NEWARK, N.J. _ An attorney for U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez's co-defendant Salomon Melgen on Thursday disparaged the case against the men as a "trial by email" and accused prosecutors of engaging in a "terrifying" campaign of manipulation and deception to win a conviction.
"They took out of context emails and made a timeline to make things appear related that aren't related," Kirk Ogrosky told jurors. "They're lying to you. They're making up a story and trying to get the evidence to fit their story."
Ogrosky made his assertion in a crowded courtroom in Newark that was the setting Thursday for closing arguments in Menendez's corruption trial, which has now reached the end of its ninth week. The drama lasted more than four hours Thursday and also featured impassioned pleas to jurors from prosecutor J.P. Cooney.
"An elected official like Sen. Menendez should be accountable to the citizens he represents, not to a wealthy doctor who lavished him with luxury trips and jaw-dropping campaign checks," Cooney told jurors, adding later: "Hold these defendants accountable. Find them guilty."
Prosecutors have been arguing in court that Menendez, a Democrat, used his office to help Melgen, a wealthy Florida eye doctor and a longtime friend, to secure visas for his foreign girlfriends and to intervene in a lucrative port security contract in the Dominican Republic and a multimillion-dollar Medicare dispute.
In exchange, prosecutors say, Menendez took bribes in the form of luxury vacations, free flights on Melgen's private jets and $660,000 in political contributions. Both men deny the allegations.
The government's 18-count indictment charges Menendez with six counts of bribery, three counts of honest services fraud, one count of conspiracy, one count of interstate travel to carry out bribery and one count of making false statements on his congressional financial disclosures to conceal the crimes. Melgen faces the same charges, except for the false statements accusation.
Both sides packed the stuffy courtroom Thursday with supporters for one of the most theatrical and critical parts of the trial. Arrayed behind the government's lawyers were AnnaLou Tirol, chief of the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section and Timothy Gallagher, special agent in charge of the FBI's Newark Division, along with other Justice Department officials.
Sitting behind Menendez and Melgen were more than a dozen members of the clergy, dressed in suits or religious robes, squeezed into rows with Menendez's two adult children and Melgen's wife. During a break Thursday, Menendez was seen praying in a circle with some of the faith leaders in the hallway outside the courtroom.
"It is that faith that has sustained me here for the last eight, nine weeks," Menendez told reporters after Thursday's proceedings, holding back tears as he did so. "It is that faith that I believe will ultimately render a verdict of not guilty. And between that faith and my family, I've been a very blessed man."
Cooney was the first to speak Thursday, and he began his remarks by revisiting a statement from Menendez's office and a CNN interview, both from early 2013. In them, the senator said he had flown on Melgen's private jet on only three occasions _ a figure that was later revealed to be higher _ and that he wrote Melgen a $58,500 check for those flights as soon as they came to his attention.
"Sen. Menendez wanted the public to believe then and the defendant wants you to believe now that $58,500 fell through the cracks," Cooney said. "$58,500 does not fall through the cracks."
Using several screens arranged around the jury box to highlight some of the government's most compelling evidence and provide a chronology of events, Cooney showed jurors how those flights and several other gifts Menendez received from Melgen never appeared on the senator's annual financial disclosure forms.
"(There was) nowhere that a voter in New Jersey could find out what an enormous influence a doctor from Florida had on their United States senator," Cooney said. "That was exactly the point, because those gifts, they were bribes."
Cooney described a friendship between the men from 2006 to 2013 marred increasingly by the corrupt exchange of gifts for influence and walked jurors through how prosecutors believed they had proved every element of every count.
"This is bribery," Cooney said. "This is what bribery looks like."
When Ogrosky stepped to the podium, the veteran defense attorney was more animated than at any other point in the trial.
He blasted the government for building its case on circumstantial evidence _ "Not a single witness of everyone you heard from said there was an agreement between these guys," he told jurors _ and more or less called into question the integrity of the prosecution.
Several government witnesses, he said, interpreted emails or interactions with Menendez staffers in a negative light only after extensive interviews with prosecutors and FBI agents who selectively showed them or failed to show them documents from years earlier.
Ogrosky denied outright, for example, that a Menendez staffer had ever said that "bad medicine is not illegal" during a 2009 phone call with Medicare officials, as Dr. Louis Jacques, a former Medicare official who was on the call, testified as a government witness.
"He's not a liar," Ogrosky said of Jacques. "He was just manipulated by these prosecutors."
Ogrosky also pointed out that Melgen was involved in another business dealing during the time period covered by the indictment and could have profited handsomely from a change in government regulations. Rather than calling Menendez for help, however, Melgen hired an attorney.
"It's a hell of a bribe to spend millions of dollars on attorneys when you have a senator on retainer," Ogrosky said. "That's ridiculous."
Closing arguments will continue Monday with a presentation by Menendez's attorneys followed by a rebuttal by prosecutors. The case will then go to the jury.
