New Jersey businessman testifies that Sen. Menendez bragged about alleged bribes

Businessman Jose Uribe testified Monday at Sen. Bob Menendez’s bribery trial that the senator had once bragged that he had “saved his a**” twice before.

For more than four weeks, Sen. Bob Menendez has been a mostly peripheral figure at his bribery and corruption trial. On Monday, at federal court in Lower Manhattan, the New Jersey Democrat became the main character. Prosecutors’ star witness, businessman Jose Uribe, told the jury for the first time that Menendez helped drive the wider conspiracy that ensnared the senator; his wife, Nadine Menendez; and two co-defendants. In his testimony, Uribe, who pleaded guilty before the trial began and is cooperating with prosecutors, described Menendez as a Godfather-like character who lorded his power over others and, by his deeds and demeanor, appeared to many as an all-powerful figure with vast influence in all walks of life. Menendez, in Uribe’s telling, rarely asked any questions and provided only a blinkered view into his plans and actions. But months after allegedly delivering on the key pieces of the bribery scheme, Menendez, during a 2020 dinner with Uribe, sat back, his hands crossed over his stomach, and reminded the businessman of all he’d done. “I saved your a** twice. Not once, but twice,” Menendez told him in Spanish, Uribe testified. Nadine and her adult daughter, who were also at the dinner, had just excused themselves to use the bathroom. Before they returned, the senator bragged that it had not been difficult work, but Uribe said his body language suggested that “he was proud and confident that he got this done.”