while Trump's trial is over the federal corruption case against New Jersey senior US senator Bob Menendez rolls on and as week three comes to a close prosecutors pulled out a new witness a former senior level official at the USDA who government lawyers allege was pressured by Menendez to butt out of the lucrative halal meat Monopoly his associate and co-defendant will Hannah had secured it's one of the first times the prosecution presented direct communication from Menendez that didn't first go through his wife naen but it may not prove a quid pro quo Ted Goldberg has been inside the Manhattan Federal courtroom for us today and joins me from outside with an update Ted so a truncated schedule today how did the prosecution make the best of its time Bri it was a short schedule but there was some pretty explosive testimony coming from former USDA under secretary Ted mckin he testified that when he saw this halal meat Monopoly created in Egypt one of the first things he started to to do was to raise alarm Bells not just within uh Egypt as far as sending informal emails but also sending formal letters so he was writing to Egyptian dignitaries Egypt's Ambassador in DC and also Egyptian government officials asking why are you going to just one company to certify meat for the entire country of Egypt this is going to have pretty bad effects for American companies and he said he never got a reply did not get any kind of response informal formal or otherwise and then that's when his testimony took a bit of a turn because a few weeks after he sent these emails in these letters he testified that he received a call from Senator Robert Mendez we had heard a lot about this Monopoly forming but this was the first time that it seems like the prosecution has been able to link the senator with this meat Monopoly especially this explicitly as part of this phone call that mcken says he received from Senator Mendez he said that multiple times he had heard from the senator stop interfering with my constituent and in case there was any confusion McKenna said this four or five times over the course of his testimony stop interfering with my constituent so obviously the defense is going to try to get a crack at mckenny over the next uh day or so worth of testimony but this was pretty explosive stuff pretty damning stuff coming from the former under secretary of agriculture at the USDA also the the first time now in a few days that we've seen them pivot from what had been just lengthy lengthy records of emails and text messages and phone calls uh talking to FBI agents did they dive back into that at all today oh don't worry Bri there was still a lot of documentation happening today whether it was texts or voicemails or voice memos or emails from naen Menendez just sending them out to things sending them out to people I should say there was a little bit of everything there were receipts there was naen acknowledging the receipt of a $33,000 piece of exercise size equipment uh courtesy coming courtesy of some of the defendants and also uh acknowledging that house that housework had been done around her home in North Jersey but there was also a message that she had sent asking will Hana one of the codefendants to help out with her mortgage saying that she was falling behind on her mortgage payments she was in danger of foreclosure and this was something that we had seen in previous testimony from the lawyer John moldon who had briefly worked at isg Halal yeah utor there Ted clearly trying to to connect the dots very quickly though because this is the end of week three where do we see this trial heading next so the interesting thing is this is the first time we've heard from ybe the businessman Jose ybe I believe his name was his name appears in these texts because naen said that she had reached out to him to try and arrange this mortgage payment to happen of course ybe is the star witness for the prosecution he has not taken to the stand yet looks like that will happen next week if not later but this is the first time we have seen his name we have heard his name in relation to this evidence so his name has popped up it seems like he will play a very large role in this case to come Ted Goldberg for us in Manhattan Ted thanks so much for the update