Newly unsealed court documents reveal that at his upcoming federal bribery trial, Senator Bob Menendez may blame his wife, Nadine Menendez, for getting him into trouble.
In a motion first filed in January, Menendez’s lawyers argued in favor of severing the couple’s trial because the New Jersey senator might testify about personal communications between him and his wife. The brief was initially sealed; Menendez’s legal team asked the judge to redact the specific lines on the strategy, claiming that the information could “bias the jury pool,” according to the New York Times. The court papers were unsealed Tuesday under pressure from a group of news organizations.
“While these explanations, and the marital communications on which they rely, will tend to exonerate Senator Menendez by demonstrating the absence of any improper intent on Senator Menendez’s part, they may inculpate Nadine by demonstrating the ways in which she withheld information from Senator Menendez or otherwise led him to believe that nothing unlawful was taking place,” the filing reads, per ABC News.
Last September, federal prosecutors indicted Menendez, his wife, and a trio of New Jersey businessmen, alleging that the senator used his position to act as a foreign agent to benefit the Egyptian government in exchange for cash, gold bars, and even a luxury car for Nadine. Subsequent superseding indictments claimed Menendez sought to aid the Qatari government as well. Prosecutors claim that Nadine Menendez introduced her then-boyfriend Bob Menendez to her longtime friend Wael Hana, a New Jersey businessman, who later acted as an intermediary between the couple and Egyptian officials. In one instance, Nadine Menendez is alleged to have passed on sensitive information about the U.S. Embassy in Cairo from the senator to Hana who then shared that knowledge with government officials in Egypt. She is also alleged to have received mortgage payments, compensation for a no-show job as well as $15,000 to go towards a new Mercedes-Benz convertible in exchange for her husband providing additional favors for Hana and two other businessmen Fred Daibes and Jose Uribe.
Menendez, his wife, Hana and Daibes, have entered “not guilty” pleas. The other businessman, Uribe, pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with authorities. Menendez, a three-term senator, has long denied the charges against him and has resisted calls for his resignation. Though he has said he won’t seek reelection as a Democrat, he has floated the idea of an independent bid.
The couple was initially charged together, but a judge ruled last week that the Menendezes will undergo separate trials because Nadine requires surgery for an unnamed medical condition. The senator’s trial is set to begin on May 6, while hers is scheduled for July 8. Perhaps that’s for the best, because judging by these initial hints at the senator’s legal strategy, any encounter between the two of them will be pretty tense.
