The trial of Senator Robert Menendez was paused on Thursday after the judge announced that one of the senator’s co-defendants, Fred Daibes, a New Jersey real estate developer, had tested positive for Covid-19.
The judge, Sidney H. Stein, said it was “the expectation and the hope of the court” that the trial could resume Monday, given revised federal Covid guidelines and depending on how quickly Mr. Daibes begins to recover.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention no longer recommends that people isolate themselves if they have been free of fever for at least 24 hours without the aid of medications and if their symptoms are improving.
Mr. Daibes is on trial with the senator and another defendant in a sprawling bribery conspiracy case in which prosecutors say Mr. Menendez, 70, and his wife, Nadine Menendez, 57, accepted gold, cash and a luxury car in exchange for the senator’s agreeing to dispense political favors at home and abroad. Ms. Menendez’s trial was postponed until at least August because she is being treated for breast cancer. All four defendants have pleaded not guilty.
The delay comes near the end of the trial’s fifth week in Federal District Court where, one day earlier, Mr. Daibes, who is in his late 60s, could be heard coughing loudly throughout the proceeding. Then, on Thursday, Judge Stein said in court that Mr. Daibes’s lawyers had emailed him at 8:18 a.m., notifying him that their client was feeling “clearly much worse.”
“I don’t think we have much choice,” Judge Stein said Thursday morning. “I cannot proceed without a defendant being present.”
Judge Stein returned to the bench in the afternoon and said he had asked Mr. Daibes’s lawyers to provide him with an update on their client’s status on Friday.
Here are some of the other highlights of the week:
The cooperator
After Jose Uribe took the witness stand last Friday, a federal prosecutor jumped right in with a series of questions that quickly revealed why he was there.
“Have you ever committed federal crimes?” the prosecutor, Lara Pomerantz, asked.
“Yes, I have,” Mr. Uribe said.
Had he pleaded guilty to committing federal crimes? Yes, he said. Did they include bribery of a public official? Mr. Uribe again answered in the affirmative.
“Who was that public official?” Ms. Pomerantz then asked.
“Senator Robert Menendez,” Mr. Uribe said.
In a trial in which prosecutors said they might call dozens of witnesses, none seems as critical to the government’s case as Mr. Uribe, 57, a former insurance broker. He told the jury that he had helped bribe Mr. Menendez, providing a new Mercedes-Benz worth more than $60,000 to the senator’s wife in return for his help in trying to persuade New Jersey’s attorney general to stop investigating several people and companies close to Mr. Uribe.
Mr. Uribe offered firsthand accounts of meetings with the senator, including one dinner conversation in which Mr. Menendez, speaking in Spanish, seemed proud and confident.
“He said, ‘I saved your ass twice — not once, but twice,’” Mr. Uribe recalled.
Mr. Uribe said he had decided to plead guilty about two months after he was indicted. It was not until March 1 that Mr. Uribe walked into open court and pleaded guilty — the first time the public came to understand his new role.
Mr. Uribe said he had met at least 10 to 15 times with prosecutors who, at times, were joined by F.B.I. and I.R.S. agents.
Mr. Menendez’s lawyers have sharply attacked Mr. Uribe’s credibility, calling him a liar and aggressively cross-examining him. In their questioning, they seemed to suggest that he had fabricated certain recollections, and they also elicited testimony that he had been drinking before or during meetings with Mr. Menendez, perhaps a suggestion that his memory was impaired.
Mr. Uribe told the jury he had decided to plead guilty and cooperate with the goal of obtaining a “better sentence for myself.” He also said he wanted to show prosecutors that members of his family had no role in his wrongdoing and that “it was all on me.”
The ‘little bell’
A hand-held bell, and a defense lawyer’s attempts to plant seeds of doubt about its existence, provided a series of amusing — and potentially indelible — courtroom exchanges.
Mr. Uribe testified on Monday that Mr. Menendez had rung a “small bell” to summon Ms. Menendez during one of several private conversations he had with the senator. The vividness of the scene lingered for days; on Wednesday, the words “little bell” were uttered in court 17 times.
Adam Fee, one of Mr. Menendez’s lawyers, pressed Mr. Uribe for details about the “small bell” during cross-examination, as if aware that the couple’s method of communication undermined a defense claim that Mr. Menendez and his wife lived largely separate lives.
“How little a bell was it?” Mr. Fee asked. “Was it bigger than the microphone head or smaller?” Bigger.
“Is it bigger than my fist or smaller?”
“I cannot see the size of your fist,” Mr. Uribe responded.
Did Mr. Uribe, Mr. Fee asked, text any of his friends to say, “Hey, it was super weird when Senator Menendez rang a bell to summon Nadine”?
Mr. Uribe later said he recalled having had a conversation with prosecutors during which “it was told that it was very rare that a bell — that somebody in today’s age has a bell.”
It might not have been at all rare for Ms. Menendez. A month before the occasion on which Mr. Uribe said he witnessed the bell-ringing, she sent Mr. Daibes a text message, wishing him a happy birthday and noting that she was “looking for the perfect bell.”
“I have not found it yet, but I will,” she wrote in the message shown Wednesday to jurors.
That led Mr. Fee to ask a different witness about bells stored at Ms. Menendez’s home in Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
“Are you aware,” he asked, “of a collection of antique Greek bells that don’t ring?”
The witness, a paralegal, was not.
The uncomfortable chair
Philip R. Sellinger, New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor, is accustomed to courthouses. Since December 2021, he has run the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of New Jersey, and before that, he was a managing shareholder for a 2,000-lawyer international law firm.
But being called on Tuesday as a witness against Mr. Menendez, a former close friend charged with some of the most serious crimes ever lodged against a sitting United States senator, was an unfamiliar role. He appeared well prepared; at one point, he interrupted a prosecutor to restate an answer so that “the record is clear.”
But the tension was obvious: A federal official responsible for making sure other people follow the law was offering testimony about a powerful friend’s alleged efforts to break it.
Prosecutors have said that Mr. Menendez steered Mr. Sellinger into the U.S. attorney’s office only after repeatedly suggesting that a bank fraud case initiated by the office Mr. Sellinger now leads was being handled “unfairly.”
“Senator Menendez hoped,” he testified, “that if I became U.S. attorney that I would look at it carefully.”
Presidents, in selecting U.S. attorneys and federal judges, traditionally defer to their party’s senior senator in a state — in this case, Mr. Menendez. And at the time Mr. Menendez mentioned the case, Mr. Sellinger was still auditioning for the job.
Mr. Sellinger was recused from the case because of an unrelated conflict of interest, and he testified that he had never believed Mr. Menendez was asking him to bend the rules or “do anything unethical or improper.”
He is expected to finish his testimony once the trial restarts next week.
