week three of Senator Bob menendez's corruption trial picked back up again today after a week-long Hiatus and it started with the prosecution taking a critical hit after judge cydney Stein on Friday blocked certain evidence the government wanted to use in support of its case attempting to prove the senior senator accepted bribes in exchange for sending billions of dollars of US military aid to Egypt the judge found it was in violation of the Constitution's speech order debate clause which grants members of Congress a form of immunity when it relates to official duties as lawmakers attorneys for the defense and prosecution spent the morning tussling with the court over its ruling as the government asked the judge to reconsider the trial then shifted back to the witness stand senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan is standing outside the Manhattan courthouse now with the latest Brenda so the jury back today they had quite a bit of a break how did things kick off Hey Brianna well actually the way it started out we almost didn't have a jury today that's because juror number 12 called out SI she apparently fell down yesterday ended up in the ER got stitches and she called the judge this morning and said look I just can't make it well you have to have all of the jurors seated in order to proceed with the trial or else you dismiss that one juror and that's not what the judge wanted to do he called her back persuaded her to come in at 1:00 but it's not like the the morning went to waste actually what the judge the judge and the lawyers focused on was the judge's order from Friday where he essentially barred admission of some evidence that the prosecution felt would really help them connect the dots between what Menendez did and that alleged bribe it's called The Constitution's speech and debate clause and what it does is offer immunity to elected legislators in the Congress it Shields any of their official acts from being used prosecution in in a criminal case now according to the prosecution this is a crucial piece of evidence that they need to admit and if they can't use that then they're going to have to struggle the judge however said look you can use promises you can discuss promises but not specific official acts so how did the prosecution move forward then Bren with connecting those dots your words well they had the assistant for Fred Davies who's one of the codefendants and essentially she worked with uh the prosecution they put up pictures of gold bars and they had the serial numbers on the gold bars and they were able to identify those as the same as the ones in Davy's itinerary he B he had a a vault of gold and he had a list of all the gold bars there was also the pictures from what they seized in the Menendez house and the serial numbers matched the second witness to come up was FBI uh agent Special Agent Michael Coughlin Coughlin was using evidence that was seized remember the cell phones that they took from the Mendez household they got a wealth of information text messages they got emails they even have phone recordings and what the prosecution was doing is setting up piece by piece e email by email text message by text message talking about how wh Hana one of the codefendants and nine Aran and she was at that point not married to the senator set up a meeting with Egyptian generals and of course at the heart of that is the allegation that Senator Menendez used his power to sign off on millions of dollars uh in military aid for Egypt Bri yeah Brenda it seems like they're really setting up that groundwork getting into the details there those gold bars we knew would be significant in the case and of course proving that they are uh Brenda Flanagan for us in Manhattan thanks Bren