the jury now goes on a week Hiatus for the Memorial Day holiday giving them plenty of time to mle over the facts and evidence presented so far in a sprawling web of charges former Federal prosecutor Chris Gramiccioni joins me once again to walk us through what we learned in this latest round of questioning Chris good to see you uh this trial is now getting into the nitty-gritty of the case the defense is really leaning on this naen Menendez uh through line how far can they take that uh given what we know so far the evidence that's been presented I think you're going to see that throughout the trial them lean on the concept that this was really an arrangement that naine had with the other codefendants Senator Mendez was largely kept in the dark on that and when it comes to the codefendants their defense as large as you're going to be these were just gifts between friends or loans this had nothing to do with any actions that were taken by Senator Mendez I I go back to a line that was in the opening arguments when they said you know you might not like it but it's not a crime it doesn't necessarily equate to an official act um they've got a lot of dots to connect here um a lot of minutia for the jury to go through how difficult is that for them given just the sheer amount um and layers to this case to get the jury to really wrap their head around it well you know as we talked about then they opened big with all of the things of value the cars the cash the gold bars and now this burden on the government is to show this was part of this quid quot pro quot exchange this bribe scheme the do that they're going to rely heavily on a few things I suspect and one of the biggest ones is contemporaneousness was the timing of for example the mortgage payment that was directed by Hana to his attorney or at least that's the evidence that came in what was the timing of what Hana what benefit Hana might have gotten which had to do with his exclusive Halal certification um so you're going to see the government focus on contemporaneousness um they also going to see them I think in the future be focusing on acts of concealment and also to overcome the arguments that the senator was taking official action you know for the ordinary benefit of constituents you're going to see them highlight how it would actually be adverse to us interest and and one of the ways they started to do that was through the testimony of the USDA official who testified that they initially they intended to have a number of Halal certified companies that would export beef to Egypt but it was news to him that it appeared to be monopolistic just with while while Hannah's company yeah when you talk about constituent Services it was another New Jersey business that went out of business after will Hannah's uh company got the so contract track so if you're talking about constituent Services I would think that's a tough tough argument to make on that note let me just switch gears uh the jury is now going to go on an extended break through the rest of the week for the Memorial Day holiday how does that factor in here the fact that they've now got several days to sit on the witness testimony that they've heard so far it's probably hard to stop and start like that it was very frustrating being a federal prosecutor as a defense attorney but that said we don't work on holidays and weekends and I don't think any jurors would wish to do that so uh do they lose momentum I mean that sort of sounds like what you're saying it loses momentum for both sides it it does especially when in when you're in the midst of the case and chief that's being presented so the government like you said wants to get some momentum going but when it's peac maill like this one of the challenges you have especially at summation at closing arguments is trying to kind of refresh the jury's recollection of everything that was discussed they get to take back evidence um but they don't necessarily get copies of transcripts of testimony they have to recall that or in some cases ask for readbacks so the longer a trial goes where there's there's more and more breaks the harder it is for them to collectively recall everything that was submitted into evidence interesting Chris Gramiccioni always good to have you on thank you so much hey likewise have a good one [Music]