Government

Bob Menendez Moves To Suppress Search Warrants Because Ummm... Nadine Did It!

Those are Bob's gold bars, and you can't see them!

By  
on
Robert Menendez

(AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Embattled New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez is moving to suppress the search warrants that kicked up those stacks of cash and the incriminating text messages detailing his alleged concierge services for members of the Egyptian government. Those are his gold bars, and you can’t see them!

(Those are not his gold bars.)

Menendez says that the government has been out for revenge since he skated on that bribery charge in 2017, leading it to file warrant applications that were “riddled with material misrepresentations and omissions that deceived the authorizing magistrate judge.”

“The government’s apparent zeal to ‘get back’ at Senator Menendez for defeating its prior prosecution has overwhelmed its sound judgment,” he fumes, adding that “the government actively distorted the evidence and withheld key exculpatory information, misleading well-meaning Magistrate Judges into granting warrants that should never have issued.”

Specifically Menendez is challenging the five warrants for his residence and communications issued between January of 2022 and September of 2023. He says the warrants were overbroad and lacked time delineations with respect to his electronic devices and communications, and complains that the FBI’s supporting affidavits mischaracterized the evidence and failed to disclose exculpatory information known to the government.

The motion, which is heavily redacted, relies on recent pretrial disclosures of Brady evidence. Menendez says that the government was obliged to disclose all of it to the magistrate when it applied for the warrants.

Sponsored

These assertions are substantially undermined—if not wholly discredited—by the government’s recent disclosures mentioned directly above.

All of this exculpatory evidence should have been presented to the magistrate judge so she could evaluate the government’s claim of probable cause before authorizing a wide ranging search through the a sitting Senator’s email and iCloud account. See Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373, 394-95 (2014) (noting that “[t]he sum of an individual’s private life can be reconstructed” through data stored on a typical modern cellphone or cloud account). Unfortunately, none of it was.

The redactions make it impossible to see what supposedly exculpatory evidence “should” have been included in the warrant application, but it would probably be news to many criminal defendants that Brady disclosures are required before the indictment. Nevertheless, Menendez demands that Judge Sidney Stein suppress the evidence collected under the three digital warrants and hold a Franks hearing to “assess the misstatements and omissions in the government’s warrant applications” en route to suppressing the warrants to search his home.

Recently, the Senator moved to sever his case from his wife Nadine Menendez’s so that the lovebirds wouldn’t have to defend themselves by testifying against each other. Here, too, peeking through the redactions, is a reference to a “conversation [which] makes clear that Senator Menendez was not aware of any bribes or alleged improper payments to Nadine.”

Awkward! And also … don’t Bob and Nadine live together, so a search of her residence is gonna involve his gold bars, too?

Menendez also whines about the mess left by federal agents when they searched the couple’s house:

Sponsored

Upon my return home, I was shocked to find my belongings and furniture in complete disarray. Among other things, I noticed that certain interior doors (including doors I generally keep unlocked had been forcibly broken down; furniture had been haphazardly moved around; filing cabinets, desk drawers, dressers, wardrobes, and closets had all been rummaged through and their contents strewn about; and folders and loose documents were scattered on desks, tables, and on the floor.

And when the facts and law are against you … complain that the FBI left a mess.

US v. Menendez [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes the Law and Chaos substack and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.

Topics

, ,