{"id":189,"date":"2023-12-27T18:55:24","date_gmt":"2023-12-27T18:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2023\/12\/27\/prosecutors-urge-judge-to-reject-menendezs-plea-for-a-delay-in-bribery-trial\/"},"modified":"2023-12-27T18:55:24","modified_gmt":"2023-12-27T18:55:24","slug":"prosecutors-urge-judge-to-reject-menendezs-plea-for-a-delay-in-bribery-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2023\/12\/27\/prosecutors-urge-judge-to-reject-menendezs-plea-for-a-delay-in-bribery-trial\/","title":{"rendered":"Prosecutors urge judge to reject Menendez&#8217;s plea for a delay in bribery trial"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Federal prosecutors opposed New <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/us\/democratic-party\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jersey Democrat<\/a> Sen. Bob Menendez and his co-defendants&#8217; request for a two-month delay to their bribery trial, set for May, urging a U.S. judge to reject their plea on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The current schedule set by the court is expedited, but reasonable,&#8221; Damian Wiliams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, wrote to U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein.\u00a0&#8220;Nothing in the defendant\u2019s request for an adjournment, made more than two months after the schedule was set, justifies a material deviation from this considered schedule.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Last week, Menendez&#8217;s defense lawyers argued they didn&#8217;t have enough time to sift through some 6.7 million documents in time for a May <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/entertainment\/events\/in-court\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">trial date<\/a> and cited the &#8220;complexity of this case.&#8221; But prosecutors asserted they had completed &#8220;good-faith efforts to facilitate the defense&#8217;s efficient review.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The government has taken great pains to organize the discovery and to assist counsel&#8217;s review of it,&#8221; the prosecutors&#8217; filing read.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/menendez-blocks-2-biden-nominees-frustration-border-negotiations\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>MENENDEZ BLOCKS 2 BIDEN NOMINEES OVER FRUSTRATION WITH BORDER NEGOTIATIONS<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Other assertions regarding the amount of time they allegedly need \u2013 such as their desire to take unspecified investigative steps, their plan to file a challenge to the sufficiency of the indictment, their desire to mount a constitutional challenge to a federal criminal statute, and their plan to file suppression motions \u2013 are not unique to this case and do not justify a multiple-month adjournment,&#8221; it continued.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Menendez, along with his wife Nadine and three New Jersey businessmen \u2013 Wael Hana, Jose Uribe and Fred Daibes \u2013 were first charged in the federal bribery scheme on Sept. 23.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>FBI and IRS criminal investigators allege that Menendez and his wife accepted several gold bars and other gifts from Daibes, a New Jersey developer and former bank chairman accused of banking crimes. Menendez allegedly worked to help appoint a prosecutor who would be sympathetic to Daibes, according to the indictment.<\/p>\n<p>The unsealed indictment alleges that from at least 2018 through 2022, Menendez and his wife &#8220;engaged in a corrupt relationship&#8221; with Daibes, Hana and Uribe.<\/p>\n<p>The couple is accused of accepting &#8220;hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes in exchange for using Menendez&#8217;s power and influence as a senator to seek to protect and enrich Hana, Uribe, and Daibes and to benefit the Arab Republic of Egypt.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/menendez-to-appear-in-court-and-plead-not-guilty-to-foreign-agent-charge\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>MENENDEZ PLEADS \u2018NOT GUILTY\u2019 TO FOREIGN AGENT CHARGE<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The alleged bribes included cash, gold bars, payments toward a home mortgage, compensation for a low- or no-show job, a luxury vehicle, and &#8220;other things of value.&#8221; After the investigation was underway, Menendez reportedly disclosed that his family had accepted gold bars in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>According to prosecutors, Menendez allegedly shared confidential U.S. government information with Hana, an Egyptian American businessman, to clandestinely support the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/science\/archaeology\/ancient-egypt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Egyptian government<\/a>. The indictment contends that Menendez exerted inappropriate pressure on a Department of Agriculture official to safeguard Hana&#8217;s business monopoly granted by Egypt. In return, Hana purportedly funneled profits from his monopoly back to Menendez.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/top-dem-committee-accepted-thousands-from-menendez-same-day-feds-unsealed-his-bribery-indictment\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>TOP DEM COMMITTEE ACCEPTED THOUSANDS FROM MENENDEZ THE SAME DAY FEDS UNSEALED HIS BRIBERY CHARGES<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Menendez faces <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">additional charges<\/a> of acting as a foreign agent and accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes to benefit the Egyptian government through his &#8220;power and influence as a Senator,&#8221; according to the superseding indictment filed by a grand jury in Manhattan in October.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Federal prosecutors opposed New Jersey Democrat Sen. Bob Menendez and his co-defendants&#8217; request for a two-month delay to their bribery trial, set for May, urging a U.S. judge to reject their plea on Tuesday. &#8220;The current schedule set by the court is expedited, but reasonable,&#8221; Damian Wiliams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of &#8230; <a title=\"Prosecutors urge judge to reject Menendez&#8217;s plea for a delay in bribery trial\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2023\/12\/27\/prosecutors-urge-judge-to-reject-menendezs-plea-for-a-delay-in-bribery-trial\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Prosecutors urge judge to reject Menendez&#8217;s plea for a delay in bribery trial\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}