Disgraced former New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez — who’s reportedly seeking a pardon from President Trump after selling out his office for gold bar bribes — lost his bid for a new trial Wednesday.
Manhattan federal court Judge Sidney Stein found that the three-term Garden State senator wasn’t unfairly convicted despite an evidence snafu during jury deliberations.
The longtime Democratic pol asked Stein in November to throw out his conviction after prosecutors discovered they accidentally provided jurors with bits of evidence they weren’t supposed to see.
Prosecutors had loaded the wrong versions of trial exhibits, that weren’t properly redacted, when they sent a laptop loaded with evidence to the jury to review as the panel weighed Menendez’s verdict.
Stein, in a ruling Wednesday, found it was “extraordinarily unlikely” that jurors ever saw the mistakenly included evidence — “a few phrases buried in thousands of exhibits and many thousands of pages of evidence.”
Even on the “infinitesimal chance” that the jury did see that evidence, “there is a similarly minuscule likelihood that the jury would have understood it, much less attribute the significance to these exhibits that the defense now do,” the judge wrote.
Defense lawyers had two days to review the laptop before agreeing for it to be sent to jurors — and Menendez then waived his right to object to the contents, Stein said.
Menendez — who was forced to resign the month after his July conviction — is set to be sentenced on Jan. 29 and could face decades behind bars.
Menendez, 71, sought a pardon from former President Joe Biden before he left office but was apparently rebuffed.
He’s since been reportedly seeking clemency from Trump — who may be reluctant to grant the request given Menendez voted against him during both of the president’s impeachment trials.
Menendez said in a statement Wednesday that he “respectfully disagree[s]” with Stein’s decision and that he planned to appeal over the evidence blunder.
“To think that prosecutors can put unconstitutional and inadmissible evidence in front of the jury, assure the defense they only provided the jury with admitted exhibits, and escape any consequences, is outrageous,” Menendez said.
