Senator Bob Menendez is asking a federal judge to disregard one of the most salacious pieces of evidence against him in his corruption trial filing a motion this week to suppress evidence of gold bars and stacks of cash found inside his home because he says the search warrants used to gather that evidence violated his fourth amendment rights senior political correspondent David Cruz has the latest they said they were searching for apples and they were actually searching for oranges former prosecutor and now defense attorney Henry Klingman says that's pretty much what this latest motion by the Menendez defense team says they want the judge to throw out evidence of gold bars and cash the prosecution says they found in the Senator's home what the government's likely to come back and say is no we were searching for apples but we happen to find oranges and that's okay the first is not okay what the defense is saying if true is not okay you can't use a warrant ostensibly to search for a gun when in truth you're looking for child pornography or drugs or gold bars but if you go in looking for evidence of of bribe offenses some you know things of value and you're expecting to find cash as the government did find cash and then you happen to find a stack of gold bars as well that's fair game for the government and they're filing the defense team says the government is out to get Menendez because he's beaten them in court before they say prosecutors were overzealous and with withheld exculpatory information about what was actually a senator just doing his job the senator hinted at the strategy in an interview soon after the indictments last year while I can't get into every specific of uh the charges that the government uh has alleged uh because uh I need to be able to preserve that for my defense uh you know this this is an example of how in fact we did give the government information uh and how in fact they chose not to use it and how I look forward to both the process in motions and a trial if we get to a trial uh that ultimately will show people in New Jersey what the truth really is maybe some of that is included in the redacted portions of the Motions there's a lot of black Ink in these filings Klingman says Motions like this and the recent defense motion to dismiss the case outright generally don't succeed but if it did well it's a game changer no doubt it either means the end of the government's case or a severe weakening of the government's case because of course the senator Mendez defense is he was simply doing what all Senators do being an advocate um gathering information speaking out on issues of public interest speaking privately about issues of public interest um without the quo in the quid pro quo the gold bars being the quo there's no case so it's a a bit of a Hail Mary pass with lots of upside legally but politically this is the stuff that's out there now this is the stuff that you can't put that toothpaste back in the tube this is what we all know about and this is the stuff that really has sunk him politically it's put him into singled digit approvals um I I don't really think that there's any coming back from that politically don't tell that to Bob Menendez who is showing again that he has yet to meet a corner out of which he wasn't ready to fight I'm David Cruz NJ Spotlight [Music] news