Well, now it's time for our daily Bloomberg Lab of Brief, exploring legal issues in the news, and today Bloomberg Law host doom Grasso discussed the political corruption trial for New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez. She speaks with Robert Mints, a partner at mcarter and English, and Jeffrey Bellan, a professor at William and Mary Law School. Jeff, let's start with
a brief outline of the case against Menendez. So the government has has to show that there was money exchanged for official acts here and so are things of value. And they've got a whole catalog of things of value that went from Dr Melligan to Senator Menendez. Highlights include like an expensive Paris hotel room, some trips to the
Dominican Republic where the doctor had, I guess a nice villa. Uh. And then you know some of the eye catching ones are are very large, like effectively campaign contributions up to seven fifty thousand dollars. So that's all the money going
to Senator Menendez and things of value. And then the government has a whole bunch of allegations of things that the senator did for Dr Melligan in that same time period, including intervening on his behalf in a medicare billing dispute, intervening on Dr Meligan's behalf in like a business deal having to do with the ports in the Dominican Republic, and then arranging to influence the visa application process to help Dr Meligan's girlfriends get some visas, and so the
challenges connecting those things. But they certainly have a lot of allegations of gifts and official acts. Bob Menendez is prominent attorney. Abby Lowell said that acting out of friendship is not improper, it's not corrupt, and it's certainly not
a crime. Tell us what the defense strategy is, Well, the defense is taking the position that the case is really not about what happened, but about why it happened, and so that means for the jury, this is all a question of intent, and what the jurors are really asked to do is get into the mind of both Center Menendez and Dr Meligan and explore this relationship and try to determine whether this was a true friendship at these gifts were simply given out of their affection for
one another, or whether there was something more nefarious going on. Here whether there really was a quid pro crow relationship where this stream of benefits were bestowed upon Center Menendez, with the expectation by Dr Meligan that at some point in the future Center Menendez would intercede on his behalf to benefit him financially. As Robert Man's a partner, Ed McCarter in English, and Jeffrey Bellan, a professor at William and Mary Law School, speaking with Bloomberg Lahost jun Crosso.
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