Sen. Bob Menendez’s defense begins with sister testifying about family tradition of storing cash

NEW YORK (AP) — Sen. Bob Menendez’s sister came to her brother’s defense Monday, testifying at the start of the defense presentation at his bribery trial that she wasn’t surprised to learn that the Democrat stored cash at home because “it’s a Cuban thing.”

Caridad Gonzalez, 80, was called by Menendez’s lawyers to support their argument that hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash found in the Menendez’s residence during a 2022 raid was not unusual for a man whose parents fled Cuba in 1951 with only the cash hidden at home.

“It’s normal. It’s a Cuban thing,” she said when she was asked for her reaction to Menendez directing her to pull $500 in $100 bills from a boot-sized box in a closet of his daughter’s bedroom in the 1980s when she worked for him as a legal secretary.

She testified that everyone who left Cuba in the 1960s and 1970s kept cash at home because “they were afraid of losing what they worked so hard for because, in Cuba, they took everything away from you.”

Prosecutors say more than $486,000 in cash, over $100,000 in gold bars and a luxury car found at the Menendez home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, during the 2022 raid were bribe proceeds.

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