On the first day of his corruption trial, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) sat for more than eight hours, grim-faced and mostly silent, as dozens of potential jurors summoned to Manhattan federal court on Monday were painstakingly questioned by the judge after they asked to be excused.
Menendez, once the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is accused of accepting gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz convertible and other bribes from businessmen with ties to the governments of Egypt and Qatar. Two of those businessmen, now co-defendants in the case, sat one row behind the senator for the laborious start of jury selection.
