CBS News
New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez wants psychiatrist to testify about his habit of stockpiling cash
Washington — When federal investigators executed a search warrant at Sen. Bob Menendez’s New Jersey home in June 2022, they found more than $480,000 in cash stashed in envelopes and coats, as well as 13 gold bars worth more than $100,000.
They also seized nearly $80,000 from his wife’s safe deposit box at a nearby bank.
After Menendez was charged last year with corruption, he explained that for 30 years he withdrew thousands of dollars each month from his personal savings account in case of emergencies. The “old-fashioned” habit, he said, had roots in his family’s experience in Cuba.
In a letter that was disclosed Wednesday, the Democratic senator’s attorneys argued the habit resulted from “two significant traumatic events” in his life.
A psychiatrist who evaluated Menendez would be expected to testify at trial that he “suffered intergenerational trauma stemming from his family’s experience as refugees, who had their funds confiscated by the Cuban government and were left with only a small amount of cash that they had stashed away in their home,” the senator’s lawyers said last month in a letter to prosecutors.
The psychiatrist, Karen Rosenbaum, would also be expected to testify that he “experienced trauma when his father, a compulsive gambler, died by suicide after Senator Menendez eventually decided to discontinue paying off his father’s gambling debts.”
Menendez developed a mental condition, which was never treated, in response to the lifelong traumas, the letter said. The condition was redacted in the public filing.
The condition and “lack of treatment resulted in a fear of scarcity for the senator and the development of a longstanding coping mechanism of routinely withdrawing and storing cash in his home,” it said.
Justice Department
Prosecutors, objecting to the proposed testimony, included the letter in a legal filing on Wednesday and asked the judge to prevent the psychiatrist from testifying. They asserted the psychiatrist’s conclusion “does not appear to be the product of any reliable scientific principle or method” and is an attempt to gain sympathy from the jury.
If the judge allows Rosenbaum to take the witness stand, prosecutors should be able to have Menendez examined by a separate psychiatrist, they said.
Menendez’s trial is set to begin on May 13.
The former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was indicted in September 2023 on charges alleging he and his wife, Nadine, accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bribes. Prosecutors said they used his power and influence to enrich and protect three New Jersey businessmen and benefit the government of Egypt.
In the following months, superseding indictments alleged Menendez and his wife conspired to act as a foreign agent for Egypt, accepted expensive gifts in exchange for favorable comments about Qatar and obstructed the investigation into the alleged yearlong corruption scheme.
Menendez and his wife have pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.
In a court filing last month, prosecutors said at least 10 envelopes containing more than $80,000 in cash had the fingerprints or DNA of one of the New Jersey businessmen, while all of the gold bars can be linked to two of them.
Some of the cash that didn’t bear the associate’s fingerprints “was packaged with money bands indicating it had been withdrawn, at least $10,000 at a time, from a bank at which Menendez and Nadine Menendez had no known depository account — indicating that the money had been provided to them by another person,” prosecutors said.
Menendez recently indicated he might incriminate his wife, who will be tried separately this summer because of “serious medical condition” that requires surgery. Menendez’s lawyers said in a legal brief that the senator might testify about communications with his wife that will demonstrate “the ways in which she withheld information” from her husband “or otherwise led him to believe that nothing unlawful was taking place.”
CBS News
Coal use hitting all-time high in 2024, which is on track to be hottest year ever, report says
World coal use is set to reach an all-time high in 2024, the International Energy Agency said Wednesday, in a year all but certain to be the hottest in recorded history.
Despite calls to halt humanity’s burning of the filthiest fossil fuel driving climate change, the energy watchdog expects global demand for coal to hit record highs for the third year in a row.
Scientists have warned that planet-warming greenhouse gases will have to be drastically slashed to limit global heating to avoid catastrophic impacts on the Earth and humanity.
Earlier in December, the European Union’s climate monitor Copernicus said 2024 was “effectively certain” to be the hottest on record — eclipsing the mark set just last year.
Published on Wednesday, the IEA’s “Coal 2024” report does, however, predict the world will hit peak coal use in 2027 after topping 8.77 billion tons this year.
But that would be dependent on China, which for the past quarter-century has consumed 30 percent more coal than the rest of the world’s countries combined, the IEA said.
China’s demand for electricity was the most significant driving force behind the increase, with more than a third of coal burnt worldwide carbonized in that country’s power plants.
Though Beijing has sought to diversify its electricity sources, including a massive expansion of solar and wind power, the IEA said China’s coal demand in 2024 will still hit 4.9 billion tones — itself another record.
Increasing coal demand in China, as well as in emerging economies such as India and Indonesia, made up for a continued decline in advanced economies.
However that decline has slowed in the European Union and the United States. Coal use there is set to decline by 12 and five percent respectively, compared with 23 and 17 percent in 2023.
With the imminent return to the White House of Donald Trump — who has repeatedly called climate change a “hoax” — many scientists fear that a second Trump presidency would water down the climate commitments of the world’s largest economy.
Coal mining also hit unprecedented levels by topping nine billion tons in output for the first time, the IEA said, with top producers China, India and Indonesia all posting new production records.
The energy watchdog warned that the explosion in power-hungry data centers powering the emergence of artificial intelligence was likewise likely to drive up demand for power generation, with that trend underpinning electricity demand in coal-guzzling China.
The 2024 report reverses the IEA’s prediction last year that coal use would begin declining after peaking in 2023.
At the annual U.N. climate change forum in Dubai last year, nations vowed to transition away from fossil fuels.
But its follow-up this year ended in acrimony, with experts warning that the failure to double down on that landmark pledge at COP29 in Azerbaijan risked jeopardizing efforts to fight climate change.
Set up in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis, the IEA presents itself as “the world’s leading energy authority.”
CBS News
Tennessee DA accused of firing multiple times at fugitive, hitting home with woman and her 3 children inside
A district attorney in Tennessee is facing a reckless endangerment charge after shooting at a fugitive several times and hitting a home that had a woman and her three children inside.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced the grand jury charge Monday against District Attorney Chris Stanford. His district covers Van Buren and Warren counties.
The indictment says that as the incident unfolded in Smithville on Nov. 21, a bullet Stanford shot from his handgun went through a front porch patio chair, through an exterior wall and into the living room wall of the home. The woman and children weren’t hurt.
Smithville is about 60 miles southeast of Nashville.
The indictment says that Stanford fired the shot “unlawfully, intentionally and recklessly.” There was no immediate threat to him or others, he wasn’t aiming the handgun, and “just held it out and shot” without using the gun’s sights, the indictment adds.
Following his indictment, Stanford surrendered at the DeKalb County Jail and was released after posting a $10,000 bond, TBI said. A message left with Stanton’s office was not immediately returned Tuesday.
The Warren County Sheriff’s Office described the circumstances leading to the incident last month. In a social media post, it said authorities were pursuing suspects after finding three dead bodies at a house and at an adjacent building.
The suspects were sighted in DeKalb County, the sheriff’s office said. One of them was taken into custody without incident. Stanford and other law enforcement officials chased the other suspect, who was a passenger in a car, the office said.
While trying to help the suspect flee, the driver struck a homeland security officer with the car, the sheriff’s office said.
In a statement last month to CBS affiliate WTVF-TV, Stanford said he fired shots in response to the homeland security agent being hit. No one was shot when Stanford fired his gun. The homeland security officer was injured and taken to the hospital, according to a social media post by District Attorney Bryant Dunaway.
“The vehicle then drove toward me and others, accelerating quickly. I fired my service weapon in defense of myself and others at the scene. Based upon my training and the circumstances that presented themselves, I believe my actions were necessary and justified,” Stanford said.
Stanford also told the news station he has a state law enforcement certification to carry his weapon at all times.
The two suspects in the three deaths were taken into custody and charged with criminal homicide, while the driver, also taken into custody, faces felony evading arrest and aggravated assault charged, according to the sheriff’s office.
Stanford will make an appearance in court on Jan. 7, WTVF reported. Since he showed up at the scene and fired his weapon, he is now a witness and cannot prosecute the triple murder in his own county, the station reported.
CBS News
Accused mastermind of journalist’s murder wanted by Mexico — but U.S. has called him a “protected witness”
Mexico has asked the United States to extradite the suspected mastermind behind the murder of journalist Javier Valdez after he was arrested on drug charges, the attorney general said.
Damaso Lopez Serrano — who the Justice Department says is known as “Mini Lic” — is accused of ordering the 2017 killing of Valdez, an award-winning journalist and AFP contributor who covered the narcotics trade.
The alleged former high-ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel was arrested on Friday in Virginia on charges of trafficking fentanyl. Lopez Serrano is the son of Damaso Lopez Nunez, who launched a struggle for control of the cartel following the arrest of its leader, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Mexico’s Attorney General Alejandro Gertz described Lopez Serrano as the “mastermind” behind Valdez’s murder.
“We have already prosecuted the rest of the perpetrators and they are in jail,” he told a news conference.
Valdez was shot and killed in his car on May 15, 2017 in the Sinaloa state capital of Culiacan near the offices of his weekly newspaper Riodoce.
Enric Marti / AP
Investigators believe Lopez Serrano ordered the hit because he was angry about information published by Valdez about the Sinaloa Cartel’s internal power struggles.
Mexico has made several extradition requests for Lopez Serrano, who surrendered to U.S. authorities in July 2017 for drug trafficking and cooperated in exchange for a reduced sentence. At the time, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said Lopez Serrano was “believed to be the highest-ranking Mexican cartel leader ever to self-surrender in the United States.”
He was released from prison on parole in 2022.
Gertz said that Mexico had asked “on countless occasions” for Lopez Serrano to be handed over, but Washington declined because he had become a “protected witness” and “was giving them a lot of information.”
He voiced hope that with Lopez Serrano’s latest arrest “there are more than enough reasons” for the United States to finally grant Mexico’s request.
Rebecca Blackwell / AP
Wracked by violence related to drug trafficking, Mexico is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists, news advocacy groups say.
Reporters Without Borders says more than 150 newspeople have been killed in Mexico since 1994 — and 2022 was one of the deadliest years ever for journalists in Mexico, with at least 15 killed.
Media workers are regularly targeted in Mexico, often in direct reprisal for their work covering topics like corruption and the country’s notoriously violent drug traffickers.
Most recently, in October, gunmen killed a journalist whose Facebook news page covered the violent western Mexico state of Michoacan. Then less than 24 hours later, an entertainment reporter in the western city of Colima was killed inside a restaurant she owned.
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Tennessee DA accused of firing multiple times at fugitive, hitting home with woman and her 3 children inside
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