NEWARK – In the most important speech of his political life, Sen. Bob Menendez couldn’t say a word.

Menendez watched from the defense table in federal court this morning and early afternoon as his defense attorney Abbe Lowell delivered his closing argument in the senator’s corruption trial. With Menendez’s freedom and political career on the line, Lowell seemingly put everything he had into a strident closing argument, with the lawyer’s voice cascading to indignant shouts at time but ending with a literally whispered plea for a not guilty verdict.

“All you heard shows that for over 30 years he had served you and the people of New Jersey very well,” Lowell said of Menendez. “He has been bought by no one, committed none of the crimes you saw here.”

In the last few minutes of his three-hour summation, Lowell even blessed the senator with the words of Menendez’s Senate counterpart Cory Booker, using Booker’s words from the inside courtroom a week and a half ago when Booker appeared as a character witness.

“So I’ve seen him, observed him and worked with him all over New Jersey, and Bob Menendez is trustworthy and honest,” Lowell said, quoting Booker.

“Bob has not forgotten where he comes from,” Lowell continued, channeling the state’s junior senator. “I rely on what he tells me and he has never let me down.”

Lowell’s closing returned again and again to what he said is the “fatal flaw” in the prosecution’s case: there was a friendship with co-defendant Dr. Salomon Melgen, and there never was an explicit, corrupt agreement between Melgen and Menendez.

“There has to be a meeting where Sal Melgen and Bob Menendez spoke together in some way,” Lowell said.

No evidence of that agreement means no legal connection between the list of official acts and the stream of gifts and rewards, Lowell said.

“The one side to the other side have a Grand Canyon gap between them,” he said.

Adopting a mantra, Lowell went through the 18 counts in the case that will be listed on the jurors’ personal verdict sheets, saying the government proved none of the offenses beyond a reasonable doubt.

“Because there was no agreement, you cannot check the guilty box unless you ignore the evidence and the law,” Lowell said.

Lowell focused on what he said prosecutors ignored in their case. He went over the fact that Menendez is not alleged to have performed any official acts for Melgen the first year of the bribes, to no private jet flights charged as bribes in 2010, to a 2012 meeting with a Medicare official Lowell said was due to that official’s pending nomination.

Mocking prosecutors, Lowell wondered why they believe Menendez took action.

“’I remember,’” Lowell said, sarcastically channeling the prosecution’s version of Menendez, “’I was bribed six years ago and I better do something about it today.’”

“That meeting was about her nomination,” Lowell said.

Deploying charts, emails entered into evidence, and even a 2006 Menendez for Senate campaign video on the monitors facing the jury box during his summation, Lowell at one point motioned toward a chart including 20 trips to the Dominican Republic by Menendez and his family in the years before the indictment.

“If they take the trips they want in their exhibit, but ignore the 20 plus trips that happened in all the years before, that conceals from you the while story,” Lowell said.

“There’s a difference between assumption and proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” Lowell said.

Deriding the prosecution tactics as the “switch game,” Lowell repeated his narrative from earlier in the closing where he said gifts between close friends Melgen and Menendez were not bribes.

“The thing of value was their deep and abiding friendship,” Lowell said.

After a short break, jurors returned for the last word by an attorney in this case: a rebuttal by the prosecution.

“Life, experience and common sense teach us that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one,” lead prosecutor Peter Koski said. “This case is no exception.”

Jurors could begin deliberations as soon as this afternoon following the end of the government’s rebuttal.