At the corruption trial of Robert Menendez, the former powerful senator from New Jersey, the jury may have seen no more telling a collection of evidence than the actual bribes he received — bars of gold bullion that glinted under the courtroom lights.
But the trial also turned on the testimony of an obscure insurance broker who was charged in the case and then, before trial, switched sides.
The broker, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty and cooperated with the authorities, meeting 36 times with the government and providing what one prosecutor told the jury was “devastating evidence of Menendez’s culpability.”
Now, Mr. Uribe will become the final defendant in the sprawling case to face justice when he appears on Thursday in Federal District Court in Manhattan for sentencing.
Mr. Uribe testified as a key government witness at two trials — that of Mr. Menendez and two businessmen charged with him, and that of Nadine Menendez, the former senator’s wife, who shuttled messages and bribes to her husband. The couple and the businessmen were all convicted and given stiff prison sentences.
Mr. Uribe testified at one point that he gave Ms. Menendez a Mercedes-Benz in exchange for securing “the power and influence” of the senator. In another piece of memorable testimony, Mr. Uribe told jurors about witnessing Mr. Menendez ring a hand-held bell to summon Ms. Menendez from inside the couple’s home.
The senator’s defense strategy had been to shift blame to his wife for involving him in illegal activities, but a prosecutor, Paul M. Monteleoni, told the jury that Mr. Uribe’s testimony about the bell “shows that Menendez was in charge.”
“He wasn’t the one being led around and manipulated by Nadine,” Mr. Monteleoni said of the senator. “He’s not a puppet having his strings pulled by someone that he summons with a bell.”
Thursday’s sentencing hearing represents not only a reckoning for Mr. Uribe. It is also an endpoint in a case that roiled New Jersey politics, deposed a Democratic power broker and ushered in election reform.
Mr. Uribe has pleaded guilty to seven counts that carry a maximum sentence of decades in prison. But his is the rare case in which the government and his lawyer agree he should receive substantial leniency from the court.
In a letter last week to the judge, Sidney H. Stein, prosecutors in the office of Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, did not recommend a specific sentence, but said the judge should take into account that Mr. Uribe’s assistance had been exemplary — timely, significant, reliable and risky.
“His cooperation involved a historically rare and serious corrupt scheme by one of the most powerful politicians in the country implicating foreign relations, national security and the integrity of state and federal law enforcement at the highest levels,” the prosecutors told Judge Stein.
Mr. Uribe’s lawyer, Daniel J. Fetterman, has asked the judge to impose a sentence of no time in prison.
In his brief, Mr. Fetterman likened his client’s case to those of 13 other “exceptional cooperators” who had helped the government in highly significant federal prosecutions in New York and who received no jail time.
These included Lauren Salzman, a top lieutenant to Keith Raniere, the leader of the cultlike group Nxivm, who cooperated extensively and testified for four days against Mr. Raniere; Ms. Salzman was sentenced to five years of probation and 300 hours of community service.
Mr. Fetterman also pointed to the cases of Nishad Singh and Gary Wang, two close associates of Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, who both cooperated extensively with the government and received sentences of time served.
The prosecution of Mr. Menendez, his wife and the three businessmen began just over two years ago in Manhattan when federal prosecutors announced that the senator, who was then the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, had been charged with taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, including the gold bars and the Mercedes, in return for exercising his power abroad and at home.
Mr. Menendez stepped down from the committee chairmanship but vowed to fight the charges. He declared in a defiant speech on the Senate floor that he was innocent and that the charges were “baseless conjecture, not facts.”
But after a two-month trial, he was convicted in July 2024 on all 16 counts he faced, including bribery, extortion, honest services wire fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and acting as an agent of Egypt. Mr. Menendez, who resigned from the Senate after his conviction, became the first U.S. senator ever found guilty of acting as an agent of a foreign power.
The bribery scheme, according to evidence prosecutors presented to the jury, was carried out at furtive dinners attended by the senator and his wife, in text messages and on encrypted calls. In return for the bribes, which were paid to to the Menendezes by the three businessmen, including Mr. Uribe, the senator used his authority to direct military aid and weapons to Egypt and tried to help his allies evade criminal charges in New Jersey.
During the trial, Mr. Uribe testified that he had directly asked Mr. Menendez for his help in two matters of great concern to him. One involved a friend who was being prosecuted by the New Jersey attorney general’s office, and the other related to a young woman who he thought of as a daughter, and who he feared would be drawn into an investigation by the same office. The senator, Mr. Uribe recalled, said he would “look into it.”
Mr. Uribe testified that months later, when he was dining with the senator at a New Jersey restaurant, Mr. Menendez addressed him bluntly, in Spanish. Mr. Menendez indicated that he had resolved both matters of concern to Mr. Uribe.
“He said, ‘I saved your ass twice — not once, but twice,’” Mr. Uribe testified.
Benjamin Weiser is a Times reporter covering the federal courts and U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, and the justice system more broadly.
Tracey Tully is a reporter for The Times who covers New Jersey, where she has lived for more than 20 years.
The post Star Witness in Menendez Bribery Case to Be Sentenced appeared first on New York Times.
