With less than a month to go before Robert Menendez, New Jersey’s disgraced former U.S. senator, is scheduled to be sentenced for corruption, his lawyers submitted an emotion-laden appeal for leniency based on what they depicted as Mr. Menendez’s hardscrabble upbringing, life of service and devotion to family.
In a legal brief filed minutes before midnight on Thursday, the lawyers, Avi Weitzman and Adam Fee, laid out Mr. Menendez’s rise to political prominence in Hudson County, N.J., and a catalog of good deeds done for constituents during three decades in Congress.
As they did during Mr. Menendez’s two-month bribery trial in Manhattan, Mr. Weitzman and Mr. Fee suggested that their client’s greatest failing was being led astray by a conniving wife.
Nadine Menendez, the former senator’s wife, was charged with her husband with conspiring to trade his political influence for bribes of cash, gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz convertible.
Her trial is expected to start next month.
Persons:
Robert Menendez, New Jersey’s, Menendez’s, Avi Weitzman, Adam Fee, Weitzman, Fee, Nadine Menendez
Organizations:
Benz
Locations:
Hudson County, N.J, Manhattan