Bob Menendez Appeals For New Trial Citing Prosecution Error

Former Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez’s legal team petitioned Wednesday for the Manhattan federal court to overturn his bribery convictions and authorize a retrial.

The request follows prosecutors’ admissions that jurors accessed tainted evidence on a computer during deliberations, rendering a new trial necessary, according to the defense’s filed documents. Menendez’s attorney Adam Fee claimed that the “serious breach” necessitates a new trial.

Fee contended in their filing that the flawed exhibits were crucial, representing the sole evidence linking Menendez to the military aid for Egypt. They labeled the government’s blame shift onto the defense as both legally and factually baseless, pointing out the impracticality of reviewing nearly 3,000 exhibits in just a few hours and the reasonable expectation that the government would correctly label the exhibits.

The defense argued that treating this oversight as a waiver could potentially encourage prosecutorial misconduct.

“It had the right to expect that the government had not mislabeled non-introduced and constitutionally barred exhibits as admitted ones. If this were treated as a waiver, that would give parties the incentive to intentionally try to pull a fast one,” the filing said.

Menendez faced conviction in July on 16 counts, including bribery, for allegedly accepting bribes to facilitate U.S. military aid to Egypt. He resigned from the Senate in August and is scheduled for sentencing Jan. 29.