so let's dig a little deeper into this with NBC News correspondent rahima Ellis uh rahima thanks for for joining us today talk to us about what we know about the closing arguments here how long they might last when the jury might start deliberations well the prosecution began its closing arguments this afternoon for 3 hours or maybe a little less than that and it had already signaled that its closing argument would last at least 5 hours so that's going to go into tomorrow as well and in those closing arguments one of the things that they said
to the jurors is that senator mende has put his power up for sale in this bribery scheme involving 18 different charges including bribery extortion obstruction of justice and acting as a foreign agent after that closing argument from the prosecution the defense will come up and it's not known exactly how long the defense argument will be but it's expected that these closing arguments could take most of the day tomorrow before the judge gets an opportunity to charge the jury in this case before the week is over and certainly uh it's expected it could happen as soon
as Wednesday now you've been following this case obviously for a while now let's talk a little bit about the witnesses here on the prosecution side was there sort of a star witness or or a compelling testimony that that we heard there was a star witness and in fact it was bombshell testimony if you will because it is one of the three New Jersey businessmen who was accused in this bribery scheme that the government has alleged against Senator men Menendez and and that prosecution witness um he came out and he confessed to buying the Senator's wife
a $60,000 Mercedes b in exchange for her influence over her husband that's something that uh the jurors had not heard before and this particular witness again he was a friend of the family if you will and testified that he U gave this car to Mrs Menendez specifically in exchange for her making certain that there were favors that would be coming from her husband the senator so Rahim the the senator had had said from the beginning here that he intended to vigorously fight the charges against him obviously when you look at the defenses case here what
was really the Crux of the argument coming from menendez's Team there were a couple of things in the Menendez case one of the things they're saying is that the amount of money that was found in the home he said it was a cultural thing that being the son of Cuban immigrants that cuban-american families were accustomed to having large sums of money in the home coming from the Castro regime where things and possessions could be taken from a family without any notice and all of a sudden and in addition to that one of the things that
the defense said is that Senator mendez's wife kept him in the dark about what was going on they said she tried to get cash anywhere she could and any way that she could so in some measure they're saying that the wife was more responsible for this than the husband was and that seems to be the largest and the most prominent aspect of the defense in all of this if the jurors get this case this week the six men and six women will have to decide who's innocent or guilty but if the senator is found guilty
of this he could face decades Behind Bars Aaron it is an interesting argument to he in this particular case we'll of course be watching to see how it all turns out Rahim Ellis for us today Rahim thank you we appreciate it thanks for watching stay updated about breaking news and top stories on the NBC News app or follow us on social Med media
