Less than two months after former Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey was sentenced to 11 years in prison on federal corruption charges, the trial of his wife, Nadine Menendez, begins on Tuesday in Manhattan.
Ms. Menendez, 58, was charged with her husband and three New Jersey businessmen in a wide-ranging bribery scheme, but her case was postponed after she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery and a long recovery period.
The government has portrayed Ms. Menendez and her husband, a Democrat who once led the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as partners in a web of corruption. An indictment accused the couple of conspiring to accept gold bars, cash, a Mercedes-Benz and other bribes totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for Mr. Menendez’s helping the businessmen and the governments of Egypt and Qatar.
Mr. Menendez’s two-month trial was full of international intrigue, backroom dealings and even romance. The jury heard from a government witness about the senator and his wife dining with an Egyptian official at the upscale Morton’s the Steakhouse, near the Capitol, unaware they were being photographed and video-recorded by undercover F.B.I. investigators. “What else can the love of my life do for you?” Ms. Menendez was overheard saying.
Mr. Menendez’s lawyers made sure jurors saw another side of the Menendezes, describing how the couple began dating in early 2018 and how the senator “fell for her,” as one lawyer, Avi Weitzman, said in his opening statement. “She is a beautiful and tall international woman, who grew up part of her life in Lebanon,” Mr. Weitzman said. She spoke four languages and received both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from New York University.
They got engaged in October 2019 on a trip to India, where Mr. Menendez serenaded her at the Taj Mahal, singing “Never Enough” from “The Greatest Showman.” They were married in October 2020.
Last July, after a two-month trial, Mr. Menendez, 71, was convicted of all 16 counts he faced, including bribery, honest services fraud, conspiracy, extortion and acting as an agent for Egypt. He resigned from the Senate in August and has appealed his conviction.
In her trial, Ms. Menendez faces charges that include bribery, extortion and conspiracy. She has pleaded not guilty.
Mr. Menendez, speaking to reporters after his sentencing, called his prosecution by the Justice Department and the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York a “witch hunt.”
”President Trump is right — this process is political and it’s corrupted to the core,” Mr. Menendez said in what was widely seen as a plea for clemency. (Mr. Menendez was indicted in September 2023, during the administration of President Joseph R. Biden Jr.)
On Monday, Mr. Menendez again appeared to make a plea to Mr. Trump. In a post on X, in which he tagged Mr. Trump, he said his wife had breast cancer reconstructive surgery days ago and was being “forced by the government to go to trial tomorrow.”
“Only the arrogance of the S.D.N.Y. can be so cruel and inhumane,” Mr. Menendez wrote. “They should let her fully recover!”
Nicholas Biase, a Southern District spokesman, declined to comment.
At Mr. Menendez’s trial, prosecutors said Ms. Menendez acted as a “go-between” for her husband and his co-defendants, passing messages and accepting bribes on his behalf. Evidence and testimony showed Ms. Menendez had known one of the businessmen for years before she married the senator; two of them helped to pay off her mortgage debt and bought the Mercedes for her. And one of the men promised to put her on his company payroll in a low- or no-show job.
With Ms. Menendez not in court to defend herself, her husband’s lawyers adopted a blame-the-wife strategy, depicting her as a conniving and money-hungry spouse who hid her financial problems from Mr. Menendez and kept him “in the dark on what she was asking others to give her,” Mr. Weitzman told the jury.
“She tried to get cash and assets any which way she could,” he said.
But the government roundly rejected that portrayal. One of the defendants, Jose Uribe, who has pleaded guilty and cooperated with the prosecution, testified that he helped to buy Ms. Menendez the Mercedes in return for the senator’s help in quashing a state investigation into two people close to him. He described a meeting with the senator on his patio. At one point, Mr. Menendez called out “mon amour” — French for “my love” — and rang a little bell to summon Ms. Menendez, whom he was dating at the time.
In a closing argument, a prosecutor, Paul M. Monteleoni, cited the incident to bolster the idea that the senator — not his wife — was behind the corrupt scheme. “Menendez was in charge,” he said. “He called the shots.”
Ms. Menendez’s lawyer, Barry Coburn, has not signaled what strategy he will use at her trial, and he declined to comment on Monday. But it appears Ms. Menendez will have her husband’s support.
“I want to see her pain-free, happy again, and hope to return to a joyful future together,” the former senator said as he addressed the court at his Jan. 29 sentencing.
The judge, Sidney H. Stein, agreed at the request of Adam Fee, another of Mr. Menendez’s lawyers, to delay the former senator’s surrender date so that he could be present for his wife during her trial.
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