Week 1 Was a Prosecutors ‘Show and Tell’ for the Gold Bar Bob Menendez Jury Trial

Prosecutors in the Gold Bar Bob trial quickly revealed the core of their strategy, presenting jurors with actual gold bar evidence and photos of cash seized during an early morning FBI raid at the couple’s Edgewood Cliffs home in 2022. Photos displayed nearly $500,000 stuffed into Senator Menendez’s embroidered jackets and men’s boots.

The Menendez defense, co-led by Adam Fee former AUSA from the Southern District of New York, claimed that the gold bars were locked in his wife’s closet, and he had no knowledge that her longtime friends and co-defendants, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, were giving her what they claim were “gifts” rather than bribes. The prosecution’s strategy involved putting the gold bars in the hands of the jury, while FBI agents testified under oath that the photos of cash shown to the jury were so unusual that they prompted a widening of the FBI’s initial investigation of the Edgewood Cliffs home.

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