Federal judge rejects Sen. Bob Menendez request to delay bribery trial

Dec. 29 (UPI) -- A federal judge has rejected a request from attorneys representing Sen. Bob Menendez to delay the start of his bribery trial for two months.

The Democrat from New Jersey and his wife, Nadine Menendez, were each indicted in September on three bribery charges, with Bob Menendez receiving an additional charge of conspiracy for a public official to act as a foreign agent in October.

Earlier this month, lawyers representing Bob and Nadine Menendez asked that the start of the trial, which has been scheduled for May 6, to be pushed to at least July "given the complexity of this case." The lawyers citied the "unprecedented foreign-agent charge against a sitting senator" and the volume of the government's disclosures as cause.

"Defendants cannot meaningfully prepare for trial on the timeline the court set," their counsel wrote in its request.

U.S. District Court Judge Sidney Stein rejected the request Thursday, stating in his ruling that the quantity of discovery is what had been expected and "does not justify a two-month adjournment of the schedule."

Stein continued that the volume of discovery material is actually much less than the Menendez's counsel had thought they were to receive when they filed for the adjournment due to an "inadvertent error" that led them to believe they would receive 735 terabytes of data instead of the 3 terabytes they ended up getting.

"While 3 terabytes is concededly a substantial amount of data, it is but a tiny fraction of what defendants believed they had on their plates to digest and is consistent with the expectations voiced at the initial pretrial conference that discovery would be voluminous," Stein said.

Menendez and his wife have been charged with receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bribes in the form of cash, gold bullion and mortgage payments, among other methods, from three New Jersey businessmen between 2018 and 2022.

The senator has also been charged with acting as a foreign agent of Egypt.

They have pleaded not guilty.