Menendez prosecutors' star witness describes bribery scheme over brandy and cigars

NEW YORK — Federal prosecutors’ star witness in their case against Sen. Bob Menendez testified Monday about a backyard meeting with the senator in September 2019. There was Grand Marnier and the senator was smoking a cigar.

At one point, Jose Uribe, the witness who has pleaded guilty to bribing Menendez and his now-wife and is cooperating with federal prosecutors, said the senator called out “mon amour” and rang a little bell that summoned his then-girlfriend Nadine from her house to the backyard. She brought out a piece of paper and then went back inside the house.

Uribe said he used the paper to write down the names of companies and people being investigated by the New Jersey attorney general’s office. Uribe said he bribed Nadine with a new car so the senator would “kill” this investigation.

The New Jersey Democrat took the piece of paper and put it in his pocket, Uribe testified.

The next day, Menendez had a meeting in his Newark district office with then-New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal and one of Grewal’s top aides. Federal prosecutors allege Menendez used that meeting to try to disrupt investigations Uribe wanted stopped.

Grewal testified last week that he cut off the senator when Menendez tried to bring up pending cases. When he and his aide left the meeting, the aide turned to Grewal and said, “Whoa, that was gross.”

Prosecutors have said Menendez, who has denied the allegations, failed to sway the investigation’s outcome but told Uribe the meeting went well anyway. They have charged the senator with corruption and Uribe earlier this year pleaded guilty to bribing the senator and his wife.

Months before the backyard tête-à-tête, Uribe said he had given Nadine $15,000 cash in a parking lot to help Nadine buy a new Mercedes-Benz.

From Uribe’s point of view, Menendez seemed to solve his problems. And his bribes to Nadine were part of the reason why.

Uribe said he never discussed the car with the senator but had “no doubt” he knew about it. On the stand, Uribe suggested being at the senator’s girlfriend’s home and having drinks and dinners with him could not be explained any other way.

At her house, with the senator and the brandy and cigar, he was making sure the senator knew what the other end of the deal was: get “peace” for Uribe, his business associates and family.

The backyard meeting Nadine’s house was one of several meetings Uribe testified to while being questioned by a federal prosecutor on Friday and Monday.

Prosecutors illustrated several interactions with photographs of where the meetings took place: The parking lot of Villa Amalfi in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, where Uribe said he handed Nadine the cash; and the interior of Il Villaggio in Bergen County, where Uribe said he, Nadine and the senator had met on Aug. 7, 2019 to confirm their understanding.

Uribe said that at the dinner the senator seemed to have “complete knowledge” about the prosecution that the senator is accused of trying to disrupt. And, when Uribe asked him to find out about the investigation into his own company, Menendez indicated “he would look into it,” Uribe testified.

A few weeks later, on Sept. 5, 2019, they met in the backyard to talk again, Uribe said. The next day, after prosecutors said Menendez met with Grewal, Uribe said Nadine sent him to meet Menendez at the senator’s apartment.

There, Uribe said he found the senator in the lobby. They gathered near a window. “That thing you asked me about,” Uribe said the senator told him, there “doesn’t seem to be anything there.”

A few weeks later, on Oct. 29, the senator called Uribe from a “202” number. Uribe said he thought the senator had called from his office in Washington. This time the senator was more definitive, in Uribe’s memory.

“That thing you asked me about – there is nothing there,” Uribe said the senator hold him. “I give you your peace.”

Uribe took that to mean the senator had helped end the investigation into his business circle, friends and family.

At this point in his testimony Monday afternoon, Uribe began to break down in tears and was eventually handed a tissue by a court staffer.

Uribe’s goal, going back over a year, had been to get a good deal for one business associate who was being charged with insurance fraud in New Jersey and to stop a related state investigation that could lead to one of his own companies.

Earlier in 2019, Uribe’s associates, Elvis Parra, got a deal where he didn’t serve any time. And, after the fall 2019 call from the senator, the investigation into Uribe’s businesses seemed to stop.

Uribe also gave more details about the bribe he said he gave to Nadine, who will stand trial separately because of a cancer diagnosis.

“If your problem is a car, my problem is saving my family,” Uribe said he told Nadine in March 2019, in the days before he said he handed her the cash to make the downpayment on a new Mercedes convertible.

Uribe would eventually also arrange or make dozens of monthly car payments for her Mercedes.

By late summer, Parra had gotten a deal that required no jail time. That was good for Uribe. But a detective from the New Jersey attorney general’s office was still trying to interview one of his employees, someone so close he considered her a daughter. That was bad.

Part of the issue seems to be that Uribe had for months been going through an intermediary: Wael “Will” Hana, who is now one of the co-defendants in Menendez’s corruption trial. And it was unclear if the senator knew Uribe was seeking a two-part deal until months after Uribe thought he and Hana had a deal.

For instance, days before their August 2019 meeting, Nadine had texted Uribe that she’d spoken with the senator and “he said it would’ve been so so easy if we had wrapped both together.”

Days after the senator called Uribe, the three of them and another friend went out and had Champagne to celebrate.

The next summer, amid the pandemic, Uribe said he met the senator, Nadine and her adult daughter at a restaurant with an outdoor area. When Nadine and the daughter got up to go to the bathroom, the senator turned to him and said, in Spanish, that he’d saved Uribe’s backside.

“He said: I saved your ass twice. Not once, but twice,” Uribe said.

But, instead, two years later, in summer 2022, FBI agents visited the senator, Nadine and Uribe with search warrants, subpoenas and lots of questions.

At one point, Uribe said Nadine came to visit him after the search and she asked what he planned to tell authorities about the car. He said he would describe it as a loan, though he said it was never meant to be. Just before Christmas 2022, Nadine would write him a check for $21,000 that said “personal loan” but didn’t cover everything he’d paid toward the car, Uribe testified.

Uribe, who has since pleaded to seven different crimes — some unrelated to his interactions with the Menendezes — is now cooperating with federal prosecutors in hopes of a lenient sentence. Otherwise, he faces up to 95 years in prison.

Defense attorneys began their cross examination of Uribe late Monday. They are likely to probe several parts of his account, as well as his own criminal record. For instance, he recalled the substance of but not always the exact words used during conversations with Menendez and it’s not always clear if he and Hana were on the same page or whether the senator always knew what Nadine was telling people about his thoughts, words and actions.

The senator’s legal team has said his conversations with Grewal were related to concerns about selective prosecution of Hispanics by state authorities.

On the stand, Uribe also revealed another instance of the senator doing him a solid. At a ribbon cutting for a hospital, Uribe said Menendez introduced Uribe to the New Jersey insurance commissioner at the time. Uribe, who had previously lost his insurance license, was trying to get it back. He said Menendez told the commissioner he was a “good man.”