(Headline USA) The legal team representing Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J. argued in a filing revealed this week that the Democrat hoarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gold bars because of “generational trauma,” The Hill reported.
Menendez is facing several federal charges for bribery and acting as a foreign agent.
The Justice Department alleged Menendez sold his influence and received cash, gold and gifts in return. The cash and gold were found in Menendez’s home during a FBI raid last year.
His attorneys claimed in a recent filing that Menendez kept the 13 gold bars and $480,000 in cash in his home because of the psychological trauma tied to his upbringing in Cuba.
“Senator Menendez suffered intergenerational trauma stemming from his family’s experience as refugees, who had their funds confiscated by the Cuban government and were left with only a small amount of cash that they had stashed away in their home,” the filing said.
Menendez also “experienced trauma when his father, a compulsive gambler, died by suicide after Senator Menendez eventually decided to discontinue paying off his father’s gambling debts,” the filing continued.
The senator’s hoarding of cash and gold at home was a “coping mechanism” for this trauma, it claimed.
His lawyers went on to request that a psychologist be called into the trial to question Menendez on the trauma.
Menendez made a similar claim last year shortly after the DOJ filed its charges against him, arguing that hoarding cash and gold was a normal habit among immigrant families.
“For 30 years, I have withdrawn thousands of dollars in cash from my personal savings account, which I have kept for emergencies and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba,” he said at the time. “Now, this may seem old-fashioned, but these were monies drawn from my personal savings account based on the income that I have lawfully derived over those 30 years.”
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis borrowed from this same argument when called to explain in the witness stand why she, too, kept large amounts of cash on hand—with no discernible record of where it came from—in order to reimburse her lover and coworker, Nathan Wade, for their joint travel expenses.
Willis’s father, John Floyd, a former member of the Black Panthers, also took the stand to attest to having brought her up this way.
“Your Honor, I’m not trying to be racist,” Floyd said. “It’s a black thing. I was trained and most black people hide cash.”
FANI WILLIS' FATHER: "Your Honor, I'm not trying to be racist. It's a black thing. I was trained and most black people hide cash… I was trained. You ALWAYS keep some cash. In fact, I gave my daughter her first cash box and told her 'always keep some cash.'" pic.twitter.com/pYzeOcLqjm
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 16, 2024
Many suspected that Willis’s purported use of cash was part of a deliberate effort to defraud Fulton County taxpayers as she and Wade were possibly writing off the trips or billing them as travel expenses.
