He is scheduled to be sentenced in January.

However, his lawyers filed a motion Wednesday to vacate his conviction and schedule a new trial after the government acknowledged that nine exhibits shown to the jury during deliberations contained information that was supposed to be excluded by a court ruling.

In the motion, his defense team argues that the unredacted exhibitions contained “the only evidence in the record” connecting Menendez to the provision of military aid to Egypt.

“In light of this serious breach, a new trial is unavoidable, despite all of the hard work and resources that went into the first one,” his lawyers wrote in the motion. “Without doubting that the error was unintentional, the responsibility for it lies exclusively with the government, and the government must accepts its consequences.”

Menendez filed the motion a little more than two weeks after Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Monteleoni wrote U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein that a laptop the government gave to the jury for deliberations contained evidence the court had ruled inadmissible. He said the exhibits were redacted as thoroughly as required.

However, Monteleoni wrote in the letter that no action needed to be taken because the defendants had inspected the exhibits before they were given to the jury and “there is no reasonable likelihood any juror ever saw any of the erroneously less-redacted version,” among other reasons.

In seeking vacatur and a new trial, Menendez’s lawyers argue Monteleoni was trying “to shift blame” by stating they waived objections by not catching the mistake.

The defense said they were limited to a few hours to inspect nearly 3,000 exhibits and was right to expect the government had not mishandled the evidence.

“If this were treated as a waiver, that would give parities the incentive to intentionally try to pull a fast one,” they said, adding that the inclusion of the exhibits substantially prejudiced their client before the jury, which was exposed “to a theory of criminality that the government was barred from presenting.”

The exhibits in question concern the former senator’s alleged approval of military aid but had been redacted under court order due to the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution which protects members of Congress from prosecution related to their official duties.

Menendez’s lawyers argued that a new trial should be granted, but at the very least, the court should order discovery so they can assess the scope of the potential constitutional violations.