The trial of Sen. Robert Menendez took a weeklong pause Tuesday after federal court jurors who were invited to take a brick-by-brick look at the prosecution's bribery case were trapped in an elevator a day after they were forced to to leave their usual meeting room because of flooding.
Judge Sidney H. Stein said jurors were trapped in an elevator for several minutes during what was supposed to be a 10-minute late-afternoon break that lasted nearly half an hour.
The elevator breakdown occurred when jurors were moved from floor to floor to a conference room because the carpet in their regular conference room, just outside the courtroom, was soaked Monday after someone left the faucets on. of the toilet open during the weekend. As the jurors left, Stein jokingly warned them, “Don't all get in an elevator.”
The mishap occurred on a day when prosecutors built their case against the Democrat with evidence they hoped would win points with jurors against Menendez and his two co-defendants: two New Jersey businessmen who, according to the government, paid him bribes consisting of gold bullion. gold, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and a car.
Lawyers for Menendez, 70, of Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and the businessmen say their clients are not guilty and that the government is trying to make ordinary interactions between a politician and his constituents crimes.
Among Tuesday's witnesses was a man who worked for the State Department during the years when prosecutors say Menendez used his powerful position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to do favors for Egypt so he could keep the flow of bribes.
Joshua Paul, who now works as a consultant for a nonprofit, testified that the committee and its chairman have extraordinary powers over the State Department because it controls its leadership, dictates how it operates and confirms ambassadors around the world.
After his arrest last fall, Menendez was forced to resign from his position, although he has resisted calls for him to leave the Senate.
Prosecutors say Menendez did things that benefited Egyptian officials so he could receive bribes in exchange for paving the way for a co-defendant to obtain a lucrative monopoly to certify that meat exported to Egypt from American slaughterhouses met Islamic dietary requirements.
In addition to bribery, extortion, fraud and obstruction of justice, Menendez is also accused of acting as a foreign agent of Egypt.
Neumeister writes for the Associated Press.
