After a slow start, Sen. Bob Menendez’s corruption trial hit warp speed Wednesday, with the defense team using opening arguments to blame everything on his wife and ending the day by demanding a mistrial.

With 12 jurors and six alternates seated after two and a half days of questioning, the case kicked off after lunchtime with prosecutor Lara Pomerantz methodically outlining the 18-count indictment against Menendez — a Democrat and New Jersey’s senior senator — and two of his co-defendants, businessman Wael Hana and Edgewater real estate developer Fred Daibes.

“For years, Robert Menendez abused his position to feed his own greed and to keep his wife happy,” Pomerantz said. “Menendez put his power up for sale, and Hana and Daibes were more than happy to buy it.”

But defense attorney Avi Weitzman told the jury that there were “innocent explanations” for all of prosecutors’ accusations, and he quickly cut to what might be the heart of his defense — Menendez’s claim that his wife, Nadine, kept him in the dark about the gold bars, cash, luxury car, and other bribes she allegedly took from Hana, Daibes, and a third co-defendant Jose Uribe, who pleaded guilty in March.

“The real question for you is: What did Bob know?” Weitzman told the jury.

Daibes and Hana are standing trial alongside Menendez, and their attorneys are expected to deliver their opening statements Thursday morning. Nadine Menendez was charged too, but U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein previously postponed her trial to July because she has a medical issue.

The senator’s wife

Despite her absence in the courtroom in Manhattan, Nadine Menendez loomed large over the trial Wednesday, with both prosecutors and the senator’s defense team repeatedly referring to her and her role in a bribery scheme that prosecutors say stretched back to 2018, when the couple began dating and a year after Sen. Menendez’s last corruption trial ended with a hung jury.

Pomerantz painted her as the insulation Menendez put between himself and his alleged benefactors, saying Nadine’s role as go-between gave the senator plausible deniability.

“Menendez was careful when he was committing crimes,” she said. “He was smart enough not to send too many texts. Instead, he had Nadine do that for him.”

Weitzman, though, portrayed her as a greedy manipulator who took gold, cash, and other bribes without her husband’s knowledge. The couple had separate finances, lived separately until April 2020, and have largely led separate lives since then, and FBI agents found all the gold bars in her locked closet, Weitzman said.

While the 70-year-old senator knew his wife had gold bars, he thought they were an inheritance from her family, who had built a fortune in the Persian rug business, he added. Instead, he said, Nadine had always been financially supported by other people, including a previous husband and by her wealthy family, and consequently “tried to get cash and assets any which way she could,” Weitzman said.

“I’ll acknowledge it smells a bit weird,” he said of what he called “the green and gold elephant in the room.”

Besides gold, investigators also found more than $400,000 stuffed in envelopes, jacket pockets, and shoes all over the couple’s home. Weitzman attributed that hoarded cash to the senator’s habit — forged after his family fled with nothing from Cuba in the 1950s — of making monthly withdrawals of $400 to $500 for decades and keeping the cash at home.

Prosecutors say the riches were corrupt payments for official actions that only a senator could deliver.

“Quid pro quo — this for that,” Pomerantz repeated throughout her opening statements.

Specifically, prosecutors have accused Menendez of taking gold, cash, and a no-show, “sham job” for Nadine Menendez from her longtime friend Hana to help Hana secure a monopoly on importing halal meat to Egypt.

“Hana didn’t actually have any experience in this business, but what he did have was a U.S. senator in his pocket,” Pomerantz said.

In exchange, Menendez also provided sensitive information about staffing at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and even ghost-wrote a letter from an Egyptian official to U.S. lawmakers who had held up millions in military arms and aid to Egypt over concerns about human rights abuses there, prosecutors allege.

Menendez also tried to disrupt the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey’s prosecution of Daibes and a fraud investigation by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office involving Uribe, an insurance broker who was friends with Hana, prosecutors said.

In exchange, Uribe gave Nadine $15,000 in cash in a parking lot as a down payment on a $60,000 Mercedes Benz convertible and continued to make monthly payments afterward for years, Pomerantz said.

“This was not politics as usual. It was politics for profit,” she said. “Robert Menendez was a United States senator on the take, motivated by greed and focused on how much he could put in his own pocket, and in his wife’s pocket.”

Weitzman insisted prosecutors were “wrong, dead wrong.”

Menendez took no bribes and never acted as a foreign agent for any government, he said.

“The actions Senator Menendez took were actions on behalf of constituents,” he said.

His interactions with Egyptian and Qatari officials were merely him “engaging in diplomacy on behalf of the U.S. government,” he added.

Weitzman urged jurors to remember Menendez’s long history of public service. Menendez has served in the Senate since 2006, in the House from 1993 to 2006, and in the New Jersey Legislature and Union City politics before that.

“He’s an American patriot,” Weitzman said.

About that mistrial motion

Stein rejected defense attorney Adam Fee’s argument that Pomerantz tainted jurors during her opening statements by implying that Menendez agreed to publicly support Qatar to help Daibes land an investment from a member of Qatar’s royal family in exchange for gold bars and cash.

Fee accused Pomerantz of violating Stein’s order that prosecutors couldn’t discuss the substance of a resolution supporting Qatar that Daibes allegedly urged Menendez to introduce to help him secure the investment.

“This is angels dancing on the head of a pin, your honor. They are injecting this case with that inference,” Fee said.

But after a heated back-and-forth between Fee and prosecutor Daniel Richenthal, Stein denied the mistrial motion.

“There’s no basis for it,” he said.

EWING, N.J. (CBS) — A somber gathering was held Wednesday to honor a fallen hero. Funeral services were held for Marcellus Bethea, the New Jersey state trooper who died on May 5 while training at the agency’s Ewing facility.

His death remains under investigation.

“To all of you whose hearts are broken in the wake of this tragic loss please know that I and the people of New Jersey are here with you, we grieve with you,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said.

Murphy reflected on Bethea’s life of duty and integrity and gave examples of heroism on the job.

“There are glaring examples of Marcellus’ heroism in action, like the time he arrived on a scene to aid a motorist and ended up carrying an injured woman from her car just moments before it burst into flames,” Murphy said.

Bethea was an eight-year veteran of the New Jersey State Police. He died while training for the state police’s TEAMS unit, an elite swat-style unit. Fellow troopers and lifelong friends reflected on a life cut far too short.

“There was nothing more important to him than his family, his parents, Kate, his lovely daughter Bella,” New Jersey State Police Trooper Sam Liebman said. “He worked tirelessly to provide for them, I swear, I don’t know anyone that worked more overtime. He was just always there working for them.”

Bethea grew up in Columbus, Mansfield Township, New Jersey. He was a graduate of Northern Burlington Regional High School and Rowan University. His widow spoke through tears as she described his love of being a trooper, something he wanted to be since he was just a child.

“I’ll never forget the way his eyes would light up when he would talk about his passion of being a state trooper, especially being a TEAMS member. Whether it was his love or dedication for his career and commitment to his family, he approached everything with enthusiasm and zest for life,” Kate Bethea said.

Bethea is survived by his wife and 2-year-old daughter. He was 33 years old.

NJ Transit will offer refunds on some tickets purchased before June 1 in response to criticism of the agency’s new policy that applies 30-day expiration dates to tickets.

The refund policy, announced Wednesday, will apply to all one-way bus, train, and light rail tickets bought before June 1, and will also apply to 10-trip train tickets purchased then.

The reversal comes after lawmakers and commuters blasted the rail agency for its new expiration date policy, part of a package approved in April that included fare hikes of up to 15% starting July 1 — and a 3% increase each year after. Adding expiration dates to tickets will provide a revenue boost of tens of millions annually, the agency says.

The agency said the overwhelming majority of customers typically do not purchase more than three months of tickets in advance, but the refund option will help people who purchased tickets before the new expiration date policy was announced.

Ticket holders seeking refunds will be able to do so starting Aug. 1 and through Dec. 31.

Previously, people could buy as many transit tickets as they wanted with no worry they’d expire. Under the budget approved by NJ Transit in April, all one-way tickets purchased after July 1 will only be valid for 30 days.

Tickets purchased in June won’t be eligible for a refund, and all one-way tickets purchased before July 1 will expire on July 31, regardless of purchase date.

“Ticket expiration policies are consistent with transit industry best practices across the country,” NJ Transit said in a statement.

The cash-strapped transit agency says that with the new fare hikes, it will close the roughly $100 million budget gap it faced for the upcoming fiscal year. But another shortfall of nearly $800 million is expected in the budget year beginning in July 2025, even considering the revenue from fare hikes.

Senate President Nicholas Scutari (D-Union) last week threatened to introduce legislation to reverse NJ Transit’s expiration date policy if the agency didn’t honor the full value of tickets purchased before the agency announced the change. On Wednesday, Scutari said he welcomes the move by the agency to refund riders.

“NJ Transit has a responsibility to respect the consumer rights of its riders by treating them fairly. If they want to sell tickets with expiration dates, it should be on the tickets or the purchasers should be informed at the time of sale. That is a reasonable expectation for any customer, including riders who rely on the services of a public transit agency,” he said.

How to request a refund 

Refunds are expected to take about three to four weeks, and will go much faster for customers who kept their receipts, the agency said in its announcement.

All mobile app tickets will be automatically converted to a full-value credit if unused by August 1.

People who bought online should print out their tickets before June 1. Instructions on how to seek a refund are included on printed tickets.

Customers with paper tickets must visit a customer service office near them with their receipts. If you don’t have receipts, you’ll be asked to provide the last four digits of the credit card used to purchase the tickets.

Customer service offices are located in Hoboken Terminal, Newark Penn Station, Secaucus Junction, Trenton Transit Center, New York Penn Station, and the Port Authority Bus Terminal.