US senator Bob menendez's corruption trial may have sidelined him from tomorrow's primary election but the indicted senior Democrat is planning to enter the race according to multiple reports Menendez is expected to file a nomination petition with thousands of signatures before tomorrow's filing deadline to run as an independent in November's general election if a jury exonerates him it means he can continue to raise money and use campaign funds to pay for his legal expenses and potentially makes for a spoiler in the fight for the seat menendez's formal entry into the race comes as he enters his fourth week of his Federal bribery trial accused of accepting mounds of cash and gold bars in exchange for political favors including acting as a foreign agent for the Egyptian government prosecutors picked up where they left off on Friday with a trove of text and phone records They believe will prove their case senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan has been inside the Manhattan courtroom for us all day where cameras were not allowed and she joins us now with the latest Bren good to see you so who did we hear from today hey Briana so today we still have the witness who was on the stand Friday he is a witness for the prosecution and the defense spent this afternoon essentially trying to pick holes in in his testimony and it got contentious a couple of times the judge had to uh remind the defense attorney attorneys not to be so argumentative so the man on the stand was Ted mckin he is a former USDA official and he claims that Senator Mendez as we told you before is trying to pressure him into and trying to protect a a a Halal beef export Monopoly that one of his constituents was running now this Hala beef Monopoly had just been granted by Egypt and it's something that uh Menendez allegedly took bribes to protect so the defense presented Ted mckin as someone who was pushing US exports and saw this new Halal company as an Enterprise that could cause damage to the US industry because essentially they didn't know what they were doing they were new to the experience they were too small uh they tried to intervene they they called Egyptian officials the US envoys tried to argue can't we recertify some of the Egypt of the US H companies that you desertified to create this Monopoly that's when mckenny says he got the phone call from Senator Menendez who essentially said quote stop interfering with my constituent which was a very different kind of phone call from mckenny yeah and and that begs the question what is and what isn't appropriate actions taken from a US senator on behalf of a constituent did they get into that at all what they got into was the fact that the USDA got phone calls all the time from elected Congress people and generally you would get a phone call from a congressman in Iowa for example who was saying we want you to to try and and promote exports of a certain product or you know a a corn out of Iowa for example um and the Menendez call they said was very different because what you got was uh a very Curt not polite not win-win not rahr US exports Let's help my state kind of call it was one that they thought could potentially hurt the export industry uh for the for the US BR we're now in week four we've only seen a summation of one witness so far uh presumably a lot more work to do and the jury has so much minutia to sift through how is it in the court and how does the jury appear um I would be lying if I wouldn't report that we've seen some very drowsy jurors a couple of them have closed their eyes from time to time you have to understand the the the prosecutions presenting a bit by piece uh email text message letters uh phone recordings the the kind of of testimony oh there goes an ambulance the kind of testimony that that we're hearing is a painstaking uh building of of a case with all of this evidence being presented in chronological order and then the defense will come in and try and and pick holes in it Bri yeah these cases are not easy uh for anyone on either side Brenda Flanagan for us in Manhattan thanks Bren you're welcome