Sen. Bob Menendez takes a selfie with his wife, Nadine, and businessman Wael Hana. The three were co-defendants in an 18-count federal corruption indictment. (Courtesy of U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York)
By Dana DiFilippo
Reprinted with permission
New Jersey Monitor
Nadine Menendez was sentenced to four and a half years behind bars Thursday for her role in a yearslong international bribery scheme that landed her husband, former Sen. Bob Menendez, in a federal prison in June.
She cried as she told U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein during her sentencing hearing at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan federal courthouse in Manhattan that she blames her husband for her criminal troubles.
“I was wrong about my husband,” Menendez said in court, according to the New York Daily News. “I now know, he’s not my savior. He’s not the man I thought he was. I should have asked more questions. I should have known better.”
Prosecutors have portrayed Nadine Menendez, 58, as the greedy go-between in a global scheme in which she accepted bribes of cash, gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz convertible, and more from three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for her husband’s political influence. The plot began within weeks after the couple met in 2018 and continued until FBI agents raided their Englewood Cliffs home in 2022, prosecutors said.
“They were partners in crime, partners in corruption, and partners in greed,” prosecutor Lara Pomerantz said during the five-week trial’s opening statements in March. “She did the dirty work.”
Stein agreed Nadine Menendez was not “an innocent observer” and sentenced her to 54 months of incarceration, offering some leniency because of the breast cancer that drove him last year to order separate trials for the couple.
Jay Clayton, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, celebrated the sentence as a warning against corruption.
“The defendant and her partner in crime, former Senator Robert Menendez, engaged in the most brazen form of public corruption — gold bars, cash, and a luxury car in exchange for a Senator’s power,” Clayton said in a statement. “Today’s sentence sends an important message: our elected officials are not for sale.”
Nadine Menendez faced decades in prison after a jury convicted her in April of 15 crimes, including bribery, obstruction of justice, extortion, and conspiracy. Prosecutors wanted her incarcerated for at least seven years, while her defense attorneys sought a sentence of just one year, citing her cancer care and her traumatic childhood as a refugee whose family fled a civil war in Lebanon.
The former senator’s attorneys also played the blame-the-spouse game during his trial, when they portrayed him as an unwitting victim in a scheme orchestrated by his wife. He tried to backtrack that attack in a letter to the judge last month, when he said he “didn’t fully preview” his attorneys’ comments at trial.
“To suggest that Nadine was money hungry or in financial need, and therefore would solicit others for help, is simply wrong,” he wrote.
He implored Stein for leniency for his wife.
“Your Honor, you gave me a tough sentence that surely serves the deterrent value you said was needed,” he wrote. “To imprison Nadine, would not recognize the trauma she has suffered, how it has affected her and her judgment, and I would respectfully say would not have any greater deterrent effect.”
Bob Menendez was chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee when he was indicted in 2023. He became the first sitting senator ever convicted of acting as a foreign agent after a jury found him guilty in July 2024.
During his nine-week trial, prosecutors presented thousands of pages of documents, text messages, and photographs, and questioned dozens of witnesses to show how he acted to benefit the governments of Egypt and Qatar and worked to derail several criminal cases against the businessmen, in exchange for the bribes. During both trials, they offered as evidence text messages, voicemails, and other communications between the couple in which they discussed the scheme and riches.
Bob Menendez has appealed his conviction and remains incarcerated at the federal prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania. A Democratic member of Congress for more than 30 years, he has unsuccessfully sought a pardon from President Donald Trump. He was sentenced to 11 years behind bars.
Two of the businessmen involved in the bribery scheme, halal meat exporter Wael Hana and real estate developer Fred Daibes, were also convicted and sent to prison for just over eight years and seven years, respectively.
Sentencing for the third businessman, Jose Uribe, is set for Oct. 9. He testified against his co-defendants in a cooperation deal with prosecutors.
