Government opposes Menendez’s push to delay bribery trial

Prosecutors asked a judge to reject Sen. Bob Menendez’s (D-NJ) request that a federal court in New York delay his corruption trial, which is set to begin in May.

Attorneys for the Southern District of New York argued in a court filing Tuesday that Menendez’s request was based on “ill-founded” arguments related to the high volume of discovery in the case and the perceived complexity of his charges.

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Menendez was indicted on four charges in the fall over allegations he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to use his influential position as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman to benefit the Egyptian government.

The New Jersey Democrat was forced to step down as chairman because of the charges, but he has pleaded not guilty in the case and refused to resign as senator despite bipartisan calls from his colleagues for him to do so.

Menendez’s defense team argued in a court filing last week that the senator needed a “modest” extension of deadlines and a trial delay of roughly two months because the government had provided him with more than 15 million pages of discovery that were not search-friendly.

“This volume of discovery is simply massive, and will require several more months just to conduct targeted reviews of a meaningful portion of the relevant discovery,” Menendez’s attorneys said.

The defense attorneys also said the extra time would accommodate “substantial, complex motion practice in this case” and indicated that Menendez plans to ask that the case be dismissed on speech or debate clause grounds. The speech or debate clause affords members of Congress the privilege of immunity from arrest in certain circumstances while serving in office.

Prosecutors responded that they had taken “great pains” to present discovery in an organized manner in accordance with deadlines that all parties in the case had agreed to in October.

“If there were a right to have multiple months to digest discovery prior to filing motions, as the defendants appear to suggest, practice in this district would look quite different,” they wrote, noting that they believe the court’s trial schedule is “reasonable.”

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Menendez must file any requests to dismiss his case by Jan. 8. The trial is set to begin on May 6, in the heat of four consecutive weeks when the Senate will be in session in Washington, D.C.

Menendez is asking the court to postpone the trial until at least early July, a time frame that would conflict less with his Senate schedule, which will begin to die down for the summer around that time.