Corruption trial of wife of former Sen. Bob Menendez reaches closing arguments
NEW YORK (AP) — A prosecutor repeatedly referred to Nadine Menendez as the “partner in crime” of her husband — former Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez — while asking a jury in a trial’s closing argument Thursday to convict her of bribery charges.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Monteleoni told the Manhattan federal court jury that Nadine Menendez helped her husband use his power in the Senate to benefit three New Jersey businessmen.
The prosecutor cited as proof of bribes the hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gold bars found in the couple’s home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, during a 2022 FBI raid.
“The defendant helped Robert Menendez put his power up for grabs,” Monteleoni said. “You saw again and again a clear pattern of corruption.”
He said the couple “put the senator’s power up for sale” and used Nadine Menendez, 58, as the “go-between” who communicated with the businessmen and the senator to ensure everyone understood what they would receive in return for lucrative bribes.
Bob Menendez, 71, is to report to prison in June to begin an 11-year sentence. He was convicted last year of bribery charges at a trial that was supposed to include his wife. But Nadine Menendez’s lawyers secured a postponement after she was diagnosed with breast cancer and required surgery.
Born in Lebanon of Armenian descent, Nadine Menendez began dating the senator in early 2018 when she was known as Nadine Arslanian. Prosecutors said she soon joined a bribery scheme involving at least one businessman she had known for years separately from her soon-to-be husband. They were married in the fall of 2020.
Defense attorney Barry Coburn urged the jury to find Nadine Menendez not guilty, saying prosecutors failed to prove their case.
“These things we’re talking about here are unproven,” he said.
He said the dealings the senator had with the businessmen were just what a politician is supposed to do for his constituents.
For instance, he said, a monopoly that businessman Wael Hana had arranged with the Egyptian government to ensure all meat exported there from the U.S. conformed with religious requirements was certain to bring jobs to New Jersey and was the kind of thing politicians are supposed to encourage.
Hana also was convicted last year and sentenced to eight years in prison. Another businessman, Fred Daibes, was sentenced to seven years in prison. A third businessman who pleaded guilty to charges and testified against the others has not yet been sentenced.
Menendez, whose Senate career began in 2006, resigned from the Senate after his conviction. He had already been forced out of his chairmanship of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Coburn said the government was wrong to assume “there’s bad intent.”
And he said it was not evidence of corruption when the government elicited from some witnesses that they never saw Nadine Menendez in Hana’s company offices after she was hired as a consultant in what prosecutors alleged was a no-show job meant as a bribe.
“Where is the legal requirement that a consultant be in the office?” he asked.
By LARRY NEUMEISTER
Associated Press
