By Thomas Anderson
This is a HUGE blow to the defense of Senator Robert Menendez. At the heart of his defense was going to be an attack on the government’s allegations of Senator Menendez’s intent to violate the law by acting as a foreign agent and using his official office for private business in exchange for the gold bars and cash that was stuffed in his closet. Menendez was going to use a psychiatrist named Karen Rosenbaum to testify that Menendez developed a never-before-treated mental condition, in response to the lifelong traumas, according to a letter the Menedez defense attorneys provided the court a few weeks ago. As a result, Menendez supposedly has a “fear of scarcity” and developed “a longstanding coping mechanism of routinely withdrawing and storing cash in his home,” according to his lawyer’s letter to the court.
According to CBS News:
A psychiatrist who evaluated New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez will not be allowed to testify at his corruption trial about “two significant traumatic events” in his life that his lawyers say explain the hundreds of thousands in cash investigators found in his home, a judge said Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein barred testimony from the psychiatrist, Karen Rosenbaum, saying that some of her sworn statements would be “impermissibly based on inadmissible hearsay.” More from @CBS