Jurors at the corruption trial of Senator Bob Menendez watched a secret FBI video recording of the New Jersey Democrat dining, laughing and pouring wine at a Washington steakhouse with his then-girlfriend and three Egyptian men.
The mood was upbeat, an FBI surveillance specialist testified Tuesday at the trial in New York federal court. At the 2019 dinner at Morton’s Steakhouse, the agent sat a few feet away and posed as the wife of a colleague, who secretly took photos and made a grainy video. The conversation was hard to hear but one bit stood out from Nadine Arslanian, who Menendez would marry a year later.
“She asked, ‘What else can the love of my life do for you?”’ Terrie Williams-Thompson, an FBI investigative specialist, told jurors.
Menendez, the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is accused of taking 13 gold bars, $480,000 in cash and a Mercedes Benz in bribes in exchange for favors he did for Wael Hana, one of the men at the dinner, and two other businessmen. Menendez, 70, is also charged with acting an agent of the Egyptian government and other crimes.
Prosecutors say the senator attended the May 21, 2019, meal with Hana, an Egyptian American, an Egyptian intelligence official and Arslanian. The testimony came a day after Menendez, who has pleaded not guilty, said he will run for re-election in November as an independent.
The testimony by Williams-Thompson and another surveillance expert gave jurors a sense of how widespread the FBI investigation was four years before the indictment of Menendez, Hana, and another businessman, Fred Daibes. His wife, who now goes by Nadine Menendez, has cancer and will be tried separately.
