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(AP Picture/Seth Wenig)
Embattled New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez is moving to suppress the search warrants that kicked up these stacks of money and the incriminating textual content messages detailing his alleged concierge companies for members of the Egyptian authorities. These are his gold bars, and you may’t see them!
(Those are not his gold bars.)
Menendez says that the federal government has been out for revenge since he skated on that bribery cost in 2017, main it to file warrant purposes that have been “riddled with materials misrepresentations and omissions that deceived the authorizing Justice of the Peace choose.”
“The federal government’s obvious zeal to ‘get again’ at Senator Menendez for defeating its prior prosecution has overwhelmed its sound judgment,” he fumes, including that “the federal government actively distorted the proof and withheld key exculpatory info, deceptive well-meaning Justice of the Peace Judges into granting warrants that ought to by no means have issued.”
Particularly Menendez is difficult the 5 warrants for his residence and communications issued between January of 2022 and September of 2023. He says the warrants have been overbroad and lacked time delineations with respect to his digital units and communications, and complains that the FBI’s supporting affidavits mischaracterized the proof and didn’t disclose exculpatory info identified to the federal government.
The movement, which is closely redacted, depends on current pretrial disclosures of Brady proof. Menendez says that the federal government was obliged to reveal all of it to the Justice of the Peace when it utilized for the warrants.
These assertions are considerably undermined—if not wholly discredited—by the federal government’s current disclosures talked about straight above.
All of this exculpatory proof ought to have been introduced to the Justice of the Peace choose so she may consider the federal government’s declare of possible trigger earlier than authorizing a large ranging search by the a sitting Senator’s electronic mail and iCloud account. See Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373, 394-95 (2014) (noting that “[t]he sum of a person’s non-public life will be reconstructed” by information saved on a typical fashionable cellphone or cloud account). Sadly, none of it was.
The redactions make it unimaginable to see what supposedly exculpatory proof “ought to” have been included within the warrant utility, however it might most likely be information to many felony defendants that Brady disclosures are required earlier than the indictment. Nonetheless, Menendez calls for that Decide Sidney Stein suppress the proof collected underneath the three digital warrants and maintain a Franks listening to to “assess the misstatements and omissions within the authorities’s warrant purposes” en path to suppressing the warrants to look his dwelling.
Just lately, the Senator moved to sever his case from his spouse Nadine Menendez’s in order that the lovebirds wouldn’t must defend themselves by testifying towards one another. Right here, too, peeking by the redactions, is a reference to a “dialog [which] makes clear that Senator Menendez was not conscious of any bribes or alleged improper funds to Nadine.”
Awkward! And in addition … don’t Bob and Nadine reside collectively, so a search of her residence is gonna contain his gold bars, too?
Menendez additionally whines concerning the mess left by federal brokers once they searched the couple’s home:
Upon my return dwelling, I used to be shocked to search out my belongings and furnishings in full disarray. Amongst different issues, I observed that sure inside doorways (together with doorways I usually hold unlocked had been forcibly damaged down; furnishings had been haphazardly moved round; submitting cupboards, desk drawers, dressers, wardrobes, and closets had all been rummaged by and their contents strewn about; and folders and unfastened paperwork have been scattered on desks, tables, and on the ground.
And when the info and regulation are towards you … complain that the FBI left a multitude.
US v. Menendez [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore the place she writes the Law and Chaos substack and seems on the Opening Arguments podcast.
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