NEWARK – Minutes after the jurors who hold his freedom and career in their hands finished their first 90 minutes of deliberations this afternoon, Sen. Bob Menendez strode out of the federal courthouse to a scrum of reporters hungry for a soundbite.

Menendez insisted, likely futiley, that he won’t be addressing the media going into and out of court on every day the jury deliberates. But this afternoon he indulged reporters nonetheless in both English and Spanish. 

“I think the government floundered in their closing statements, and I’m looking forward to the jury’s verdict of not guilty,” Menendez said.

The prosecution’s final words may have been ringing in his ears. Before jurors retired just after 3 p.m. to begin deliberations, the last word in the first corruption case against a sitting U.S. senator in a generation came from Department of Justice prosecutor Peter Koski.

Holding little back in an hour-long rebuttal to the defense closings, Koski was at times dismissive, mocking, sanctimonious and sympathetic toward Menendez, his co-defendant Dr. Salomon Melgen and their attorneys. 

Calling the defendants “a greedy doctor and a corrupt politician,” Koski was playing comedian one moment eliciting visions of Menendez and Melgen getting couple’s massages at Casa de Campo, but tragedist the next.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if Sen. Menendez is an honest man in his daily life, his aberration here is perhaps the most damming evidence,” Koski said.

While Menendez attorney Abbe Lowell ended his summation earlier in the day with the words of character witness Sen. Cory Booker, Koski attacked the defense’s use of Booker and South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. 

“These weren’t character witnesses,” Koski said. “These were political witnesses.”

“The defendants’ politics say nothing about their private character,” he said. “Do not let the defendants get away with politicizing this case.”

Koski struck back at the defense claims that evidence of a long, deep friendship between Menendez and Melgen means their relationship was not corrupt.

“Friends can say no to each other,” Koski said.

“But these defendants could not say no to each other,” Koski added. “That’s how you know they had a corrupt intent, ladies and gentlemen.”

“We cannot tolerate the defendants’ crimes because we cannot risk that they will be repeated,” Koski said.

Menendez and Melgen “corrupted one of the most powerful offices in the country,” the federal prosecutor said. In a photo-negative version of Lowell’s closing – where he urged jurors to “be mad” about the government targeting Menendez and use their power to acquit – Koski told jurors to use their votes to convict Menendez and Melgen.

“You do have the last word,” Koski said to jurors. “Tell the defendants we’re here because we will not tolerate corruption.”

“Don’t let the defendants get away with that,” Koski said. “Hold them accountable. Find them guilty on all counts.”

The jury will return at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday and deliberate until 4:30 p.m. each day until there is a verdict. Friday is a federal holiday so the courthouse will be closed, and jurors have told Judge William Walls they want to stay with the Monday-to-Thursday trial schedule for deliberations.

Thursday, then, represents a pivotal day for both sides. If there is no verdict by Thursday afternoon, Walls has said he will dismiss a juror who is going on vacation and replace her with an alternate. But the ascending alternate would mean deliberations next Monday would start from scratch.

It’s virtually pointless to predict how long a jury will take to come back with a verdict, though some guesstimation is inevitable. But a member of the defense team may have best summed up the time frame for this or any jury with one phrase: “could be 20 minutes, could be two weeks.”

All we know after today is that it won’t be 20 minutes.