No verdict after second day of deliberations in Sen. Bob Menendez’s corruption trial

Jurors failed to reach a verdict Monday after their first full day of deliberations in Sen. Bob Menendez’s federal bribery trial.

After spending three hours Friday deliberating, the jury considered the case for another seven hours on Monday at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan federal courthouse in Manhattan before breaking for the evening. Deliberations will resume Tuesday morning.

New Jersey’s senior senator, a Democrat, is charged with 16 crimes, including bribery, extortion, acting as a foreign agent, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy. Prosecutors accuse him of taking gold bars, cash, a luxury car, and more from three businessmen who wanted his help to disrupt criminal cases and land lucrative investments from Egyptian and Qatari officials.

Jurors sent three notes to Judge Sidney H. Stein Monday with brief questions.

They asked whether a not-guilty verdict on a single count requires unanimity and whether counts 11 and 12 of the 18-count indictment covered Menendez’s alleged intervention in the federal bank fraud case of Fred Daibes, one of his five codefendants. The answer was yes to both.

In a third note, they requested a 10-minute fresh-air break on the courthouse’s eighth-floor balcony.

The trial is now in its 10th week, with codefendants Daibes and Wael Hana standing trial beside Menendez.

Daibes, an Edgewater real estate developer and bank founder, and Hana, a halal meat exporter, have denied guilt, saying the cash and gold that FBI investigators seized from the senator’s Englewood Cliffs home during a June 2022 search were gifts given out of friendship and that the deals they signed with Egyptian and Qatari officials were the result of their hard work, connections, and due diligence.

Menendez has also denied the charges, saying his actions in Egypt and Qatar were the normal work of a U.S. senator, that he has hoarded cash over decades as “a Cuban thing,” and that his wife, Nadine, had inherited family gold.

Codefendant Jose Uribe pleaded guilty in March. Nadine Menendez was also charged but won’t stand trial until at least August while she undergoes treatment for breast cancer.