NEWARK – Briefly overcome by emotion, Sen. Bob Menendez tearfully spoke this afternoon about his faith and how his soul was strengthened during an impromptu prayer session with local ministers in the courthouse hallway this morning.

On his way out of court, where closing arguments in the case will continue Monday, a reporter asked the senator what the faith leaders’ seemingly spontaneous gesture meant to him. For nearly 10 seconds Menendez was silent as he attempted to compose himself.

“Well, I’m a firm believer in God,” the senator finally said. “And, to have all those leaders of different faiths together at that moment, to bring for me what I feel was the Holy Spirit at that moment was a blessing.”

“And it is that faith that has sustained me here for the last eight, nine weeks, it is that faith I believe will ultimately render a verdict of not guilty,” he continued, tearing up again as he folded his arms in front of his chest. “And between that faith and my family, I’ve been a very blessed man.”

The day of closing arguments began with ambitions the attorneys would deliver all four summations in one day – a closing from the government, one each from both defense teams, and a final prosecution rebuttal. But jurors only heard half of the itinerary – the government’s closing and a tag team of two lawyers for Menendez’s co-defendant Dr. Salomon Melgen – before Judge William Walls dismissed the jury for the weekend.

Menendez’s attorney Abbe Lowell’s closing has been postponed until Monday, with the government’s final word scheduled for immediately after. This means the jury will not begin deliberations until Monday afternoon at the earliest, perhaps Tuesday. All with a juror’s vacation a week from tomorrow threatening to upend deliberations after just a few days.

In court this afternoon, Melgen’s lawyers spent more than two hours delivering a closing argument attacking the government’s case against both their client and Menendez.

Kirk Ogrosky called the Department of Justice’s case a “trial by email,” while his colleague Jonathan Cogan pointed out gaps in the prosecution’s narrative, which Cogan said meant the case against Melgen and Menendez “didn’t make any sense at all.”

Melgen, Ogrosky said, gained nothing by relying on his friend the senator. The Department of Health and Human Services won the case against him for $8.9 million in Medicare overbilling. Melgen’s port security contract was never enforced. And neither Melgen nor Menendez became any richer out of what prosecutors said was a relationship of bribery and conspiracy.

“Here we are at a corruption trial where you sat listening to weeks of evidence of something that was really nothing,” Ogrosky told jurors.

Ogrosky said the government’s tactics should be “terrifying” to any citizen.

“They took out-of-context emails and created a timeline that made things appear related that aren’t related,” Ogrosky said.

Cogan told juror’s that Melgen’s reaction to news of an $8.9 million government Medicare case was not to call Menendez but hire a lawyer, Alan Reider.

“Why would Dr. Melgen be going to a law firm and hiring multiple lawyers if he had a senator who could fix the problem on retainer?” Cogan said.

Four months pass before Menendez gets involved but even then, Cogan said, there are no allegations Menendez received any bribes in exchange for his work through all of 2009.

“In fact, and this is really the remarkable part, two weeks after the doctor gets this letter (from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid) and is in a time of need?” Cogan said. “The senator flies down on his own dime and spends $1,100 – $1,100 in airfare to the Dominican Republic to attend Melissa Melgen’s wedding.”

As he left court, Menendez cheered Ogrosky and Cogan’s closing and said he looked forward to Lowell’s.

“I think that Dr. Melgen’s attorneys began to show the jury what the truth of this case is really about, what an unjust prosecution this has been,” Menendez said.