NJ's top federal prosecutor, a Menendez wedding guest, testifies of soured relationship with the senator

Before he was the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, Philip Sellinger was in Sen. Bob Menendez’s inner circle. They dined together, they played golf together with their sons, and their wives texted. Sellinger was one of the 70 or so guests at the senator’s pandemic-era wedding.

When Joe Biden, a fellow Democrat, got to the White House after the 2020 election, Menendez made good on something he and Sellinger had talked about for years: getting Sellinger the top federal prosecutor’s job in New Jersey.

But, once Sellinger got the job, the relationship soured.

On Wednesday, Sellinger came across the Hudson River to take the stand in a corruption case brought by fellow federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York who now think they know why Menendez dumped his long-time friend: bribes.

Sellinger testified about a series of interactions in late 2020 and the first half of 2021 where Menendez and one of his long-time aides brought up a federal prosecution back in New Jersey against another of Menendez’s wedding guests — real estate developer Fred Daibes.

Daibes, who is on trial with Menendez, is accused of bribing the senator and his wife with cash and gold to interfere in a fraud case New Jersey federal prosecutors had brought against Daibes in 2018.

After Sellinger refused to get involved in Daibes’ case, Menendez snubbed him and declined to attend a ceremony honoring Sellinger.

“He said, ‘I’m going to pass,’” Sellinger testified. “‘The only thing worse than not having a relationship with the United States attorney is people thinking you have a relationship with the United States attorney, and you don’t.’”

The road to that snubbing, though, took some twists and turns.

Sellinger said that in December 2020, just before Menendez seemed poised to recommend Sellinger to Biden, the senator brought up the Daibes case and said he hoped when Sellinger became U.S. attorney he would “look at it carefully.”

Either during that meeting or the next day by phone, Sellinger told Menendez about a case he’d worked on in private practice that was basically a lawsuit against Daibes’ real estate interests. Sellinger said he might have to recuse himself from the Daibes criminal case.

Within a few weeks, Menendez said Biden’s team wanted other candidates besides Sellinger and that Menendez was unable to have the White House nominate Sellinger. That seemed to end something Sellinger said he and Menendez had been talking about since 2016. Sellinger said he and the senator had talked about Menendez recommending Sellinger to the Hillary Clinton White House if she won. Senators of the same party as the president typically pick top political appointees for their state.

Of course, Donald Trump won that year. But the conversations picked up again when Biden beat Trump in 2020.

For a while, Menendez turned his attention to Esther Suarez, but her bid for the U.S. attorney’s job fell apart, and Menendez ended up recommending Sellinger in 2021 after all.

In March 2022, a few months after Sellinger was sworn in, one of Menendez’s top aides at the time, Michael Soliman, reached out to set up a meeting with Sellinger at Chateau of Spain, a popular lunch spot near the federal courthouse in Newark.

They chatted for a while until Soliman said to Sellinger, “Let me ask you a question,” Sellinger testified,

“Let me stop you there,” Selliner said he replied. Sellinger told Soliman he couldn’t talk about specific cases with elected officials or their representatives.

A few weeks later, Sellinger invited Menendez to a ceremonial swearing in. By then, Menendez wanted nothing to do with his old friend.

Menendez defense attorney Avi Weitzman began cross examining Sellinger in the late afternoon Wednesday and is expected to continue Thursday morning. Sellinger told Weitzman he never believed Menendez to be asking him to do anything improper or unethical.

Menendez’s defense is that he was vetting Sellinger because of his past legal conflict with Daibes. They argue the senator’s references to Daibes were about making sure Sellinger didn’t hit a snag because of a potential conflict — not the senator trying to install someone in office who was favorable to Daibes.

In Weitzman’s opening statement at the start of the trial, he pointed to a later call Menendez had with the prosecutor who took over supervision of the Daibes case, Vikas Khanna — California Rep. Ro Khanna’s brother. Weitzman said Menendez “didn’t mention Daibes by name, not even once, in this entire call, and Vikas Khanna never knew that Daibes knew Sen. Menendez.”

Daibes’ defense attorney has previously acknowledged that Daibes gave the Menendezes cash and gold — but as gifts, not bribes.

“Mr. Daibes did not give anything to Nadine Menendez or to Senator Menendez to influence or have the senator engage in any official acts on behalf of him or anyone else,” Daibes’ attorney Cesar De Castro said during opening statements in the trial.

Also on Wednesday, the federal judge overseeing the Menendez case agreed to further postpone the separate trial of Nadine Menendez following a cancer diagnosis just before this trial. Her rescheduled trial was loosely set to begin next month but now won’t begin until August at the earliest.