Judge denies bid to delay Menendez trial over bribery allegations

A federal judge denied a motion Thursday to delay the trial of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) over bribery allegations.

Menendez and his wife were indicted on charges of extortion and misuse of public funds in September. Federal prosecutors alleged the pair accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from interests in Egypt in exchange for political favors.

The senator’s attorneys requested a two-month delay to the scheduled May 6 trial, citing mountains of case discovery.

District Judge Sidney Stein did not agree with the attorneys’ argument.

“The fact that discovery has been voluminous is consistent with the parties’ stated expectations on October 2 and does not justify a two-month adjournment of the schedule,” she wrote in the order. “In fact, the volume of discovery material is less than defendants were concerned it was when they sought the adjournment on December 20.”

Stein said a clerical error previously made Menendez’ attorneys believe they had received 735 terabytes of data — a staggering amount — but the true size was about 3 terabytes.

“While three terabytes is concededly a substantial amount of data, it is but a tiny fraction of what defendants believed they had on their plates to digest and is consistent with the expectations voiced at the initial pretrial conference that discovery would be voluminous,” she wrote.

Menendez has denied wrongdoing in the case and refused numerous calls for him to resign from office. He described the prosecution as a “smear campaign” against him.

“For years, forces behind the scenes have repeatedly attempted to silence my voice and dig my political grave. Since this investigation was leaked nearly a year ago, there has been an active smear campaign of anonymous sources and innuendos to create an air of impropriety where none exists,” Menendez said in a statement in September.

“I have been falsely accused before because I refused to back down to the powers that be and the people of New Jersey were able to see through the smoke and mirrors and recognize I was innocent,” Menendez said, referring to 2015 federal corruption charges against him that were ultimately dropped in 2018. “I remain focused on continuing this important work and will not be distracted by baseless allegations.”