With less than a month to go before Robert Menendez, the disgraced former US congressman, is expected to be sentenced for corruption, his lawyers have filed an emotional plea for leniency based on what they describe as Mr. Menendez's difficult upbringing. Menendez, the life of Mr. service and devotion to family.
In a legal document filed a few minutes before midnight on Thursday, the lawyers, Avi Weitzman and Adam Fee, set Mr. Menendez's rise to political prominence in Hudson County, NJ, and a catalog of good deeds done for voters during thirty years in Congress.
As they did when Mr. Menendez is on trial for two months of bribery in Manhattan, Mr. Weitzman and Mr. Fee suggested that their client's biggest mistake was being misled by the woman who was the consultant.
Nadine Menendez, the wife of a former member of parliament, has been accused by her husband of conspiring to exchange his political influence for bribes in exchange for money, gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz convertible. His trial is expected to begin next month.
“The evidence shows that Senator Menendez was unaware of Nadine's activities, including the receipt and sale of gold bracelets by Nadine, as well as the money she kept in her locked cabinet and safe deposit box,” the attorneys wrote.
In a letter of support filed Thursday, Mr. Menendez's daughter, Alicia Menendez, an MSNBC cable news anchor, cited the sacrifices her father continued to make for his wife, who was undergoing breast treatment. cancer.
“During the darkest days of his life, he looked at his wife's breast cancer diagnosis with a kind of grace and forgiveness that I honestly cannot understand but admire,” Ms. Menendez wrote.
His letter is among more than 120 filed in the name of Mr. Menendez, which is part of an effort to show that his sentence is much shorter than the 12 years recommended by the probation department. The US attorney's office for the Southern District of New York, which prosecuted Mr Menendez, is expected to reveal the government's sentencing recommendations in the coming weeks.
A spokesperson for the Southern District declined to comment on the request, as did Ms. Menendez's attorney, Barry Coburn.
Mr. Menendez and two New Jersey businessmen, Fred Daibes and Wael Hana, were convicted in July of being part of a massive international bribery conspiracy. A former powerful Democrat who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Menendez was found guilty of each of the 16 charges he faced, including acting as an agent of a foreign government.
Mr. Menendez, 71, maintains his innocence and plans to appeal the jury's decision.
But the federal judge in charge of the case, Sidney H. Stein, rejected Mr. Menendez to postpone his sentence on January 29 until his wife's case is over.
In a statement Thursday, the former senator's attorneys argued that the Department of Corrections' recommendation that he be sentenced to 12 years in prison was “too harsh — a possible death sentence and a death sentence for someone of Bob's age and condition.”
Mr. Weitzman and Mr Fee suggested the guidelines instead suited a sentence of no more than 27 months – and even that, they wrote, was too long.
They urged Judge Stein to consider a prison term of less than 27 months accompanied by “hard community service for at least two years.”
“He is certain that he will not commit crimes in the future,” the lawyers wrote about Mr. Menendez. “And his current situation – deprived of office and living under the permanent shadow of shame and ridicule – is enough to show the seriousness of the charges and to encourage respect for the law.”
Benjamin Weiser responsible reporting.
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