A witness in Sen. Bob Menendez's trial said Salomon Melgen's (pictured) son contacted the FAA to prevent the public from tracking his plane. | AP Photo Menendez trial turns to stays at luxurious beachfront villas, golf, pheasant hunting

Here are the highlights from Monday's proceedings in the federal corruption trial of U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez.

Menendez, a Democrat and New Jersey's senior senator, is charged with doing official favors for his friend and co-defendant, Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen, in exchange for expensive hotel stays, private jet flights and hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions.


3:40 PM

NEWARK — Tropical oceanfront hotel suites. Exclusive beaches. Spa treatments. Hunting pheasants bred on-site.

Those were the trappings of luxury U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez had access to — but did not necessarily use — thanks in large part to Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen’s largesse, prosecutors said Monday during the federal corruption trial of Menendez and Melgen.

Prosecutors went into painstaking detail about the amenities at Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic, where Melgen owned a villa in which Menendez often stayed, as well as the Tortuga Bay in Puntacana Resort & Club, a resort in the Dominican Republican where Menendez, Melgen and Melgen’s wife stayed for a few days — their oceanfront villa comped by the hotel’s president, who had them as guests for his son’s wedding.

According to prosecutors, Melgen, who got rich by investing in the data service firm Seisint, traded a lifestyle Menendez, a Democrat, couldn’t afford on his $174,000 salary in exchange for the senator's political clout with his businesses and securing visas for his foreign girlfriends.

During Monday's testimony in federal court in Newark, prosecutors showed photos of the type of villa Menendez stayed at the Tortuga Bay resort — a hotel given a “five diamonds” ranking by AAA. Menendez and Melgen, as well as Melgen’s wife, shared a two-bedroom oceanfront suite.

“Is this beach exclusive to Tortuga Bay guests?” prosecutor Amanda Vaughn asked Alberto Abreu, Tortuga Bay’s vice president for hospitality operations.

“It is,” he said.

Melgen footed the bill for the stay, according to testimony, but only for incidentals. That included two rounds of golf, some meals, a mini bar charge and a spa treatment. But there was no way to tell from the bill who actually used those services.

In his cross-examination, Menendez attorney Abbe Lowell suggested it wasn’t the senator.

“If there are two people golfing on the day in which only one greens fee is listed, that means the other golfer would have to pay in some fashion, is that correct?” Lowell said.

Abreu agreed.

Prosecutors talked extensively about Casa de Campo, showing pictures of its beach, its waterfront “Teeth of the Dog” golf course — ranked, according to Casa de Campo president Andres Pichardo Rosenberg, as the best in the Dominican Republican and 44th best in the world — its many restaurants and even its “shooting center,” where guests and residents can shoot skeet or even pheasants.

“We cultivate the pheasants,” Rosenberg said.

“You cultivate them to be shot?” Judge William Walls asked.

“Well,” Rosenberg said, sparking laughter. (There was no indication that Menendez shot pheasants).

Defense attorneys grew frustrated with the descriptions. At one point, when Vaughn was describing Casa de Campo’s spa, Lowell indicated Menendez had never used it.

“Are we going to find out how much it cost to take a massage he never took?” Lowell interjected.

The proceedings finished with testimony from Jeff Fralick, who manages a New York City livery service.

Prosecutors showed that the service picked up Menendez in Hoboken on Oct. 4, 2008 and billed Melgen more than $800 for eight hours. But Melgen attorney Kirk Ogroski noted the eye doctor had used the car service the day before, and a charge for dinner that night at a New York City restaurant on Melgen’s credit card.

Lowell followed up, suggesting Menendez had only ridden in the car between Hoboken and New York City.

“It doesn’t take eight hours to go from Hoboken — well, sometimes it does — it doesn’t take eight hours to go to Hoboken to New York City, does it?” Lowell said.

“I can’t assume how he used the car. All I know is that he had the car for eight hours,” Fralick said.

Testimony resumes Tuesday morning.

11:48 AM

NEWARK — Immediately after the FBI raided Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen’s West Palm Beach offices, Melgen’s son-in-law contacted the Federal Aviation Administration to block the public from tracking his private jet.

That fact came up during testimony Monday in the corruption trial of U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, a Democrat, and Melgen, his co-defendant. The jet had been used several times to fly Menendez between New Jersey and Melgen’s vacation home in the Dominican Republic — flights that prosecutors charge were bribes Melgen paid Menendez in exchange for official favors.

William Blacker, the program manager for the FAA’s Block Aircraft Registry Request (BARR) program, testified about an email that Melgen son-in-law Eduardo Rodriguez, who also worked for Melgen, sent the agency at 12:07 a.m. on January 31, 2013, asking that information on Melgen’s private Challenger jet be kept out of publicly-accessible databases. On January 30, the FBI had concluded its raid of Melgen’s medical office.

Blacker said that Rodriguez requested the aircraft be classified in the stricter of the FAA’s two blocked categories. That meant that private companies would no longer have access to the plane’s activities, including its departures, destinations and number of people on board. Those companies make that information accessible to the public.

Blacker said blocking the information did not remove past flight data that was already in the public domain.

Defense attorneys tried unsuccessfully to block the testimony before the jury entered the courtroom, saying it was prejudicial and noting that the the federal government, including the FBI, still had access to the data. Melgen attorney Murad Hussain said the request came after the media began “prying” into Melgen’s affairs.

“The government has this data,” Hussain said. “It’s also not relevant because this occurred after the search of Dr. Melgen’s practice where circumstances are so much changed, with media scrutiny.”

Lead prosecutor Peter Koski said the testimony would show concealment.

“This witness is going to provide testimony regarding an act of concealment that the defendant took, not just after the FBI issued a search warrant of the defendant’s offices, but that same day,” Koski said.