A Former Close Friend of Senator Menendez Testifies Against Him

Philip R. Sellinger, New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor, was called to the witness stand on Wednesday to testify in the bribery trial of Senator Robert Menendez, his onetime close friend, fund-raiser and political ally.

Mr. Sellinger’s testimony is expected to focus on how he got his job as U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey — and whether he and Mr. Menendez discussed any strings attached to his promotion to one of the country’s most prestigious legal posts.

Mr. Menendez, a Democrat, is accused in a federal indictment of trying to steer Mr. Sellinger into the U.S. attorney’s job on the condition that he go easy on Fred Daibes, a New Jersey real estate developer who had been charged with bank fraud by the office that Mr. Sellinger now leads.

Presidents, in selecting U.S. attorneys and federal judges, traditionally defer to their party’s senior senator in a state — in this case, Mr. Menendez.

Mr. Sellinger and Mr. Menendez have a long history in New Jersey.

Mr. Sellinger donated prodigiously to the senator’s campaigns. And in October 2020, when Mr. Menendez married Nadine Menendez, Mr. Sellinger was among a small group of friends who showered him and his new wife with wedding gifts.

After Joseph R. Biden Jr. was elected president the following month, Mr. Sellinger was on Mr. Menendez’s short list to be nominated to become New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor, a selection process that is customarily led by each state’s U.S. senators.

But prosecutors have said that Mr. Menendez also tried to exact a promise from Mr. Sellinger to drop a case involving Mr. Daibes, who in 2018 was accused of scheming to defraud a bank he had founded.

Mr. Menendez is in his fifth week of trial in Federal District Court on Manhattan where prosecutors have accused him and Ms. Menendez of conspiring to take cash, gold, a luxury car and other bribes collectively worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in return for the senator agreeing to dispense political favors abroad and at home.

Mr. Menendez, 70, is being tried with Mr. Daibes and another businessman, Wael Hana. Prosecutors say both men were pivotal in funneling bribes to the senator and Ms. Menendez, 57.

Her trial has been postponed until the summer because she is being treated for breast cancer. All four defendants have pleaded not guilty.