Daibes was too sick to appear in federal court in Manhattan, where the case now is in its fifth week of testimony.
Daibes, a real estate developer and bank founder from Edgewater, N.J., was coughing throughout Wednesday’s proceedings, which were largely focused on his role in the wide-ranging corruption case.
Prosecutors have said Daibes paid Menendez cash and gold bars in expectation of New Jersey’s senior senator using his political powers to derail his bank fraud investigation.
U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger told jurors Wednesday that Menendez, in offering to suggest he be nominated as New Jersey’s U.S. attorney, complained to him in 2020 that Daibes “was being treated unfairly” by the U.S. Attorney’s Office and asked him to “look at it (Daibes’ case) carefully” once he became U.S. attorney.
Sellinger instead told Menendez, a Democrat, that he likely would be recused from the case, because he once handled a lawsuit in which Daibes was an “adverse party” and he’d have to reveal that as a potential conflict of interest to his supervisors at the federal Department of Justice. Menendez subsequently chose a different candidate and ended his friendship with Sellinger, Sellinger testified. Sellinger got the job anyway a year later, after Menendez’s pick fell through.
Earlier: U.S. Attorney for NJ says Sen. Menendez asked he ‘look at’ Fred Daibes criminal case
Sellinger was scheduled to return to court Thursday for cross-examination.
Jurors also were expected to hear Thursday from several witnesses about prosecutors’ claims that Daibes also bribed Menendez to help him land a lucrative investment from a member of Qatar’s royal family.
Menendez did so by praising the Qatari government in an August 2021 press release — first using an encrypted messaging app to secretly share the announcement with Daibes so the developer could share it with the investor and a Qatari government official, according to the indictment. He also ushered a resolution praising Qatar through the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which he chaired at the time, prosecutors say.
The trial is scheduled to resume Friday morning at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan federal courthouse in New York.
Editor's note: This story was originally published by the New Jersey Monitor, for which Dana DeFilippo is a staff writer. The New Jersey Monitor is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Bob Menendez trial suspended due to co-defendant's illness
