This afternoon, the jurors started deliberations in the federal bribery case against Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and two co-defendants in the Southern District of New York. I was interviewed by WCBS NewsRadio 88 (press play above) and North Jersey dot com (Previously, the Bergen Record) on the case. Here is the link to the article.
From the article:
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“I was surprised how far the Menendez defense went with pinning the blame on his wife,” said Mitchell Epner, an attorney with Kudman Trachten Aloe Posner who has 30 years of experience with government enforcement, compliance and white-collar litigation.
“One of the problems for the defense here is it’s hard for most people and the jurors to see Menendez’s defense say ‘it’s all my wife's fault’ but he’s still married to her,” Epner said. “It’s going to be a tough thing to wrap their heads around for a U.S. Senator, that you’re married to a felon that got you wrapped up in her felonies, which is the basically the defense's story.”
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The trial went two weeks longer than anticipated and concluded with lengthy closing arguments from federal prosecutors, who tried to demonstrate how intertwined the many players were and the complications of their schemes.
“It’s been a complicated trial and complicated can be confusing,” Epner said. “One rule you learn as a federal prosecutor is to keep it simple, and they have not been able to do that here.”
Epner said the length of the federal prosecutors' closing arguments — more than five hours — was not normal. Typically, he said, closing arguments are about the length of a movie — about two hours. “When you hit five hours, you’re by definition telling people this is complicated, you want it to be simple, so simple that you should believe it without a reasonable doubt and that’s been the challenge the prosecution had here,” Epner said.
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