Sen. Bob Menendez’s family had a history of storing cash at home that stretched back to their Cuban roots, his older sister testified Monday, as the defense sought to offer jurors an explanation for the large amount of cash found at his New Jersey residence. Menendez started presenting witnesses Monday in his trial in Manhattan on 16 criminal counts, with federal prosecutors accusing the senator and his wife of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes that included cash, gold bars and a luxury vehicle.
Authorities said they seized gold bars and about $486,000 in cash during a 2022 search of the New Jersey residence the senator shared with his wife. The senator’s legal team began their defense Monday by calling his sister Caridad Gonzalez, who spoke about the family advice they received about distrusting banks and keeping money at home. Storing cash in the home was a practice for Cubans who came to the United States in the decades after World War II, she said, mentioning that her father while in Cuba kept cash in a grandfather clock.
“Mostly anything is that they were afraid of losing everything they worked so hard for, because, in Cuba, they took everything away from you, whether you liked it or not,” Gonzalez said. Gonzalez also testified that warnings about trusting banks were handed down from her father. “Daddy always said ‘Don’t trust the banks.
If you trust the banks, you never know what can happen, so you must always have money at home.’ And .