Senator Menendez bribery trial: Star witness’s credibility called into question

“You lied to customers?” Adam Fee, one of Menendez’s lawyers, asked Uribe.

“You lied to a bank?” he added.

“You lied to the federal government?” he continued.

Uribe, 57, acknowledged that he had lied to all three, leading Fee to call him a “sophisticated liar” who was willing to put his family members in legal jeopardy to cover up his crimes.

Uribe, who also pleaded guilty in 2011 to insurance fraud charges in New Jersey, maintained his composure during hours of aggressive cross-examination, even as he avoided answering many questions by claiming he had “no recollection” of certain events.

On Monday, however, Uribe had offered detailed testimony about several face-to-face meetings he had with Menendez during his quest to enlist the senator’s help to “stop and kill” an insurance fraud investigation that implicated Uribe and two of his close associates.

Uribe’s firsthand account went to the heart of the government’s case against Menendez, a Democrat charged with accepting bribes of cash, gold and the Mercedes-Benz in exchange for meddling in criminal investigations, steering aid to Egypt and propping up a friend’s halal meat certification monopoly.

Uribe told jurors that he and Menendez discussed the insurance fraud case in a private, hourlong conversation on the eve of a Sept. 6, 2019, meeting the senator had scheduled with a former New Jersey attorney general, Gurbir S. Grewal.

Grewal testified last week that during his brief sit-down at the senator’s office in Newark, New Jersey, he flatly refused Menendez’s overture to discuss a specific case.

Still, hours after that meeting ended, Menendez summoned Uribe to his apartment building to offer reassurance. “That thing that you asked me about — it doesn’t seem to be anything there,” Uribe testified the senator told him.

Uribe has pleaded guilty to providing Nadine Menendez, the senator’s wife, with the Mercedes and making the car’s monthly payments for more than two years, in exchange for gaining the senator’s “power and influence.”

Uribe testified that he believed the senator was aware he was paying for the car. But he has also repeatedly said that he never discussed the Mercedes — or how it was being paid for — with Menendez.

“I never talked to Mr. Menendez about making payments for the car,” he testified.

Nadine Menendez and two New Jersey businesspeople, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, are also charged in the bribery conspiracy. The two businesspeople are on trial with the senator; Nadine Menendez’s trial was postponed until next month to give her time to be treated for breast cancer. All four have pleaded not guilty.

Uribe testified that his first private conversation with the senator took place on an outdoor patio at Nadine Menendez’s home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

He and the senator poured drinks from a bottle of Grand Marnier brandy that Uribe had brought as a gift. The senator smoked a cigar, Uribe told jurors, and the two men discussed the fraud investigation he had sought Menendez’s help in quashing.

Before Uribe left, the senator shook a small bell to summon Nadine Menendez from inside the house; she brought out a piece of paper, and Uribe said he was instructed to write down the names of the two businesses and the two associates who were targets of the attorney general’s investigation.

The senator folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket, Uribe testified.

On Tuesday morning, a lawyer for Hana, Ricardo Solano Jr., worked to paint Uribe as a habitual liar, eliciting hours of vague replies and a frequent incantation: “I don’t have a recollection.”

The judge, Sidney H. Stein of U.S. District Court, denied a request by Hana’s lawyers to tell jurors about Uribe’s missed child support payments, apparent visits to strip clubs, and credit card debt — evidence offered to undercut the family-man image he had projected in his earlier testimony.

In denying the request, Stein alluded to Uribe’s criminal history and told the lawyers, “You have just got so much material to work with.”

When Uribe told Stein in March that he had tried to bribe the senator with a luxury car, it was the second time he had pleaded guilty to participating in criminal activity.

In 2011, Uribe pleaded guilty to taking $76,000 in insurance premiums but failing to buy coverage for seven clients, all commercial drivers. He was sentenced in New Jersey to probation and stripped of his insurance broker’s license.

Uribe acknowledged on cross-examination that he had installed his sister, his son and a 19-year-old woman who had come to him for help after becoming pregnant as principals in several companies he continued to run, illegally, after losing his license. He also told jurors that he had failed for years to pay business taxes, had lied about being married on his personal income tax forms and had fraudulently obtained two loans to purchase trucking equipment.

“This witness has been left in tatters, and I don’t believe that testimony can establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” Lawrence S. Lustberg, another of Hana’s lawyers, said after court ended for the day.

Leaving court Tuesday, Menendez said only that Uribe’s testimony — which is expected to continue Wednesday — “speaks for itself.”