Menendez trial: Former staffer's testimony provides boost for defense

U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez received a boost at his federal corruption trial Wednesday when a longtime staffer took the stand and contradicted testimony from previous witnesses that had been among the most damaging to the senator thus far.

The testimony of Karissa Willhite, Menendez’s former deputy chief of staff for policy, was indicative of how the tone of the trial has changed now that the government has rested its case and the defense can call its own witnesses to the stand.

Prosecutors have charged Menendez, a Democrat from Paramus, with using his office to benefit co-defendant Salomon Melgen, a wealthy Florida eye doctor and longtime friend, in exchange for bribes in the form of free flights, luxury vacations and more than $700,000 in campaign contributions. Both men deny the allegations.

Earlier in the trial, the government called witnesses who testified that Menendez had used "unusual" or even "hostile" tactics to try to get government officials to side with Melgen in an $8.9 million billing dispute he had with Medicare.

But through his questions to Willhite on Wednesday, Menendez attorney Abbe Lowell elicited a much different version of events.

Was it true, Lowell asked Willhite, that the senator had become “hostile” during a 2009 phone call with an Obama appointee about the Medicare reimbursement policy affecting Melgen, as that official testified earlier this month? 

“It was not angry,” Willhite said of the call, which she said she listened in on. “He was not yelling. That is just not in his character at all.”

Lowell asked her if anyone from Menendez’s office told officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services during a separate 2009 phone call that Melgen should be reimbursed even if he practiced “bad medicine,” as an agency official testified last month.

"Asbolutely not," Willhite said. “It’s just an absurd thing to say."  

And Lowell asked: Was your work on the Medicare issue focused on making sure Melgen received the $8.9 million in disputed payments, or was it motivated by broader policy concerns?

“This case was an example of a bigger issue” that could affect many doctors, Willhite said, adding at another point: “What we were trying to figure out … was whether this was a larger policy issue for us to address within our jurisdiction in the Senate.”

On cross-examination, lead prosecutor Peter Koski showed Willhite several emails and memos in which she or a woman she supervised used Melgen’s name in connection to discussions about the Medicare policy. 

Koski asked on several occasions: Wasn’t that proof that Menendez's office was trying to get a favorable outcome for Melgen specifically?

Willhite wouldn’t relent.

“The case was an example we were using in the policy conversations we were having,” she said.

Earlier Wednesday, a former high-ranking official at the U.S. Department of Commerce took the stand to answer questions about a 2012 meeting he had with an attorney representing Melgen in a contract dispute a Melgen-owned company had in the Dominican Republic.

As with Melgen’s billing dispute, Menendez is accused of having improperly lobbied government officials to intervene on Melgen’s behalf in the contract dispute.

Jurors had heard about the meeting last month from Scott Smith, another Commerce Department official in attendance, who testified that the attorney, Elio Muller, had threatened that the doctor's political connections could “cause a lot of problems” if he wasn’t “served well” in the dispute.

“He was very aggressive and threatening,” Smith said of Muller. “He constantly brought up the fact that he could make trouble for the department and that he could be a bull in the Commerce Department’s china shop. His tone was just threatening.”

Walter Bastian provided a different interpretation Wednesday when asked by Melgen attorney Samuel Stern if Muller had threatened him or Smith “in any way.”

“He did not,” Bastian replied, adding later that Smith, whom he supervised, never expressed any concerns after the meeting about having felt threatened.

Prosecutor Monique Abrishami elicited during her cross-examination that Bastian never took any steps to help in the dispute and told Muller that he would have to go to the State Department or the Department of Homeland Security if he wanted assistance, “but not us.”

The trial is set to resume Thursday morning.

Email: pugliese@northjersey.com