in a surprised Twist on Friday a key codefendant in the federal bribery case against us Senator Bob Menendez changed his plea to guilty North Jersey businessman Jose Uribe who was indicted alongside the senior senator and his wife to other businessmen is the first to plead guilty to the corruption charges and the first to agree to cooperate with prosecutors ybe a former insurance broker told a federal judge on Friday he bought a $60,000 Merc Mercedes Benz for Menendez and his wife in hopes the senator would interfere in two pending criminal investigations against ure's Associates today another blow to the defense after a judge rejected the senior senator's claims that search warrants used to bring the corruption charges against him were unconstitutional so how will this all play into mendez's trial I'm joined by Chris Gramiccioni he's former Mammoth County prosecutor and the former assistant us attorney for New Jersey Chris thanks so much for coming back on the show always good to talk to you could Jose Uribe's cooperation with prosecutors be the kind of break they need to convict someone like Senator Menendez who is uh and was pretty powerful it's quite possible and here's the thing in federal cases in particular the government oftentimes relies on cooperation as to supplement the case and chief that they're going to present to the jury and the reason why it's so valuable is because when you have a co-conspirator like Jose arbe he's going to serve as like a color commentator who's going to explain the context to some of the communications the emails the text messages but most importantly he's going to confirm what the government alleges that there was a specific quidd pro quo that they engaged Senator Mendez in return for him using official action to benefit them so yeah and I think you might see even perhaps like a game of musical chairs where once one cooperator Falls there's pressure for the others to consider the same well and and that's where I was going to go next we saw that in former president uh Donald Trump's uh recent trial where uh you know one Cod defendant uh turned and the chip started falling the Domino started falling How likely a scenario is that given the fact that one of the codefendants is the Senator's wife uh the others are businessmen who he's had pretty close ties with well I I mean the conventional wisdom is that it would be rare for a spouse to cooperate against another one I guess it's always possible it's the other co-conspirators that you know their attorneys are are counseling them listen this is the situation this is your exposure and you know they have an ethical and professional obligation to advise them not based on what's good or bad for Senator mandez but what's good for their individual clients so they're they're they're assessing the Quantum of the evidence and the risks of going to trial and losing versus the the benefits of potentially accepting a a cooperation deal if one's being even offered by the government I mean we obviously don't know that to be the case but I I do know that just as a former prosecutor in at the doj the more people you can bring in from the inside of that conspiracy to kind of talk with personal experience about it to the jury the more effective it is we're still though Chris two months away from this trial beginning how common or uncommon is it for a co-conspirator like ybe to change his plea to guilty at this point in the game I don't think it's all that uncommon I mean most of the time in cases that are sensitive like this sometimes the law enforcement will will make a run at a co-conspirator beforehand but because of you know this is such a complex case it involves a powerful Senator I think what the doj likely did IS decide to take you know make the arrests charge that you know charge charge what they did and then try to sort that out the wash after and this is one of the first pins that you see falling as a result of that I wouldn't be surprised if there is an overture um by the doj or vice versa um but we'll never know until we just monitor the ECF filing docket and that's kind of what how we found about this today so let me ask you about this decision on the search warrants these of course are the search warrants that uncovered about $100,000 in cash will remind folks uh the gold bars uh and some of the other uh lucrative items that Menendez has had in his home how significant is that decision by the judge uh which came down fairly quickly from the time uh that the defense attorneys placed this appeal I I didn't personally find it surprising uh the speed of the decision kind of told me something that the court effectively gave at the back of the hand the arguments that were being made um you know the court made some certain findings in it its opinion they said when it came to the argument about asking for a Frank's hearing and they were essentially challenging the government by saying they intentionally withheld important information and were Reckless and not and not sharing with the magistrate the court said nuh-uh not going to happen um they said that it's a far more logical interpretation of the conversations that were cited to in the warrant affidavits as extrapolated by the government if you read the warrant a if you read the warrants it's pretty clear what they're looking for and obviously the most important thing is they recovered items of evidentiary values so the doj was effectively proven right Chris Gramiccioni always good to have your Insight thanks so much for coming on hey likewise have a great day