A Senator’s Fate Is in a Jury’s Hands

The Manhattan jury in Senator Robert Menendez’s corruption trial began its deliberations midday Friday on a raft of federal charges in what prosecutors describe as a complex and yearslong bribery conspiracy.

A third-term Democrat who represents New Jersey, Mr. Menendez is accused of steering aid to Egypt, applying political pressure to preserve a friend’s business monopoly and meddling in criminal investigations in exchange for bribes of gold, cash and a Mercedes-Benz.

On Thursday, Mr. Menendez, 70, seated at the defense table with his lawyers, leaned back in a chair, hands clasped on his lap, as a prosecutor offered an hourslong rebuttal to frequently impassioned closing arguments by lawyers for the senator and two businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, who are being tried with him.

In his rebuttal argument, the prosecutor, Daniel C. Richenthal, took direct aim at a pillar of the senator’s defense strategy — an effort to shift blame to his wife, Nadine Menendez, 57.

Mr. Menendez’s lawyers had told the jury that Ms. Menendez was in dire financial straits early in their relationship and kept her husband “in the dark” about what she was asking others, like Mr. Hana and Mr. Daibes, to give her.

“Are you going to accept that there was a secret plan to dupe Senator Menendez,” Mr. Richenthal asked the jury, “that his wife cooked up a scheme to secretly collect money and gold by invoking his name with two men, one of whom was his close friend, and he never learned about it?”