Top federal prosecutor in New Jersey tells jury Sen. Menendez never pressured him
CNN
A top federal prosecutor handed Sen. Bob Menendez a lifeline at the New Jersey Democrat’s corruption trial Tuesday.
A top federal prosecutor handed Sen. Bob Menendez a lifeline at the New Jersey Democrat’s corruption trial Tuesday, telling the court during cross examination that Menendez never asked or pressured him to act improperly on behalf of a political ally. Philip Sellinger, now the US attorney for the District of New Jersey, said that in late 2020, he went to Menendez hoping for the senator’s support in his bid to be nominated to the post. During the conversation, Sellinger testified, Menendez mentioned that Fred Daibes, a New Jersey real estate developer and co-defendant in the case, “was being treated unfairly” by prosecutors who had indicted him on bank fraud charges. “Sen. Menendez hoped that if I became US attorney, that I would look at (the Daibes case) carefully,” Sellinger said. That testimony came up again Tuesday when Menendez attorney Avi Weitzman pressed Sellinger on the nature of that interaction. “I did not believe that (Menendez) was asking me to do anything other than my official duty,” Sellinger, a longtime friend and political supporter of Menendez, told the court. “I didn’t believe he was asking me to do anything.” At that, Weitzman asked Sellinger if it was “fair to say that he didn’t ask you to put your thumb on the scales of justice?”
A Romanian man has pleaded guilty to an extortion charge relating to a 2007 Connecticut home invasion in which he and two other men injected a wealthy couple with what they claimed was a deadly virus and demanded millions of dollars from them, the US Attorney for the District of Connecticut announced.