Menendez Trial’s Odd Moments: Pyramids, French Nicknames and a Bell

The bribery case against Senator Robert Menendez features an assortment of exotic elements: Qatari sheikhs, bricks of gold bullion, halal meat certification and Egyptian intelligence officers. Trial testimony has taken jurors from Cairo to Havana to Beirut.

But on top of the complex — and serious — corruption charges, the trial has at times meandered into offbeat and sometimes humorous territory.

Here are a few of the more memorable moments:

The bell on the back patio

Jose Uribe, a disgraced insurance broker, pleaded guilty in March to providing the senator’s wife, Nadine Menendez, with a Mercedes-Benz in exchange for the senator’s help quashing two insurance fraud investigations in New Jersey.

He spent nearly a week on the witness stand, and his testimony included a description of a private, hourlong meeting with Mr. Menendez on the back patio of Ms. Menendez’s home in Englewood Cliffs, N.J.

Toward the end of the conversation, the senator picked up a small bell on the table and rang it, summoning Ms. Menendez from inside the house, Mr. Uribe testified.

Mr. Menendez’s lawyer, Adam Fee, pelted Mr. Uribe on cross-examination, questioning how much he had had to drink and when he had taken Xanax that day in an effort to plant doubt that the bell even existed.